The research was fascinating in what it revealed. The NYPD was probably the most progressive and restrained police department in the nation, and the numbers proved it. More important for me was that the research showed that good, sound policy can have an immediate, dramatic, and lasting impact. Prior to the implementation of the shooting policy in August 1972, the records of the police shootings in the NYPD were unreliable. Police statistics for police officers discharging their weapons were kept at the police firing range. The statistics regarding those killed and wounded were pretty accurate. However, accidental discharges and “misses” were completely unreliable. So the numbers maintained at the range should be considered conservative numbers. But what they indicated was that in 1970 and 1971, the NYPD recorded around eight hundred discharges. Between ninety and a hundred people were killed, and dozens more were wounded.
The 1972 numbers showed a slight decrease. But that is deceiving. You don't appreciate the dramatic decrease until you separate the shootings from before and those from after the date the policy was implemented. Looking at police shootings for the first eight months of 1972, they appear to be quite similar to those from 1970 and 1971. However, when you look at the last four months of 1972 and prorate these numbers, there is an immediate decline in shootings of about 40 percent. There is an additional decline in 1973 and another decline in 1974. This trend continued, and a decade later, the number of all reported discharges was around 350, and the number of people killed was around twenty.
My research clearly indicated numbers that showed the NYPD had greatly improved in the area of deadly physical force. But the statistics dealt only with officers discharging their weapons. What about when officers don't discharge their weapons, even when they would be fully justified in doing so, including times when they are being shot at? Unfortunately, those statistics were not readily available. I conducted a rather laborious hand check of all Firearms Discharge and Assault Reports and was able to uncover numerous instances in which police officers could have discharged their weapons justifiably but elected not to do so. This was another indication of the restraint used by members of the NYPD. Going forward, I instituted a policy that captured these instances under the title Shot at but Did Not Return Fire.
My research put me in touch with James Fyffe. In 1977, Fyffe, a police lieutenant assigned to the police academy, completed his doctoral dissertation on police shootings in the NYPD, using the 1972 policy as the impetus for his thesis. Jim went on to become a college professor, the author of numerous books on police use of deadly physical force, and America's number one expert on the subject. Jim passed away in 2006, but his contribution to this field will live on.
Unfortunately, even with statistics on your side and a clear improvement in performance in the area of deadly physical force, opinions were set in stone. The congressional oversight committee disregarded these numbers and came to the same conclusion it had reached before the hearings began.
A few years later, while continuing to review and monitor police shootings, I noticed a disturbing trend. Not only can policy affect police shootings, so can the press. In a seven-or eight-month span, six police officers were indicted and arrested in six separate incidents involving the discharge of their weapons. One was an off-duty situation, in which the officer killed an individual and was arrested for homicide. The other five were all on-situations and would fall under the category “There but for the grace of God go I.” The six indictments and arrests garnered inflammatory headlines in the tabloids and on television. As a result of the coverage, the number of people shot, and especially those killed, reached an all-time record low. It was clear to me that police officers had become hesitant to use their firearms even in situations where they were fully justified in doing so. It is almost impossible to prove that theory, but one anecdote may make the point.
The scene was in Brooklyn's Bushwick section. A police sergeant was signing the memo books of rookie police officers on their posts. As the sergeant was in the process of signing one rookie's book, an old man, the owner of a liquor store who had been robbed two days prior, informed the sergeant that the guy who committed the armed robbery was on the sidewalk walking toward them. The sergeant got out of his car and confronted the guy, who pulled out an automatic revolver, let some shots go at the sergeant, and then ran down the street. The sergeant pursued him on foot for about three or four blocks; along these blocks the sergeant passed no fewer than two rookies who observed the chase and his ongoing gun battle with the bad guy. The armed felon ran into an alley, climbed the fire escape, and entered a fourth-floor bedroom window.
As he entered the bedroom, he startled a man and woman as they lay in bed. The man was an off-duty NYPD officer. The woman was an off-transit police officer. Spotting a man with a gun coming through their window, both officers discharged their weapons, killing the felon. Good story, happy ending, except: when the sergeant began to retrace his steps and question the rookie officers he had passed during the running gun battle, they told him they weren't sure if they could shoot because they had seen a lot of police officers get arrested for discharging their weapons during the prior six or seven months. It is hard to know if this was a failure of training at the police academy or not, but clearly the negative headlines had had a negative effect on those rookie police officers.
The power of the press to influence police policy and practice is a fantastic phenomenon not often appreciated by the average citizen. The chilling effect of the negative stories regarding police officers being arrested for discharging their firearms is clear. The statistical evidence bolstered by some anecdotal evidence supports the theory. These negative stories can also have an inflammatory effect, especially in the case of prosecutors. A feeding frenzy by the press can cause some prosecutors to overreach. I have seen it time and again where police officers who did nothing wrong or who simply made a mistake were arrested or indicted.
Ben Ward
In late 1983, Police Commissioner Robert McGuire announced that he would be retiring at the end of the year, after serving six years in one of the most demanding and stressful jobs in the world. McGuire had guided the department through the turbulent years coming out of the layoffs and the blackout. He had been asked to provide the same police service even though he was about ten thousand police officers short of the 1975 staffing levels—an impossible task. Throughout this period, McGuire displayed an air of confidence and competence. By and large, the rank and file viewed him quite favorably.
Once McGuire announced his intentions, all eyes turned toward who his successor would be. Those of us who worked for Chief Pat Murphy were hoping Murphy would be chosen. However, one morning over coffee, Chief Murphy announced to us, in his typical self-effacing manner, that he would not be the choice, especially given that the New York Times, earlier that morning, had predicted he would be the choice. Murphy exclaimed with a rueful smile, “I'm in the New York Times; I'm dead in the water.” He was prescient. A few days later, Mayor Koch announced that Benjamin Ward would be the first African American police commissioner in the history of the NYPD.
Speculation was rampant, as it usually is in these situations, as to why Ward was chosen. The overwhelming argument was that the racial animosity emanating from the recent congressional hearings on police brutality was largely responsible for his promotion. Mayor Koch denied this, stating that Ward had been chosen due to his police background and the fact that he had held high positions in other parts of the city government, including commissioner of the Department of Corrections. No matter what the speculation, the appointment opened old wounds regarding an incident on April 14, 1972, at a Harlem mosque on 116th Street. Officer Phillip Cardillo of the 28th Precinct was shot there after responding to a phony call for an officer needing assistance. Two other police officers were seriously injured. Hundreds of police officers responded to the location, and there were skirmishes along the streets all day and night. Tensions ran high.
Immediately after the shooting, Deputy Inspector John Haugh, the commanding officer of the 28th Precinct, arrived at the mosque and took charge. Haugh reported that when he entered the basement of the mosque, there were approximately fifteen men (suspects) facing the wall, with one other male on the floor suffering from injuries received during the skirmish with the responding officers. Haugh ordered an ambulance for the injured man and directed that the fifteen other individuals await interview by investigating detectives. Haugh then went to the street to handle a growing unruly and angry