My close call with the Black Liberation Army

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Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:00

Peter, during your time with the NYPD, the Black Liberation Army was killing cops. And on May 19, 1971, you narrowly, narrowly escaped an assassination attempt. Could you go into that?

SPEAKER_00 0:11

Yeah, it was up in the uh 2-6 precinct in uh West Harlem. And uh we were guarding uh district attorney uh D.A. uh. Hogan's house. He was prosecuting some of the old uh Black Panther parties, which converted over to the Black Liberation Army, and he was prosecuting some of them, so he had some assassination uh threats on his life. So we had it was a fixer 24 hours a day, and uh we take a radio car, you sit in front of his premises on uh Riverside Drive and uh in West Harlem. What happened was I was with my partner, and uh a radio car comes because it was face-to-face relief. You couldn't leave until somebody took your place. They pull up alongside of us, uh Tom Curry and Nick Benetti, and uh we took off, we went to go eat. An hour later we come back and they're gone. I said, What where where did they go? Where the hell did they go? We wait. Five, ten seconds later, we're here on the radio. I'm shot, I'm shot. And they were down uh four or five blocks down on Riverside Drive, uh and they they got uh shot, you know, with a Mac 10 machine pistol 45 caliber. So we uh we were shot, he gave the location, we went down over there, and it looked like the car was in an accident. All the glass was blown out, the doors were opened, they were hanging out each side of the car, and uh the blood was all over the place. I says, I sure it wasn't a crash, but nope. When I got closer, I could see the uh the bullet holes on the side. It was like a tight pattern, like a ten inch pattern on the uh driver's side of the car. It went uh and then on the it went through the car, hit uh Tom, knocked his teeth out, his palate, and and paralyzed him, and then went through Nick Benetti's body and took a few of his organs out. And then on the other side of the car, there was a bigger pattern and the big silver dollar bullet holes when the bullets came out, you know. I said, I'd never seen anything like that. You know, that kind of a an incident, especially involving the police. I was young, only had a few years on the job. And uh that was it. So we took Nick Benetti and our car, threw him in the back of the car, somebody took Tom and put him in his car. I sat in the back and uh his eyes were rolling back, Nick's eyes. Tom died on the way, but then they re-assinated him uh back at the uh St. Luke. And I was in the back with Nick. Stay with me, Nick, and we're talking to him, and the blood was pouring out of the I saw the holes all over his chest, and uh no bulletproof vest back then, you know. It might have made the difference for him, but not for Tom. Anyway, I'm putting my fingers in the holes, trying to stop the bleeding, and nothing worked. Then we were at St. Luke's in uh a minute, and they were all outside. It w it was terrific, you know. All the uh doctors were outside, nurses were out there crying and all that stuff, and dragged one in and dragged Tom in and the whole nine yards, and they brought him back to life, but they were I think now uh both had passed away, but they were really they were hurt very badly, or you know, paralyzed and this and that. But and that was in my first encounter with that type of a police shooting, you know, Vic. And that was it. So and then from there we'd we got assigned to the DA's office. So we were young, but they said, nope, you're working with us, you're gonna help, this and that. Would you see all that? Not they felt like we were part of it, which was good. And that went on, and then there was Joanne Chesimar's people, maybe not her, I don't know. She got locked up with some other charges later on, Chesamar. And uh uh they made some arrests later on, I think a year later, whatever, and then they ultimately locked up Joanne Chesamar for other killings and shootings of police officers, and uh they took a bunch of the BLA down at that time, and then they um they put the uh Chesamar in jail. She escaped. Matter of fact, I think she escaped twice. And then she wound up the final time she escaped after killing a maybe a Jersey uh state trooper.

SPEAKER_01 3:57

Jersey trooper.

SPEAKER_00 3:58

But then Yeah. And then she uh wound up in Cuba. Everybody knew where she was, but politics as it was, we just never went and got her. And then she finally, she I read in the paper last year, she died. She passed away. So that was a story with uh with my first involvement with that. And that was probably the origination of the Black Liberation Army and their conversion from the Black Panthers and uh and her regime, so to speak. And uh she uh went on to and they her and her cohorts wound up uh the week after that, they wound up um shooting uh Piagentini, Joe Piagentini, and uh Wave uh Forst no, not Forster, uh Jones. Wavely Jones, yeah, up in the uh 3-2 with the polar grounds, uh, took the guns and and and killed those who murdered those two guys, and then they then a time later after that, and we thought it was a black-white team, nobody was sure at the time, and then they went down to the ninth precinct and they uh killed uh Forster and uh Laurie, right? Uh down in the ninth precinct, I think it was. And then they went on to havoc uh after that and other shootings around the country. It spread and it was a cop killing season that year we lost, I think, thirteen cops, uh half of them probably due to the BLA. And then uh besides the thirteen, we had thirteen suicides in that same year, you know. So that that was a job, it was a wild time, just our six shooters, no speed loaders, and uh and uh no vests and stuff like that. You're on your own, but then we all carried to two guns, you know. You're allowed to carry a service gun and your off-duty gun on your waistband, and and then uh still no vest. And in 1978, they came out with the uh bulletproof vest for everybody on a job. So that was my encounter, original encounter with the uh with the BLA and such, you know. So I marrily missed it. It was meant f coincidentally, it was just meant for us, for them to pull alongside us and do the thing, you know. So why God chose them and not us, I I don't know. But anyway, it's one of the sad parts of the early 70s, and there was a lot of that, you know, a lot of a lot of cops got killed, you know.

SPEAKER_01 6:03

Uh for people that don't know how bad J Joanne Chesamard was, she should be in the Hall of Fame for bad guys, men included, and she had more lives than a cat and was in more gun battles. Allegedly, she was involved in um Scarangella and Rainey's ambush out in Queens. They found her fingerprints in the van. She escaped. She was like you said, she got into a shootout with the Jersey State Trooper. The trooper was killed. She was sentenced to 20 or 30 years in jail. She escaped from with help, obviously. She escaped from Roy State Prison in New Jersey where she made her way to Cuba. I'll believe it when I see it. They, you know, they reported she was dead. I don't believe it at all. You know, it's one of those things, maybe Cuba's getting the heads up that at some point they might start cooperating with us with law enforcement. So maybe some of these people they're just saying, yeah, yeah, they're dead, so we don't hand them over as a bargaining chip. I I saw in another interview that you said you were this close to catching her one night.

