NYPD BURIES
OFFICER GUERRA WITH HONOR
P.O.
CARDILLO’S FAMILY STILL WAITS FOR HONOR
TWO TRAGIC DEATHS
THAT ALTERED NYPD POLICY
TAGS:
NYPD OFFICER GUERRA FUNERAL, NYPD FIRE RESPONSE POLICY,
NYPD
OFFICER PHILLIP CARDILLO, MOSQUE #7,
NYPD
HISTORY, NYPD TRADITION,
SERVICE,
SACRIFICE, HONOR, DUTY, NYC
(Updated)
(Monday April 14, 2014 Rockaway
Beach, Queens, NYC) Two men separated by
a generation, one honored and laid to eternal rest today, the other a man whose
effort to honor is itself a source of contention. For some this inconsistency
reflects the reality that New York is a tale of two cities but, it really isn’t. It is more a single city of a million tales,
of thousands of stories and neighborhoods, characters famed, infamous, known
and anonymous. This City has a storied
history and every day new pages are written into that dense tome. We have known great triumphs in our past and
have suffered through dark days. There
is an almost homeostatic quality to this living, breathing beast of 10 million
individuals, opposing forces and influences reflected in our governance and
tolerance, in what we think we share and that which we all will never have in common beyond the
fact we can all identify as New Yorkers.
The unique dynamics that function like atomic particles and hold this
City together as an entity somehow make it all work. For the most part despite the ups and downs,
it remains, we remain. And there are so
many stories. This is a story of a date
that will live in NYPD both as a day of infamy and a day of sacrifice; April 14th.
The briny scent wafting over
the gathered mass of dress blue uniforms along the streets in Far Rockaway is a
world apart from the urban scents of auto and bus emissions and ethnic foods on
116th Street in Harlem that seem to defy the fact that the Atlantic
Ocean is just a few miles way. Two different worlds in one City: the largest and most complex and diverse in
America.
Here in the part of South Queens
that many New Yorkers never venture out to, the strips of beachfront where
Hurricane Sandy’s roiling tides and winds delivered so much deadly destruction
not too long ago, a 38 year old man; a son, husband father and Cop, was laid to
rest amid thousands of his fellow Officers looking like a human ocean of blue
extending to the shoreline horizon. NYPD
Officer Dennis Guerra was buried after succumbing to injuries sustained when he
and his partner responded to reports of a fire in a housing project building in
Brooklyn. As is customary for all line
of duty deaths he was given the righteous, respectful send off by the NYPD he
had served so well.
If a crow were to take flight
on an ocean breeze current from here and land a few short miles to the
northwest, it might alight atop a squat, stolid building with a plain concrete
façade, the longtime home of NYPD’s 28th Precinct. Exactly 42 years ago today another NYPD
Officer, Phillip Cardillo was shot and lost his life in a line of duty death
six days later. He too was a son,
father, and husband and a Cop but his funeral was not attended by the Mayor or
Police Commissioner, no luminaries or politicians saw fit to pay their
respects. To this day an effort to honor
Officer Cardillo with a mural to be painted on the side of the Precinct House
parking lot wall and by renaming the segment of the block the 28th
Precinct sits on after Officer Cardillo remains a “controversial” issue that
sadly and obviously the new NYPD Commissioner wants to avoid.
April 14, 1972
One has to travel back in time
to the City as it was on April 14, 1972.
Racial unrest had spread from the Deep South and was now being waged in
cities across the northeast out to the west coast. The peaceful “passive resistance” strategy
championed by the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King was not bringing enough
changes in society for the younger generation of “civil rights activists”. These younger leaders were far more militant,
strident and aggressive than anything Dr. King could have imagined or
condoned. But, the Black Panthers and
the Nation of Islam were taking up arms against law enforcement officer all
over the country and, by Spring in 1972 the NYPD was in a low level hot
guerilla war with these angry armed factions.
