operational commanders at the scene. Three or four years after Ward's appointment to police commissioner, Al Seedman, who had been the chief of detectives during the mosque incident, admitted he was the one who struck the bargain to allow the people involved to turn themselves in. When asked later by New York Newsday reporter Len Levitt why he had not come forward to admit this, Seedman responded lamely, “What difference would it have made?”
As an aside, while I was researching police shootings for the congressional hearings on police brutality, I found an old folder in the bottom of a file cabinet at headquarters that contained memos and handwritten notes regarding internal discussions about the Harlem mosque case. Though these memos and notes didn't give a full view of what happened that day, one thing was clear: Ward did get into a heated argument in front of the 24th Precinct with Haugh regarding the police response after Officer Cardillo was shot. Both Ward and Haugh were lawyers and argued with each other about the laws that were applicable to the situation. However, the finer points of the law gave way to charges by Ward that Haugh was exacerbating tensions by the way he deployed and utilized responding police personnel. Ward thought the visible display of force, particularly by the officers who carried rifles, was unnecessary. The 28th Precinct commander was highly respected by the rank and file, and his very public argument with Ward (which subsequently led to his resignation/retirement over the department's handling of the matter) added to his stature, all to the detriment of Ben Ward.
Thirty-seven years after the killing of Phillip Cardillo the case remains unsolved. In 2009, Raymond Kelly, in his second stint as police commissioner of the NYPD, ordered a reinvestigation of the incident at the mosque.
Ward hit the ground running when he became commissioner in January 1984. He chose Pat Murphy as his first deputy commissioner and Robert J. Johnston Jr., who had been the chief of patrol, as the new four-star chief of operations, and my new boss. Johnston was a silver-haired, barrel-chested man who seemed to be in perpetual motion. He was a take-charge, no-nonsense taskmaster and a great field tactician. He had a creative genius for logistics and was constantly thinking up new ways to improve police equipment and tactics. He spent endless hours over coffee with the mechanics at Fleet Maintenance, devising ways to create and build equipment. For example, he designed a fleet of trucks and cars with high-powered lighting systems that could illuminate several city blocks in the event of a blackout or civil disturbance. He also created the “Mandela mobile,” similar to the Pope mobile, to facilitate African National Congress head Nelson Mandela's historic visit to New York City in 1991. Finally, Johnston was the architect and greatest proponent of overwhelming force, long before it was known as the Powell Doctrine. The bottom line was that, like most great leaders, he was both feared and loved by the troops who served under him.
By 1984, as a result of an influx in hiring over the prior four years, NYPD staffing levels were starting to rise. Though the number of police officers was nowhere near the 1973 levels, there were a few thousand more officers than existed in 1980. Ward made it clear to his executive staff that he was not just going to put the hundreds of additional officers in police cars to respond to 911 calls. His rationale was simple. The police department was already doing a decent job handling the 911 calls, and the additional officers would be able to make only marginal improvements in this area. Ward had other ideas as to how to use these new officers.
These new officers gave the police force the ability to attack crime in a serious fashion for the first time in my career in the NYPD. Until that point, the notion of fighting crime seriously had not really existed due to the focus on police corruption after the Knapp Commission hearings and the loss of nearly ten thousand officers due to layoffs and attrition.
In the early months of his administration, Ward unveiled a crime-fighting plan known as Operation Pressure Point, which dealt mainly with drugs and violence in the Lower East Side. The program was a huge success because there were extra police officers assigned to the area in both uniform and plainclothes. Imitation is the highest form of flattery, so Pressure Points 2 and 3 were unveiled later that year.
The Death of Eleanor Bumpers
While things were going well for Ward in Lower Manhattan, the same could not be said for the Bronx. In mid-1984, Emergency Service Unit police officers were dispatched to a housing project in the 44th Precinct to assist housing police officials with an eviction. ESU officers are specially trained to handle emotionally disturbed persons. The person to be evicted was Eleanor Bumpers, a sixty-seven-year-old African American grandmother. She was a large woman, over two hundred pounds, who was, at times, emotionally disturbed. Bumpers threatened to do harm to anyone who came into her apartment. Apparently, she was suffering from a paranoid delusional episode. Bumpers held a long knife in her hand as emergency service officers broke down her door down with a battering ram and entered her apartment. At the time, officers would use a T-bar (an implement about six to eight feet long that would keep the armed person at bay). The officer who was carrying the T-slipped upon entry into the apartment, allowing Bumpers to gain the advantage. She raised her hand, as if to plunge her knife into the back of the officer. A backup officer fired two rounds into Bumpers, killing her instantly.
This incident was a tragedy. There was no shortage of critics of the NYPD, and specifically of Officer Steve Sullivan, who had killed Bumpers. (I had worked with Steve Sullivan when I was a rookie cop in the 44th Precinct. He was an even-tempered, thoughtful police officer who was held in high regard.)
The reaction of the African American community was instant and understandable. The clear question in the air was how a sixty-seven-year-old grandmother could be evicted from a New York City Housing Authority building. In other words, this was not the action taken by a private landlord. This was the city. And how could an eviction of a grandmother ever lead to her death? Those were legitimate questions by the public. Equally legitimate were the questions, or rather feelings, of the average New York City police officer: there but for the grace of God go I. We all knew that we could find ourselves in an equally horrific situation on any given day.
The district attorney for the Bronx was Mario Merola, a person held in deep distrust by the vast majority of Bronx police officers. Merola seemed to be more of a politician than a professional district attorney. If indicting a cop could win him support or votes, a cop was not given the benefit of the doubt in close-call situations. Merola impaneled a grand jury to investigate the Bumpers case and, not surprisingly, a murder indictment was handed down against Officer Sullivan. This, in turn, brought about the largest demonstration of off-duty police officers in the history of the NYPD. Over ten thousand police officers converged at 161st Street and the Grand Concourse to express their outrage, demand Merola's resignation, and protest other assorted complaints. Needless to say, this further heightened racial tensions in the city.
Early on in the Bumpers case, Commissioner Ben Ward made an offhand but understandable comment that infuriated police officers and their union. He remarked, upon seeing a picture of Bumpers, “That could have been my grandmother.” Ward was just stating a legitimate feeling that any human being would register. However, in the racially charged atmosphere, many police officers viewed Ward's words as taking a side, and not one in support of Officer Sullivan. The charges against Ward were unfair, and anyone who viewed his statement in an unemotional, detached manner would conclude that they were the statements of someone who understood the plight of Bumpers and her family. Nonetheless, Ward took an unfair beating from his police officers.
As the case moved forward, it became clear that while Ward fully empathized with the Bumpers family, he obviously understood Officer Sullivan's predicament and was quite vocal in his denouncement of Merola's indictment. When the case went to trial, there was a great deal of testimony, especially from medical personnel. A doctor testified that the first shot had struck Bumpers in the hand that was holding the knife. This immediately disabled her and brought into question the necessity of the second shot. This had an alarming impact on police officers. They began to ask themselves, Am I expected to stop after firing every single bullet to check the medical well-being of the opponent?
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