SPEAKER_00 6:58

Yeah, we were a matter of fact, we were in street crime. And it comes over the air that the uh feds, FBI, whatever, they had were following her, right? And they said we have her in view and they were running and all this other stuff. By the time we got there, street crime, and I don't know, where we we were in um Midtown, I think. And uh by the time we got there, they says, oh no, we lost sight of her and stuff like that. But we we did a toss, man. We spent the next two nights looking. Um the NYPD was there, the feds were there, and uh, how did she got away? I don't know. It's you know, you only get one chance, one glimpse at these things sometimes. You know? Whatever, if I'm not gonna knock the feds, that's for sure. But she got away again. And how, like you says, we don't know. Nobody saw the body in Cuba. I have my doubts too, especially with the change of politics now. Uh there's no more fooling around. I believe that in in a heartbeat, if we knew she was still there alive, I think we would go get her now. You know? One way or the other. You know? I really do.

SPEAKER_01 8:03

Peter, did you have any encounters with any other BLA members like Twyman Myers or Herman Bell? No, I didn't.

SPEAKER_00 8:09

I think uh Louis Apollito did that. I had worked with Louis Appolito in Brooklyn for a while in the 7-1 precinct. I think he had the account. I know it's crazy as that sounds. We had to Wait, wait, back up, back up.

SPEAKER_01 8:21

He just dropped your name. Early, could you go into that early in your career? You worked with one of the mafia cops, Louis Appolito. Could you guys kind of go into how that you just sound like you just fall in with these people in history? Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 8:33

I know it's that it was a sad situation. And and when I knew uh Louis Apollito with and I it wasn't his steady partner back in the 7-1. We just happened the way the squads worked out, we worked together, you know, on occasions. And he was a, you know, from what I knew of Louis, he at that time, he was Mr. Brooklyn, he was very trim and muscular, and he was a tough guy, had a rack of medals more than I had, you know. And uh and we worked together. We had remember we had the combat cars before your time, probably, uh Vic. We had combat cars. On the roll caller would say uh combat car. So it was a backup car because they were shooting so many cops and somebody think. So we yeah, right. So we had four cops to a car with shotguns. You could bring your guns from home if they were on the 10 car to some all that crazy shit, right? Things were out of control then, right? No bulletproof vest. And we'd uh ride around backing up the cops on all the jobs. That was the combat car, right, you know. And uh and then we had and I I called it the Italian car, I had four Italians in one car. You know, it was very, very funny. You know, hey, we had a lot of fun. I'm telling you something, we you know, we did a lot of laughing, but there was a lot of serious shit going on. But that one I was in the that was the uh early 70s. I was in the 7-1 for six, seven years, but uh before I bounced up to Harlem when I got promoted to sergeant. But uh, you know, it was a different time, and the cops were different, and Brooklyn cops, I gotta tell you something. Brooklyn Brooklyn cops, God bless them, they were tough guys, you know. And I worked all over, I worked in every borough and stuff like that. But back in the day, Brooklyn cops had their own world. They would handle things differently, you know, they were very tough because if they were born in Brooklyn and they were uh raised in Brooklyn, right? And then they uh came on the job and stayed in Brooklyn, look out. These were these are tough guys. So either they either they became working with the mob, it's the Titan guys, you know, either they worked with the mob or they became cops, one or the other. And uh Louis fell somewhere in between there. But uh I as when I knew Louis, he was a straight-up guy, stand-up cop. And then how he ventured off into that uh La La Land shit, you know, uh becoming famous and his drive to get ahead and all that stuff with that, with shows and everything, you know. And I and then he wrote his book, Mafia Cop and everything, and because of his father, the uncle, and all that, the background, you know. But uh anyway, that's the short story with Louis and the guys in the 7-1, Brooklyn.

SPEAKER_01 11:04

They were good guys, good cops. Well, you were long retired, so when that story broke about him and Stephen Caracapa doing murders and providing the mafia with classified information, what was your reaction? You were like, holy shit.

SPEAKER_00 11:16

Exactly. But I knew he was involved in some things because originally I shouldn't be talking about uh him like that, but I I apologize. But anyway, is that uh he was involved in some allegations? If you remember, he worked for um the uh intelligence unit, maybe not intelligence. You had a knock intelligence, right, when you worked in Narcotics. And uh I think he worked there and he was maybe um charged with divulging information, and that's how it all started, you know. And then he beat that rap. I think he was okay with it, and right, and then he retired, and then he uh after he retired, he was always under investigation, you know, they never let loose of it. He moved to uh Las Vegas. And when he moved to Las Vegas, uh that's when they got him, and he did something in Vegas, I don't know if they got him. But then they got him in board.

SPEAKER_01 12:06

They got him in Vegas for selling coke, I think.

SPEAKER_00 12:08

Uh some crazy, crazy off-the-wall shit, you know, and they uh so and then it all came tumbling down, and and we were all s shocked because uh this wasn't a guy that was a young cop in our twenties, and we were kids, you know. And then he just got wrapped up in it, and it was a it was a a shame, you know. Everybody who knew him, I knew the family, you know, the get together is the precinct nonsense, you know, that we all got together in the families and stuff like that, and and uh but then he hooked up with his partner, Caracapa or whatever, I guess his name there. And so that's it. But there were so many guys like that, you know, back in the day, as sad as it is, the people you work, especially the older guys who was indicted on this, who was indicted on that, the guys were so heavily involved in the the stuff, and then they all waded through it, got transferred around and and moved on with their lives, you know.

SPEAKER_01 13:03

Peter, what years were you active with the NYPD?