After a fake 911 call
reporting Officer’s in need of assistance was placed from Mosque #7 on 116th
Street, a Mosque lead by a firebrand Black separatist, Louis Farrakhan, where
Malcolm X had prayed before the militants in his own movement assassinated
him. When two Police Officers arrived at
the Mosque they entered only to be surrounded by a group of 12 to 15 men who
beat and kicked them savagely and locked the doors so no one else could
enter. In the course of this melee one
of the assailants grabbed Officer Cardillo’s weapon and fired at point blank
range into the man’s chest. Eventually
other Cops gained access to the Mosque.
By that time all involved had taken refuge in the basement of the
building. While officers on the scene frantically
tried to transport their wounded brothers to urgent medical care other Officers
were making arrests in the basement. On
the street outside a large crowd had gathered quickly and before long a riotous
atmosphere cast a dark pall over the block as one Police car burned and rocks
and other items were being rained down on the Police from the surrounding
rooftops.
Before long Louis Farrakhan
appeared in the basement with Congressmen Charlie Rangel, yes THAT Charlie Rangel
and, in no uncertain terms informed the Police Officers making the arrests that
if they did not release the suspects immediately, the situation outside would
intensify. Essentially, these two
characters dissuaded one of the top ranking NYPD members on the scene Ben Ward,
yes THAT Ben Ward, to allow the suspects to remain in the Mosque while the NYPD
was ordered to retreat. This episode was
not only a damaging milestone for our City, it remains one of the most raw,
painful, insulting and contentious in the history of the NYPD.
Even now, more than four
decades after Officer Cardillo was buried without the honor and respect that
was due him for the sordid, dishonorable reasons of political expediency and to
pacify the Black community. To this very
day all efforts to pay respect for his service and sacrifice by either renaming
a segment of the street in front of the 28th Precinct or painting a
memorial mural on the Precinct’s parking lot wall, continue to be rebuffed by
the local Community Board on behalf of the small cadre of self-proclaimed,
self-styled Black activists, African-American blowhards and a peanut choir of
similar cooks and cranks who are adamantly anti-NYPD. One of the Community Board members said that
if Officer Cardillo’s death was going to be recognized in that neighborhood, on
that block, that it would, “Open old wounds”.
Well, the members of NYPD past and present have been living with that
same wound still open and bleeding. Once
again the cowardice of an Administration and an NYPD Commissioner is obviously a
powerfully restraining force that has laid bare the distinct lack of integrity
and propriety of Mayor Bill de Blasio and, even more sickening, Commissioner
Bill Bratton.
Books have been written about
the “incident” at Mosque #7 and, as a result of that event NYPD policy for
responding to calls to any religious building or site was rewritten. Now Officers on patrol cannot enter a
religious building be it a Catholic Church, Synagogue, Mosque or other house of
worship or temple, until there is at least a ranking superior on site.
APRIL 14, 2014
Officer Guerra who was laid to
rest today was not alive when Officer Cardillo lost his life. Although 42 years separate their deaths, they
are both members of a continuous, steady, storied lineage of an organization
that honors its history and traditions as much as it does each man and woman
who has ever served.
Officer Guerra died as a
result of injuries sustained that are not common for Police Officers line of
duty death. But, that is irrelevant on
this day. He and his still hospitalized
partner responded to a fire and it was the toxic smoke from that fire that
felled them as quickly and effectively as shotgun toting thugs. Since that fire the NYPD has already
announced new protocols for Officers as “first responders” to a fire
scene. This is a case of fixing the
fence after the herd has escaped but, it might save a future life. It is difficult to say.
Policy and protocol do not
trump courage, dedication and sacrifice.
What the members of NYPD respond to day in day out, 24/7, 365 days a
year are as many and varied an array of scenarios as Officers in any other
jurisdiction will ever see throughout their career. That is not an insult to other Police
Departments or Law Enforcement Agencies; it is the simple reality of policing
in New York City.
Hopefully no one will read
this as a comparison between the two Officers.
It is not; it is a statement on how even though the state of affairs in
our City may vary from time to time, through good times and bad, one consistent,
solid chain that keeps it all together is the continuum of the NYPD and its
traditions and, despite the inherent danger the Job entails, there will always
be men and women of good decent desire to serve.
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