When Ciaran was assigned to the 44th, I was a little surprised; I had thought that there was an unwritten rule that brothers were not assigned to serve in the same precinct. There was the so-called Sullivan rule, based on the World War II military tragedy of the five Sullivan brothers who were assigned to the same ship and who were all killed when the ship sank. I should not have been surprised, though, because in the 44th at that time there were two other sets of brothers and a father and son who were both assigned to the 44th Precinct.
The rationale for the Sullivan rule became apparent to me shortly after Ciaran started work at the 44th. I was assigned to the Anti-Crime Unit with my partner Richie Sabol and we were on the lookout for robbers and other miscreants. I knew the patrol post where Ciaran and his partner were working. The radio had been quiet when all of a sudden Ciaran's partner got on the police radio hysterically screaming, “Officer needs assistance!” Since I didn't hear Ciaran's voice, I assumed the worst. I drove my Volkswagen like a maniac through the streets of the South Bronx, mounting sidewalks to get through traffic. I eventually arrived at the location: 1430 Grand Concourse. This address consisted of six seven-story buildings surrounding a huge courtyard. It was referred to derisively by the cops in the 44th as “jungle habitat.” About a year earlier I had responded to this location only to have a burning mattress, heaved from the roof, barely miss my partner and me. “Airmail garbage! Incoming!”
When I entered the building where Ciaran and his partner needed the assistance, I found him on the second floor, as cool and calm as could be, with his prisoner handcuffed. When I asked him, “What the hell happened?” he just head nodded toward his partner, saying, “He panicked.”
A few hours later, discussing the whole incident with my partner Richie, we concluded that the Sullivan rule, if it didn't exist, should be implemented and enforced. I had risked not only my life and Richie's life but also the lives of those pedestrians whom I almost ran over in my highly emotional state. In any police response to an officer needing assistance, the heartbeat will always increase, as will the tension and the desire to get to the location as quickly as possible. When it's your brother, the heart rate goes off the charts. The blood rushing to the head clouds your thinking, and the results can be disastrous.
Tommy Ryan
The most profound lesson I learned in my eight years in the 44th Precinct, and, in fact, probably in my entire career, related to an incident that took place while I was on vacation in Ireland in July 1975. Upon returning from vacation, I received a phone call from my plainclothes partner Richie Sabol, who was now a sergeant in Brooklyn. “Did you see the papers?” he asked. “Your friend Ryan's in trouble.” While I obviously was not working the night of the Ryan incident, I learned enough about what took place from my fellow officers.
On the evening in question, two police officers were dispatched to an apartment building on Nelson Avenue in the Highbridge neighborhood regarding “men with guns.” Upon arrival at the scene, the two officers confronted three men exiting the building; when they frisked them, they discovered the men were armed with illegal handguns. It was a very good arrest. Other units responded to “back up” the initial two officers, but when they arrived, the three bad guys were already in custody. Some of the responding officers were curious to see what apartment these three men had come from. The three arrestees were obviously reluctant to talk. Enter Officer Thomas Ryan.
Tommy Ryan was a friend of mine with whom I played football in the Bronx. Tommy, like me, was a police trainee; he was assigned to the 44th Precinct when I came through the door in 1969. When Tommy turned twenty-one and became a full-fledged police officer, he was assigned to the 41st Precinct (known as “Fort Apache”) in the South Bronx. The 41st Precinct had a reputation as a “wild” precinct, and many of the officers assigned there tried to live up to that reputation. Tommy was no different. After a short time in the 41st, Tommy ran afoul of police brass and was transferred to a precinct in the North Bronx. He didn't last too long there before he again came to the attention of the police brass and was transferred once more, this time to the 44th Precinct. Tommy had come full circle.
Right around this time, after Richie Sabol was promoted to sergeant, I was back on a uniform post. One day I was summoned to the precinct commander's office and informed that Ryan had been assigned to the 44th Precinct. The commander knew Tommy and I were friends and asked me to work with him and to “look after him.” I partnered with Tommy over the next few months on a semisteady basis. Tommy was a guy with a big heart, but he also had an unorthodox way of policing, which irritated many of the veterans to no end. He was a handful. And that's putting it mildly.
The night of the incident on Nelson Avenue, Tommy Ryan took one of the three prisoners back into the building to ascertain which apartment he had come from. Ryan took the prisoner to a top-floor apartment and had the guy stand in front of the door. Ryan then knocked on the door.
Inside the apartment were a man and a woman. The man had just been “ripped off” by the three other males who had been arrested fleeing the apartment building. The man inside the apartment looked out through the peephole, saw one of the men who had just robbed him standing there at the door, got a gun, and fired at the door. Officer Ryan, who was standing to the side, heard the shot and told the other officers nearby that the person inside was shooting at him. The officers forced their way into the apartment and arrested the man inside. Everything was fine up to that point. What happened next is not quite clear, but it goes something like this.
When the officers got inside the apartment, the man who had been shooting was roughed up and injured, but apparently not too seriously. The prisoner and the occupant of the apartment were taken from the apartment to the street, where the other two guys were still in handcuffs. All four were then transported by police vehicles to the 44th Precinct station house, about ten blocks away.
It was alleged that, while being transported to the station house, the man who shot through the door was punched about the body. It was further alleged that, over the next few hours in the station house, the male was again beaten by police officers, specifically by Tommy Ryan. The man was eventually taken to a local hospital, where he lay on a stretcher for a long period of time before he was taken into the emergency room. But it was too late. The male died from internal injuries as the doctor was working on him.
As you can imagine, a huge investigation was undertaken by the Bronx District Attorney's Office. Ryan was indicted for murder, and three other officers were indicted for assault. Eventually, the charges were dropped, correctly, against the three other officers. Ryan, however, fled the jurisdiction for a few years (allegedly to Ireland), then surrendered, stood trial, and was sent to jail.
The damage this case did to the esprit de corps of the 44th Precinct is not to be underestimated. Police officers testifying against other police officers…not a pretty sight. Police community relations were severely damaged, and there were protests by community members against the officers assigned to the “House of Murder.”
In the immediate months after the initial incident, police officers were reluctant to discuss this case with other police officers. Nobody wanted to be involved. However, every once in a while, I would be assigned to partner with an officer who had been working that night and, though he may have gotten to the scene a little late, still had some insight into how this could have happened. The stories among the officers I spoke to were remarkably consistent in the details, and there was almost unanimous agreement on what went wrong, and who failed to do his job.
The sergeant who was working that fateful night was a joke. He fancied himself as “one of the boys” and always thought he was funny. In fact, some officers opined that, during the night of the arrest and beating, he found the whole thing somewhat amusing. The problem was that he failed to do his job. He was the one person who could have stopped the nonsense, but he didn't. While I never tried to make an excuse for Tommy Ryan's actions that night, he was not the only one at fault. The patrol sergeant failed—big time.