SPEAKER_00 13:05

Uh I came on in 1968 through 1989. And in 68 I came on uh April 3rd, and uh uh uh we were there for orientation, if you remember, you sat in the big auditorium and and they gave us the whole thing. And then April 4th, and when we came in later that day, we're sitting in the auditorium, they were all buzzing. James O'Reilly killed, uh murdered uh Martin Luther King Jr. right on the 4th of April, right? And I didn't know who he was, you know. And and I'm telling we had 700 guys, all white guys, maybe you had a sprinkling of blacks, not too many back in that time, you know. There was no uh diversification kind of a portion such, so it was mostly white guys. And I'm looking around, who's this guy? He got shot. Nobody knew, you know. But the black guys, the few of them they knew. And then uh that night they says, okay, you said going out on the street. You know, going out on the street, what are you talking about? I was a plumber, you know. I was a construction worker. What do you mean? You know, I shot a BB gun. I was never in the service, my brother was in special forces, but uh, and so uh they took us and they uh took us to the outdoor range late at night, and we went to the range and we all lined up single file, one behind the other, and the gun was laying there, the revolver, they would keep loading it, you didn't even load it, and you picked it up and you fired it through the metal hoop. You know, the metal hoops were there to all the targets. Yeah. So no target, just a metal hoop. And you pointed it and you fired your six shots, you laid it down and you got on the bus. And they had like 20 buses there, you know? And that was it. And that was our training. Went back to the uh academy and they gave us our guns and all that stuff, and they all the leather hardware, sent us downtown to the equipment section, the old equipment section, picked up our gray uniforms, and on the fourth day I was on the job, we were on the street, I was on Fifth Avenue, all lined up with 700 kids, you know, with the recruits, uh, you know, probationary officers, and we stayed there for a couple of weeks, and then went back to the academy for about four weeks, and it was becoming they had all the uh, you know, the uh fallout from uh, you know, the the shooting of uh of uh Martin Luther King, all those mini-riots and burning up the city, all that stuff, right? And then we had the uh the Vietnam protests. Remember, they needed so many cops and stuff like that. It was we were just a shortage of cops, they tried to build it up. And then I was uh on the street uh from then we got our blue uniforms for the summer, and we were out, and I was working in the Queen's task force, and I was making collars, and I that was fun for me. You know, locking people up, chasing them. I was young, I was getting little medals and stuff for robberies and a gun collar and that stuff. I I found it exciting. I only had six months on the job. And then from there I went to they took us out of that unit, okay. You're going someplace else. We were going someplace else. Well, we still got you because you're not permanently assigned yet. As we're sending you to a traffic unit. Now we all had to go to Safety B. Now I'm out in downtown Manhattan directing traffic. I didn't know what I was doing. I said, trucks are passing by. I was filthy, all the exhaust, my whole uniform, my face was black. Let it gasoline. It was terrible. At the end of the day, my uniform was all black with soot. And I did that for about six weeks. And then back to the academy again. And we had no graduation because it snowed and that was it. You know, you just go home. And I reported to the 13th precinct. That was really my first permanent was a 13th precinct. I said, Oh, that's not bad, but you know, I wanted more action. I was hoping to get back, you know, and I met and made friends with the lieutenant from the task force in Queens. He says, You get Queens and I'll pull you into the task force. Well, I wound up in the 13th precinct, and then we went on strike. If you remember, we went on strike, uh, the PBA strike. I said, a strike? What is a strike? He says, no, no, the delegate says, don't come in because I'd rather have you home, right? They said, stay home. So I stayed home. When I came back to work, uh, they charged me 10 days' pay for five days I was on strike that I didn't show up to work. But nobody could go to work. You know, all the delegates were there. They'd beat you up if you if you tried to go to work. So anyway, uh, that's what happened there. And then a few months later, I got transferred. 600 young people got transferred, and I wound up in the 2-6 precinct, where I encountered the uh the BLA and stuff like that. They did it with a protractor, you know, a ruler. They measured how far away you lived. So I lived in Suffolk County, and the 2-6 outside of Staten Almond was the furthest you could travel. So they uh I wound up in a 2-6 for a couple of years. And after Joe Pension, they after the couple of killings, and the families made a big beef about what my husband was doing Harlem. He didn't want to be there and all that nonsense. They started the A, B, and C houses. That if you did your A time, remember? Yeah. Yeah, yeah. So I didn't have enough time to get Queens, but I could avoid West Harlem, you know, going that far. And I took, well, how about Brooklyn? I says, I'll take it. So I saved the toll, I saved an hour with the driving, and I took the 7-1, and then that's another story, the 7-1 precinct. And I studied in 7-1. I said, I got tired, I had no hook, I was destined to go where you're gonna go. And I was an overtime kid, and you know, a rebel. And uh I was there, I was never gonna do anything on the job, and I was gonna get put in for the shield yellow bullshit. Uh so I uh wound up uh uh staying there until I studied and uh got promoted in 77. I says, you know, they put where you wanted to go and stuff, and uh I thought I was gonna stay, I'll stay in Brooklyn. It was good. The travel, it wasn't too bad, you know, going on the island. And then my wife was hip, oh that's that's good. Good Pete, better travel and stuff like that. So where did God put me in the 3-2 when I got promoted to Saj? And I was up in the 2-6, and we were guarding uh Tom Curry and Nick Benetti and and other prisoners and stuff. So when I'm up in St. Luke's, I used to look out at the balcony. I used to look down at the 3-2, and it was all smoky, you know, all the smoke coming up. I says, Oh, I don't want to go there. I says, On a warm summer night, quiet, you can hear gunshots. I says, Yeah, maybe they're fireworks. No, they were gunshots. Anyway, so that was my round robin, so to speak, and I wound up. I says, I thought maybe uh my Rochelle, my wife, you know, she was always so supportive. And uh she says, Oh, Pete, maybe, and they says, Where are you going now? I says, You were already in Holland. I says, No, no, this is central Holland now. Right, I'm going to the 3-2. She had a little murder problem there, Brad Hurst killings, 19 shootings on one corner, and then uh and I got to the 3-2 and uh uh the Italian boss comes over to me. Hey, Pete, you're young. Look at you, you're from Brooklyn, you're here, there. I'm gonna give you some units. You got the burglary robbery team. A lot of the older guys, you know, they were older. I was a young, I was 31 years old. He says, You got the burglary robbery team, besides patrol, you know. And then so I had the burglary robbery team, and then from there um I made friends with the community people, with the black community leaders and stuff like that. I was had a gift of gab at the time. And I was young, I was the youngest sergeant there, I guess. And uh they gave me like a task force and a conditions car and narcotics work and all that stuff. I backfilled with the snoo teams and backfilled with anti-crime, had the burglary robbery team, and then I had this task force with eight people, and I had four blacks, four whites, one Spanish guy, because we couldn't go out in the community and take thousands of people off the streets, cleaning out the buildings and doing the roundups and sweeps like we did, made observations, all that nonsense. So we had to have a diverse team to do it, and we did. And we became a little bit, I say, famous. We're in the newspapers and we got a lot of medals and stuff like that, and got involved in a couple of shootouts, and uh, you know, got the cross, the combat cross, the medal of valor, and all that stuff there for the shootouts and everything. And and uh and that was the story. I spent the 3-2 for a chase, it must be seven years I spent there, and then uh uh got promoted and went to street crime and I did what I did in the 3-2, I did it citywide, and I had fun. Street crime was my whole playground was sneakers and sweatshirts and stuff, so I had I had the whole city as a playground where I could do the same jump collars and gun collars and the same stuff that I did in the 3-2 precinct. But anyway, and then 21 years went by, I got heard split the kneecap open and the rest is history.

