AS OF JULY 2013, FOUR YEARS AND FIVE MONTHS AFTER OUR FIRST TAINTED JUSTICE STORY, THE FIVE OFFICERS AT THE CENTER OF THE INVESTIGATION, including Jeff Cujdik And Tom Tolstoy, have not been charged with a crime. All but one, who retired, are still Philadelphia police officers, although they remain on desk duty. They still earn paychecks, paid by taxpayers, and are building up healthy pensions.
The city has paid out almost $2 million to settle thirty-three lawsuits filed by bodega owners and two women who claimed they were victimized by these officers. In settling the cases, the city did not admit any liability.
The FBI has refused to divulge the status of the probe.
John McNesby, president of the Fraternal Order of Police, continues to staunchly defend the officers. He is adamant that the officers did nothing wrong and will be back on the street soon. He wants the city to award the officers hundreds of thousands of dollars in lost overtime. In Philadelphia, cops can win back pay based on a hypothetical, arguing that they would have earned a certain amount of extra money had they not been placed on desk duty. In this case, the theoretical overtime owed to Jeff and the other officers could exceed $1 million.
George Bochetto, the bulldog attorney who defended Jeff and railed when we first met him, “What do you guys think you are going to do? Win a Pulitzer Prize?” still practices law in Philadelphia. About a month after winning the Pulitzer, Barbara and I bumped into him at a state awards banquet. He sheepishly congratulated us. He shook our hands while patting us on the back. He leaned in closer and in a half whisper, half mumble, said, “I didn’t realize . . .” That moment was almost as satisfying as winning the Pulitzer. Not really, but you get the point.
Jose Duran, the bodega owner who captured the officers on video cutting surveillance camera wires in his store, lost his business shortly after the raid. He couldn’t afford his mortgage and had to sell his large South Jersey colonial. He now rents a smaller rancher on a busy street. He works as a butcher in the meat department at a Costco.
Dagma Rodriguez and Lady Gonzalez struggle to get past what happened to them. They’re angry and incensed that Tom Tolstoy remains an officer. “If it would have been any other citizen on the street, he would be in jail already,” Lady said.
Tolstoy, who never met with or talked to us, does have a dream though: He plans to open a charter school for teenagers who want a career in law enforcement.
The feds stopped paying for Benny’s housing. He had become too much of a handful. They wanted him to stay out of Philly, but he kept returning to the very streets where he had set up drug dealers. He felt compelled to apologize to them for what he had done. But that only made them more vengeful. Barbara spent more than an hour on the phone with one drug dealer, convincing him not to kill Benny. Eventually, we lost touch with Benny.
The hedge funds took control of the Philadelphia Daily News and Philadelphia Inquirer and got rid of the editors of both papers. A series of buyouts, budget cuts, pay cuts, and mandatory furloughs ensued. In 2011, the new overseers sold the iconic white tower that housed the papers. Morale plummeted.
Amid rumors that the hedge funds planned to close the Daily News and further slash the Inquirer, the papers were sold yet again in the spring of 2012—this time for $55 million, 11 percent of the $515 million Tierney’s group had paid in 2006. It was the fourth time in six years that the papers had been flipped. The new owners were a group of local, high-profile businessmen, some of whom were entrenched in Democratic politics and fund-raising. They reinstalled Michael Days as editor of the Daily News and Bill Marimow as editor of the Inquirer. The owners promised to revive the papers, twenty-first-century style: online and behind paywalls. Time will tell.
Barbara and I continue to do investigative reporting for the Daily News.