Some years later, I would get to test that theory as the commissioner of the Philadelphia Police Department and later still as the chief of the Miami Police Department. The policy worked as intended; it reduced police shootings and killings dramatically.
Fourth Platoon
When the new shooting policy hit the streets, I was a member of the 44th Precinct's Fourth Platoon. The Fourth Platoon was started two years earlier as an effort to address the increase in violent crime in the late 1960s and early 1970s. Up until that point, police officers worked three rotating platoons: 8:00 A.M. to 4:00 P.M., 4:00 P.M. to midnight, and midnight to 8:00 A.M. (the “late tour”). There were equal numbers of officers in all three platoons, so the same number of officers were on at 2:00 in the afternoon as were on at 2:00 in the morning, even though the workload and demand for police service was completely different at those two times.
The Fourth Platoon consisted of about forty volunteers from the three rotating shifts. This platoon worked from 6:00 P.M. to 2:00 A.M., as an overlap shift, to get additional police officers on the street during the peak crime hours. On the first day of the Fourth Platoon, TV cameras showed up at precincts throughout the city to film the roll calls to great fanfare and public interest. The Fourth Platoon was going to be the silver bullet that drove down crime and assuaged people's fears. How many times over the next thirty years did I participate in unveiling new anticrime initiatives that were hailed as the silver bullet to end this or start that? The reality is that in policing there is no silver bullet. What is required to reduce crime is hard work and creative thinking.
In any event, after joining the Fourth Platoon it became clear to me that while we looked very good in uniform out on the streets, I was not so sure we were very effective as “crime fighters.” Twenty to thirty of us would attend roll call, get our assignments, and then drive our private cars to our foot beat, sometimes as far as a mile away from the precinct. (By the way, riding in a private vehicle while in uniform was a violation of the NYPD's policy and procedures that everyone engaged in.) There were no handheld, portable radios at that time, so you walked your beat and checked in with the station once an hour using the police call box at your post. For example, I was given patrol post 27, with a ten ring and a 2100 meal. That meant I walked 170th Street from Jerome Avenue to the Grand Concourse. I would ring the station house at ten past every hour. And at nine o’clock (2100 hours, military time), I would take a meal. You were expected to be on your post for the entire eight hours (except during the meal period). However, your supervising sergeant would let you know when he would be coming around to see you. He would say, “Timoney, I'll give you a ‘see’ at 8:30 P.M., so you had better be on your post.”
Since there were no portable radios, the only crime you could fight was what you saw in front of you or what a resident of the neighborhood brought to your attention. I often found myself noticing three or four police cars (which were equipped with radios) speeding past with sirens blaring and lights flashing, responding to a robbery in progress at, say, 169th Street and Walton Avenue, one block from my post. But it could have been thirty blocks since there was no communication. Nonetheless, the appearance of police officers in uniform on foot had a greatly reassuring effect on the general public.
The lack of portable radios and the danger that entailed became quite evident in 1970 and 1971 when a number of police officers were shot and killed by members of the Black Liberation Army (BLA). The BLA was determined to overthrow the government of the United States and used the killing of police officers as a means to its end. As a result of these shootings, the police department rushed to acquire portable, handheld radios, and within a year or so they became part of our daily equipment. Although the 44th Precinct received a supply of portable radios, we never had enough to go around. The allocation of the radios was not based on priority or danger, but rather the idiosyncratic nature of the various police officers. Those who were lazy and didn't want to be bothered refused the radios for fear of being assigned “jobs” during the course of their eight-hour shifts. The younger officers, me included, were eager to get the portable radios so that we could fight crime, not just on our beat but on the adjoining beat as well.
For management, portable radios had a downside, since they compromised beat integrity. Police officers could hear what was going on around their beat and away from their beat. This created in some the temptation to leave their beat for greener pastures, where they felt they could make an arrest. If 170th Street was quiet after 9:00 P.M. when the stores closed, an officer could always drift over to 167th or 168th Street to make a narcotics arrest. In some cases, officers became really creative by using their private cars to drive to locations, sometimes ten or fifteen blocks from their beat, to answer a call in progress. Beat integrity went to hell in a handbasket. But that was the upside for police officers like me; we were able to use a high number of arrests to get into the newly established Anti-Crime Units and work in plainclothes.
The Knapp Commission
One of the advantages of working the Fourth Platoon was that it allowed me to go to school during the daytime. Another unintended advantage was that I was able to watch the live television coverage of the Knapp Commission hearings on police corruption. Witness after witness testified to the ubiquitous corruption within the NYPD. The stories were gripping, but the picture they created was ugly. After watching the hearings during the day, my partners and I would patrol the streets of the South Bronx at night, often hearing derogatory comments and sometimes outright cursing about the NYPD and its officers. It was not a good feeling, and it certainly was a hard lesson—the notion that when a few cops screw up, everybody pays. One night, one of the veteran sergeants, Nick Sforza, was conducting roll call, and he tried to explain to us what we could expect in terms of the public's attitude and demeanor as we patrolled the streets. He told us we would be angry and would want to strike out at the civilians, but he explained that we had to take it. It was the nature of the business. We had to have thick skin. To prove his point, he told us that when a lawyer or a doctor screws up, you never hear the public condemning the entire profession and those within it. The idea that everyone pays for the mistakes of the few is one I was to hear repeated far too often over the next thirty-plus years of my career.
I've heard all sorts of rationalizations and justifications trying to explain the phenomenon. One long-time cop explained to me, “You see, kid, we're always in the business of telling people to their face when they've done wrong. Whether it's some junkie we arrest for a burglary or some housewife we issue a citation to for rolling through a stop sign, there are lots of people with pent-up frustration and anger toward the cops. When they get the chance to vent, they do.” I don't know if that is true or not, but it is as good as any other explanation I have heard.
One major gripe police officers had concerning the Knapp Commission was how it seemed to focus almost entirely on the police department, paying little attention to other parts of the criminal justice system that they knew to be just as corrupt. For example, in the late 1960s and early 1970s, lawyers roamed the halls of the Bronx Criminal Court at 161st Street and Third Avenue looking for clients. There seemed to be no rhyme or reason to the cases they took on, and there seemed to be no standard fees except the cold cash that happened to be in the defendant's pocket. It was not uncommon for a defense attorney to ask a judge for the postponement of a case because one of his witnesses, “Mr. Green” (that is, the money), hadn't arrived yet. The judges understood and acquiesced to these and other such requests.
One day I was standing outside the courtroom waiting for my case to be called on a gun arrest I had made a week earlier. The defendant's lawyer, who was probably the most famous of the hallway lawyers, was engaged in conversation with the defendant and his family on the other side of the corridor. Out of nowhere, the lawyer approached me and asked, “Patrolman Timoney, what time is it?” I replied sarcastically, “What are you, nuts?” and indicated the large clock overhead. He just thanked me and returned to the family. Frank Gaffney, a veteran cop from the 43rd Precinct, came up to me and asked, “What did he want?” I told him he wanted to know what time it was, even though there was a huge clock right here. The veteran cop replied,