SPEAKER_01 21:36

You got hired before the nap commission, and then you were a young cop when the nap commission hearings happened. What was that like?

SPEAKER_00 21:43

It was very embarrassing. I was in the in the two six and people would w I never seen that before, you know. People would walk in front of the radio car and give you a dirty look and spit on the floor, you know, because you know, we knew, everybody knew what was going on, you know, stuff like that, and that I was interested in the overtime and and that kind of thing. Colling up that was my gig, you know. I I wasn't hunting money and some of the older guys maybe and the guys got caught up in it and got in trouble, you know, of course. But it was very embarrassing was the big thing. You know, with friends, neighbors, family members and stuff like that, you know, they said, What's going on? Is that true? You know, what they were saying about all the corruption? And it was everything. Everything got aired out, you know, from you know, I don't even want to go into the details on it, but it was embarrassing of of what some of the guys did. But then that was the the borderline. That was the fence. From that day moving forward, you were done. Guys wouldn't even, you know, you didn't want to take a cup of coffee after that. Guys were so afraid, they didn't want to lose their jobs, you know. And then that quickly changed. You know, the uh momentum of the job. Up and down, up and down. One day love cops, then they hate cops. You know the story. So uh we were on the down. The job was on the down, we went on strike, we had the nap commission, they were killing cops to law, nobody gave a F, you know, that kind of a thing. And then we were on the up. Guys were doing good again. You know, they felt sorry for the cops. They made sure everybody had bulletproof vests and they tried to help out. And guys, it was rah-rah police. And all the police shows came out and everything, and we were on the up. But crime was also on the up. It was it was a busy time the seventies, you know, and the eighties when when you were on, right, Vic? Uh it was busy. I mean, we can't deny that. A lot of murders, a lot of drugs and stuff like that. The 3 2 precinct was the land of drugs. We called it Dodge City. It was it was the capital of America, the 3-2 precinct. One square mile. Every block was making ten, fifteen million dollars in sales, you know. I know. It w it was out of control. But we me and that team we had, plus would help with the organized crime and the DEA was there and and the uh SNOO teams and the whole nine yards. And we really killed it. We wound up making 8,000 arrests, the team. And uh we pulled we cleaned out all the buildings of all the shooting galleries. I worked with the uh housing preservation authority. I'd clean out a building and I'd call them up and they'd cement it up and put them the metal in there and that kind of a thing, you know? But and that was it. That was it was at the time it was uh it was it was the tomb of gloom, the three two, you know. It was a a tough place. More cops there killed than anywhere in the world in that one square mile. But uh but it was a good place. I learned there. I really did. I earned my wings and I uh and I I I made headway, you know. It was a a good learning till so what when I was dropped in there, I said, uh what am I doing here? But you learn to uh wallow in the crap and you do good and you survive. Not that I was any s anything special. It's where God puts you. So to survive, you do. I was young, I was a hyper kid and and a young boss, so and it worked out fine, you know. I'm here. That's all. You know, how well God knows why, right?

SPEAKER_01 25:06

Well, you're very lucky to be here because you were involved in a couple of shootouts during your NYPD career, and I think both times were in the 3-2. Would you mind telling us about them?

SPEAKER_00 25:14

Yeah, the first one was uh I think in 19 uh 82. We were up on uh I think uh 144 street and off of uh Bradhurst Avenue, and um we were doing the drug raid of the building and shooter guys took the sides, and then uh I went in with Bobby Smith, a real hero, black cop, saved my life. We went into the building and the one of the guys who we were chasing in, Bobby was in front of me, and uh he always pushed me back and went in first. Anyway, when the guy was at the window jumping out the rewindow, he turns and fires a batch of shots from his gun at Bobby, Bobby fired back, nobody got hit, and then we jumped out the back doorway, so to speak, window doorway, into the alleyway, and we went on for a chase. And then I went uh I went up to the avenue to try to cut them off. They were went to the schoolyard, maybe they went at one four two, whatever, and I got up to the avenue ahead of them, and here they came. The guy turned around and he was gonna kill my my guy, Bobby Smet, the hero, you know. And they he leveled the gun and I let go four rounds and I hit my my target. I shot the guy and he went down and that was it. We high-fived and it was a deed, a good deed, you know? And that was that. And that was we got the cross with that, the combat cross. I was proud from Ed's Ed Koch and um Commissioner McGuire. That was a big day for us to get the cross. And then the second one came out maybe a year later after that, four or five straight off of one, four, five. And uh we just finished loading up, uh we cleaned out a building, we took a bunch of knock arrests and stuff. We had a bunch of, I think we had 20 prisoners in the van. We used to take the van around with us, you know, and load up the van. Okay, no more, we got enough. Everybody's got their pieces. How many we got? Okay, we divided it all up. Good. Let's go eat. You know, we all the Italians wanted to eat, you know. So I said, let's go eat. And he said, okay, Pete, where are we gonna get the food? Everything is good. Just as we were pulling out with the cars and the van, right? The uh prisoner van, pop, pop, pop. All the shots went off up on 145th Street. We look up the bot, two groups were having a shootout, you know, bum, bam, bam, bam, bam, big guns bigger than we had, you know. And uh with the nine mils, whatever. And they were going back and forth. The smoke was in the air, and then, oh, they turned around, oh, we're yelling. And the whole the community knew more what to do than what we did. They all hit the ground. We can't just lie on the ground, right? Right. So we had to get behind the fire hydrants, the car, the truck, this and that, and behind the poles and stuff, make yourself small and stuff. And they started firing at us. And the bullets were bouncing off the van and the cars, it was a disaster. So I let, I think I let one or two rounds go. And then, of course, the sergeant fired, right? You know, so my guys, it was like everybody's so bang. Man, the and the bullets are whizzing past me. It's wait, wait, and past my ears. Anyway, we lit off a whole volley of shots, and we know we hadn't, we had nothing. You know, we had just the we shot up the whole place, they shot up the whole place, the bear guys, we had shit, you know. So uh now we're chasing a crowd of people down a hundred and we're all running like a bunch of nuts, you know, running down there and yelling, stop, stop, yeah, sure. So my uh one of my guys, uh Jimmy Davis, passed away. I lost half my team is gone now. You know, they were a little older than I was, but he uh calls me, hey, Pete, Pete, boss, Pete, Pete, listen, we got somebody down. I says, one of us? No. Perp? No. I said, what do we got? He says, uh, a young girl, you know, uh she was pushing, a young mother was pushing a baby stroller with the baby in the stroller, and the bullet went skimmed down this one of the bullets, we don't know who it was, and it skimmed down the sidewalk, the bullet, right? And it hit her in the in the in the femur and broke the femur in half. And uh and she was crippled for life. And uh so he says it was now it turned into a real disaster. It was terrible. And then one of my guys, we went ran down there and uh ambulance and stuff, emergency services all over the place. They're the best, you know, shotguns and things and all the special weapons back in the day. We cordn off the area. And then one of my guys, my youngest guy, Louis LeBlanc, good guy, young hero, he was young, you know. He says, There he is, there's one of the guys right there. I said, You've got to be a kidney. He was so sharp. The young cop, and he was the fastest in the group. He goes in, grabs the guy by the neck, and pulls out a nine millimeter. So he saved the day. At least we we had one collar there from the group with the big shootout, you know, and he was a shooter, gun was fired, and uh so that sort of saved the day. Anyway, it was a disaster that somebody got shot, you know, of course the lawsuits and everything that came with it. Everything was cleared, uh, and we all wound up getting the uh medal for valor and the guys who were involved who fired their guns and stuff. And uh and it was a nice medal day with the with the the people, the dignitaries on Merida side, but we always felt bad about the uh the girl got the her leg broken, you know, was uh from the uh from one of the bullets anyway. So that that sort of stayed with you, you know. And then uh and then of course we had other lawsuits for, you know, doing uh any kind of work that you do, you're always gonna get involved in those kinds of incidents. And when I retired, they says, you can't retire. You got all these open cases. Where are you going? Oh, all the IAD logs are still open and everything, and severe complaints. But anyway, uh we got through it and so to speak and moved on and just continued our work until opened up 143rd Street, where the mayor was there and all the dignitaries, congressmen, and everything. Ribbon cutting ceremony. The street opened up as well as the whole area around there, uh free of narcotics and such, you know. And uh it was nice. And I was a lieutenant and I just got made, they called me back for the ceremony. So it it was a nice day, you know, we felt good.

SPEAKER_01 31:07

My uh good friend of mine is a 3-2 alumni, and he came on the job obviously after you were gone, but he heard a lot of stories about you, and he wanted me to ask you, and I think you kind of you kind of mentioned it, he wanted to know about the fastest white guy in Harlem.

SPEAKER_00 31:20

Yeah. That was uh Louis LeBlanc, and he was. He could jump over the cars as good as my black guys for the damn fast. My black guys used to leap over the hoods of the cars. It was like a TV show. And then they'd I says, Look, guys, I could run, you know, but not as fast as these guys. And I was 35 or 36 years old then, right? But uh, they could run. My black guys were tough, tough guys, you know. And my white guys too, I had big, tough white guys, too. And Louis Louis LeBanc he was the fastest white guy, stuff like that. But the ribbon cub and cutting, you know, um a Gambino crime family had control over the area. They would put it. I wanted to ask you that.

SPEAKER_01 31:57

You really fouled the Gambino crime family, right? They put a contract on your life. Oh yeah.

SPEAKER_00 32:01

Yeah, that's and that's what's in the book, Column Raiders, all that stuff. We changed names around because, you know, to protect the innocent and the guilty. But what happened was uh they put the contracts on me, my family, and there are some other cops too, and uh and and that was that and uh so uh we had to deal with with that. We worked what happened was uh, you know, when Nicky Barnes got arrested, there was a big battle over the territory who was gonna take over. And then uh so there was a lot, a lot of shootings and bloodshed over that, you know. And then when the selection was made, the Black Sunday group took over. And they were shipping the the mafiosos were shipping the uh narcotics from Turkey, from the fields uh the poppy fields in Turkey, right? So they had all the uh the mafiosos overtook the poppy fields by force. And all the peasants' farmers, so to speak, they had to work for the mafiosos, picking the poppy plants, they package it all up, bring it down by cart and train and whatnot, uh to the port of Mersin in Turkey, and from there they'd ship it to Italy to Sicily. And then from Sicily it would uh uh Palermo, they would uh cart it, truck it up to the hills in uh Sicily, where they would uh uh uh vat it and and cook it up and put it into the keys, and from there they ship it on the uh olive boats, the freighters that they owned, and they shipped it off to America, and they came in to uh the coast of Long Island, you know, and uh the South Shore and they would sneak in and drop it off at the Fulton Fish Market, you know, uh Keys, mix it with the fish and that kind of stuff. They'd have the small fishing boats meet the big freighters, and then they would bring it in and they'd mix it in with the fish, and then from there they'd send it to the Bronx, cut it up into glass scenes, diamond quarter bags, you know, of uh glass scenes. From there they shipped it from the Bronx over to Harlem and they'd sell them at 3-2 precinct. And every block was making millions of dollars, you know. And that and that's the uh that's the thing that so the DEA uh work would I I just like may if you remember the intelligence I used to send those reports in all the time. And they from there the the uh our Intel from uh New York would send it to the DEA and they were all working together and they made some big arrests and took the all the drug uh people down and uh that were involved in it and closed down a lot of the fields, the poppy fields, and gave them the freedom, took down people in Sicily and all that stuff. That stuff that we couldn't do, they did, you know, like the DEA and stuff like that. But we did our piece and gave all the information and and we cleaned up our three two prisons, you know. And that's essentially what the th Harlem Raiders is about, my diverse team, my cops.

SPEAKER_01 34:48

Your story makes a lot of sense because the Fulton Fish market for generations was controlled, I think, by the Genovese, and the Genovese farm team was the Purple Gang, right, up in Harlem. Yeah. And they were heavily involved. D do you remember, I mean, who you had these issues with with the mob?

SPEAKER_00 35:07

Nah, you know, face to face with me and the mob, it just that stuff never came to be in actuality. In the book, we you know, they changed things up a bit, but we never saw them. All we saw was a derivative of them, their people, who they assigned to take care of the streets and home, who they would control the streets. So they had a few of their first lieutenants and stuff like that. And they would never leave. And they they were down in the two five, you know, the lower east side over there, the the Italian section over there, you know, Spanish Italian section. And they uh controlled the restaurants around there. I won't mention any names. But yeah, and we all went to eat there, you know, later on. But so they were uh that's where they were sort of headquartered out of. And so they could have their fingers from the uh, you know, from that uh Harlem, east side of Harlem, it was close to the 3-2, and they could have the uh drugs, how they, you know, controlled it all, you know. And they had the money from Turkey and from Italy, they couldn't get it there. The only one who had those millions of dollars to invest was uh the mafiosos, you know, my countrymen, you know, I'm embarrassed to say. And then and they were money laundering it into uh the Vatican, you know, there was a small group of people in it. Yeah, that's that's in if we get a show, that's a big part of that is gonna be in the show. If that comes to be a series that we're working on based on Holly Maratis, we keep our fingers crossed, we're trying for a long time. But um, so so to speak, they money laundered and they would give it into a bad element of the Vatican. They poisoned a Pope and they're going to kill another Pope in real life, you know. One of the John Paul's, the first one I think they poisoned, they killed him. And uh so it was a bad element in the Vatican at the time, and they were taking the money and giving the money back to the mob, less 10% or whatever, they keep for themselves. And so they had bankers, they had the Italian bankers involved, Vatican bankers, and it was a corrupt time uh in in Rome, so to speak, you know. And uh I had to keep a lot out of that, out of Harlem Raiders, the the publishers says, No, we're not gonna go after the Vatican, stuff like that. I said, okay. They were worrying, you know, that they would be protesting my book, you know. But I put a little bit in there, but uh but in the uh hopefully the show to come if we get a show, if we get a production, all that's in there. All about the uh the mafiosos and connections to the Vatican from Harlem to to the Vatican to Sicily and to Rome, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 37:38

Peter, when you were a lieutenant, you eventually get transferred to the NYPD's prestigious street crime unit. Can you tell us about the unit?

SPEAKER_00 37:46

Yes. The street crime was it rotated from two to three hundred people, and it was a collection of cops from all over the city. And uh they, so to speak, picked the best of the group. Some of the guys were, you know, they were wild-collar guys and tough guys and everything else, and it made for a great mix, and uh a lot of young ones and a lot of older ones, and they expanded the unit, they put uh younger guys there. So I was lucky to get there and uh I was happy about it when I first got it. Originally I had, you know, they came out with that violin prone list. You remember that list we had, and I was on that list for CCRB, civilian complaints, and I had some IAD logs, investigations, and that stuff. So uh I had a tough time getting there. But one of the chiefs says, uh, pranzo, where the smoke is fire. I don't care how many arrests we made, you know. He says, as long as I'm on this job, the chief told me, he says, You you're not you're not going anywhere until you retire. I says, All right, chief, and I walked out. So he got transferred. The day he got transferred, I got street crime. They called me up. Pete, he's gone. Come on over. Because they wanted me because I was an active, nutty kid. Active kid. Young lieutenant, I was only 35 or 36, I think, at the time. And uh so I was relatively young as a lieutenant, and I was trimmed. I could still run. So I took a lot of the guys, we went around and we did all guns, you know. Street crime was guns, guns, guns. Robberies and guns and that kind of a thing. And uh and I finished up my years there. We had a good time, made a lot of arrests, and I tried to keep everybody out of trouble the best I could, you know. Uh, and it and it worked out well for me. It was a good climax to my uh career and until I got hurt, split my knee open, and then uh it was time to go. I started my writing career uh when I was there as a lieutenant, and I wrote for a lot of police magazines. That's how we started, and then got into my first book uh from Google Publications and Stress Management for Law Enforcement, and uh that was like a suicide preventative book, that was a big seller and stuff, and then I did Behind the Shield, a journey uh through the MYPD, and that was uh about my career itself. And then my final book, and that was when I was retired long after, and that was um Holland Raiders in 2019. But when I was in street crime, I was I was writing heavily, you know, for the newspapers and the daily news and such, and uh and magazines around the country, and so that was it. I developed uh not that I was a great student, but I developed a little bit of a writing skill and I was uh and I had the background for it, and I wrote about guns and how come we didn't have uh semi-automatics? All the other departments had them, and we still had our revolvers, and I got into a big te-da-tata with the uh range people, of course. They says, No, who are you? He says, You're not a range officer, Lieutenant. Who who are you? You know? I says, I was on the street with his with a six-shooter and they had nine mills. I said, they had 12 shots, I had six. I says, I could tell you firsthand we needed a better gun, you know. He says, Well, the NYPD, the cops can't take care of the guns. There's a liability there, too many bullets and stuff like that. But finally, with pushing and embarrassment, uh that they gave in, and they and then and I was retired, and they gave the guns out to the guys, the semi-autos, you know, and that changed the protection for the guys, you know. You had your vest, you had your semi-auto, you're in good shape, you know.

SPEAKER_01 41:15

The thing the thing about the NYPD street crime unit, I mean, and it was a great unit, and there was a mystique to it. You guys turned out of Randall's Island, which is this little island that sits underneath the Triborough Bridge. They actually filmed the last scene of the French Connection there, and you guys had a fleet of really good unmarked cars. You guys had yellow taxi cabs, you guys had all sorts of disguises. I'm sure you guys scared the crap out of more than a few bad guys, like in Midtown or Brooklyn.

SPEAKER_00 41:42

Yeah, it was an uh an undercover unit, so to speak, and the guys would put on the disguises, so to address as homeless people, and we'd laid them all around the sidewalks, and we put them in yellow cabs, so one driver, and we would put people in the backseat, you know, the cops. And then uh we had regular unmarked, nondescriptable old beater cars, and uh we would do all those decoy work. We did the Hasidic decoy work, right? We put the guys and nobody wanted to wear the outfits, Hasidic outfits with the white shirt and the black robe we had, you know. And the guys would have to go out and walk through the uh uh Jewish neighborhoods, the Hasidic neighborhoods, the old 7-1 or the 6-6 and and the precinct downtown Manhattan, and they'd have to walk around and wait for the bad guys to come beat them up and stuff like that and try to take them, and we'd lock them up. And then uh we had the uh uh the uh the uh gay areas. We'd go down to the West Village, we'd have the guys walking together, two guys walking together, or we had girls walking together and pretending to be gay, and then the outside influence would come in and and try to rough them up and we'd make the collars. In Howard Beach on Cross Bay Boulevard there, we had where the young guy was uh chased into the roadway, got killed. So we had the bias decoys. And uh we would send I had my black cop, good guy, but there was Dave Harris at the time. So I'd put we put our black guy on the Italian section of uh Cross Bay Boulevard right there, by the Bow Wow over there, and we'd walk him in the Italian section and wait for the Italian young people to beat him up, the black guy, you know, walking down the street, minding his own business, and we'd back him up and they'd whatever they did, and then we'd lock them up for what. And anyway, we uh we had all those decoys, and they were just in different types of um disguises, you know, whether it was cab drivers, humble people, and uh rabbi outfits and and those kinds of things. And we made those calls, or we had them guys leaning over because they uh they were doing all the robberies in mid time. I had and so we had the guy, the guys leaning against the wall, one of the older cops, good guy. He passed away anyhow. What a what a good guy. So he was the oldest guy in the unit, and I used to put him against the wall like it was an old drunk. He had the money sticking out of his pocket, a little bit of wallet, you know. And he had pea soup, and he'd like he was thrown up on the floor and he was like passing out and they'd come and take the money from him. And grandma said, bang, bang, bang, bang, we do five, six, seven of those, quick, in an hour. So we did all those kinds, and then the word would spread, no, those are cops, those are cops, you know, that kind of a thing.

SPEAKER_01 44:17

Yeah, change.

SPEAKER_00 44:18

So we did those things and we did the serious stuff too. There's the street robberies, cab stick-ups, and and guns. Guns was a big thing, you know, and that was one of my specialty, drugs and guns from the tree, too, of course. And then uh and I had the whole city, I could pick where I wanted to go. And I used to pick the 7-5, the Bronx, 4-6, and then uh and we made a lot of collars. We made batches in them, you know. We locked up the Guardian Angels and we made a big headway there, big to-do, because uh Ben Ward and who was it, Dinkins maybe, and uh they were pissed off that the Guardian Angels were uh picking on all the the black people, right? The black guys at the parks and stuff, and the Guardian Angels supposedly allegedly were pushing them around, right? So Ben Ward comes into street crime, yeah, Prenzle, come over here. You take your guys out, you know, and I want them locked up. So they gave us a limousine with a turret on there. It was like a special car, I don't know, what what unit terrorist task force or something ahead of turret had cameras and stuff, and uh and we'd sit in those cars and we'd put my black guy and a and a white guy, Bobby Yankel, I think uh I forget his name, Yankel, and uh a couple other guys and my black cop and uh like junkies, you know. And uh we put them out in the in the uh park, and then the guardian angels would gather around them and push them. They had a dog, you know, German Shepherd, and then we'd pounce on them and take a whole bunch of guardian angels who were in the newspapers. I was on TV, and then they says it's entrapment and all the other shit. But uh so we did that for Ben Ward and nobody but uh we we made headway and so we did all those kinds of things, and I had a lot of I had a good time in street crime, you know. It was a lot of fun and we did a lot of work, a lot of good work. Did you work with muggable Mary Glatzel? No, she was older than I was, Mary. And I think God bless as she's still alive today. So she was younger than I was, and she moved on uh before I got there, before I got to street crime. I got to street crime in 85. She was probably two or three years out already, out of street crime, you know. And she had a book, her muggable Mary book. But you had her, she was very good, good girl. And then we had uh there was a few girls, I can't think of her name now, uh Pearl Sullivan, and she was a a decoy as well, black girl. She did great. And uh we had a few people like that, uh a few good decoy, and hey that unit, uh street crime, it was a specialty unit, and it was the toughest of the tough and the good guys and mystique and all that stuff. But like you had said, but they came up with good college, you know, with decoy arrests, you know. They did very, very well for themselves, street crime, you know, until it finally ended, you know, different incidents happened and overaggression, over stacking the unit, and uh one thing led to another and they abolished the unit, you know. Like they abolished the uh the shotgun unit, the stakeout squad. Same thing from years back. Yeah, I knew the sergeant there from the stakeout squad, you know, and uh they would go in, sit in the jewelry store, right, the cop in the back with a shotgun. If a car was uh the store was robbed two, three times a week, he'd sit in the back. They would go in and and on the way out he would just blow them up, you know. After they come in and stuck up the store. And they did great to stake out squad, and they had like, you know, forty kills or whatever the hell they had. You know, they had uh hundreds of arrests, and they were good superhero cops, tough guys. Uh then the papers, newspapers got a hold of it and they said it was uh too violent to whatever, boom, and it was gone. That was it. You know? Yep. So and street crime sort of ended on a same kind of a situation, you know.

SPEAKER_01 47:58

Were you in street crime when Sylvester Stallone was filming the 1985 movie Nighthawks? Nope.

SPEAKER_00 48:04

I I wasn't there at that time, but I know he came into street crime and he filmed the beginning of it there in the in the uh opening, yeah. And then Harrison Ford was there. He did a little opening, he was in the street crime, Harrison Ford in the building. I don't know what the heck show he was or he was working on. But Nighthawks was a good show, and they took people. My friends took guys, uh Tony Peroni and uh Buffalo Head big guys, big tough cops from uh Thick Savage's squad. They took him for De Bronx Tale. Remember De Bronx Tale? The show? So they came to street crime that were looking for cops. And they said, come on over, we're filming. Give us some cops that look like detectives, and they came to street crime. And they took Tony Peroni, and uh Tony put on a he wasn't a sergeant, he put on a sergeant shirt, he was in charge, he was out on the street, he was there when when they had all the mafiosos lined up against the wall in the Bronx tale, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, right. So the the guys doing the investigation were for street crime. The the the cops there, the detectives, right? And then they had all the uh mafioso guys against the wall. Tony Peroni was there in the uniform with the sergeant stripes on from street crime. So that was a big gig, you know. I find that it was a lot of fun. So the unit had uh a big notoriety to it, you know, a lot of fame to it, a lot of things good and bad, but uh it was uh it was a fun unit. And it was a good ending for me. Nice. You know, I ended it with sneakers and sweatshirts, you know, running around the streets like a nutty kid again, you know.

SPEAKER_01 49:34

But uh Peter, but it was gonna test I'm gonna test your memory. I pulled up a few newspaper articles about you. Wanna I want to see if you remember these collars and these ends.

SPEAKER_00 49:43

Oh, forget about hey, listen, in two months I'll be 80. So the old memory, that's what I tell the people that were working on, like I said, the show. I says, hey, look, you gotta do it quick because everything is fading.

SPEAKER_01 49:55

I think you'll remember these. 1979, you and your narcotics team made a shotgun collar. The perps had fleas, and it was so bad that you guys had to call the Sterminator because the whole station house needed to be fumigated.

SPEAKER_00 50:08

Probably right, yes. But was this one of so many things? Yeah, that's a distant memory.

SPEAKER_01 50:15

All right. Uh yeah, let me let me see. Uh okay, in 1973, you and your partner responded to a burglary call at the Ebbotsfield Housing Projects. The complainant was showing you around the apartment when you noticed the perp was hiding in the closet with a 22-caliber pistol hiding in the closet.

SPEAKER_00 50:33

Yeah, it's right. He's tied to the bed, right? She was there and she says, uh, and then she whispers, he's in the closet, right? So just, you know, how you learn, you're a young cop and stuff. Me and uh, I think it was Kenny Sloman. We responded there. And while we're coming up, uh there was a well-dressed uh black guy going walking down the hallway. I said, Yeah, I said, Did you hear anything here? A woman calling for help. He says, you know, I think it's over there, he said, you know, over in that doorway over there, right? So sure enough, that was one of the guys who was in the room with her. So then you learn from there, you stop everybody, you know, don't let anybody walk past you, grab everybody, close it off. I don't care if it's the maid, I don't care if it's the butler, take everybody, you know. So we went in there and uh we uh went in there and she whispered he's in the closet and such like that, and then boom, boom, boom, we he came out of the closet and then uh was a I think she was a nurse, you know. And and then when we flipped him and with the detectives, I says, I know who it is, he walked right past us, you know, his his partner, you know. So the next day it was a treat, you know. I went out with the guys. Come on, we're gonna go pick him up at his job, and I went with them and I said, That's him. You know, he passed me in the hallway and and she ID'd him in the whole nine yards. It was actually a good collar, you know, for a young cop, you know. So we did pretty good. And you learn from your mistakes that you make, you know.

SPEAKER_01 51:59

Peter, you've written three books since your retirement. Can you please tell us the names of your books and where our listeners can check them out? Yep.

SPEAKER_00 52:06

Everything is available on uh Amazon. You can get and Harlem Raiders, of course, is available everywhere books are sold. Yep, Harlem Raiders, and then the let's see, these, this, and this. They're all available as e-readers now. It's the stress management and police behind the shield, right? They're all available as e-readers along with Harlem Raiders. And the Harlem Raiders, of course, is still a hardcover, and you can get that anywhere. Books are sold, and and those are uh my three books, and and uh that's my mystery. Peter, I want to thank you so much for spending your time with us today. Thank you. Hey, it's an honor and a privilege, and you have a storied career as well. So you're gonna have to, you know, you're gonna have to interview yourself because you did very well for yourself. I talked enough, trust me, and my friends let me know it. No, no, but thanks for having this almost 80-year-old guy on. Appreciate it. One for the old guys.

SPEAKER_01 53:03

I love talking to retired guys that were like retiring or before I came on the job because you guys are a wealth of information, live through a time where I found it fascinating. Like I was lucky enough to meet Sonny Grasso. I got to interview Randy Jurgensen, Kevin Halland. So, I mean, for me, this this is like an honor to talk to guys from your era. It really is.

SPEAKER_00 53:23

Hey, thank you so much, Vic. I appreciate it, and thanks for all the folks that are watching, and I wish you the best of luck with your show. I really do. This podcast is terrific. You're doing very well, my friend. Thank you.

SPEAKER_01 53:34

Thank you. And as always, I want to thank everyone for tuning in, especially my listeners in Spokane, Washington, Aslin, Wisconsin, Perth, Australia, Belgrade, Montana, Middleton, New York, and Norcross, Georgia. If you worked in law enforcement or had an interesting criminal background, please drop me a note on Twitter, Instagram at VicFerrari50. If you're watching on YouTube, please hit the like, subscribe, and hype buttons. And if you enjoy my content, just go to my Amazon author page, just type in my name, Vic, Ferrari Like the Car, where you can preview all my NYPD books for free. Thanks again, everyone, and I'll see you next week.