Beat Cop to Top Cop. John F. Timoney
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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, “You've just been set up. He's gone back over and told the family that he has spoken to you, that the fix is in, but it will require another hundred dollars to pay Timoney.” I replied, shocked, “You gotta be fucking kidding me.” That was life in the criminal court of the South Bronx, and I am sure it existed in the other four county courtrooms in the city as well.
The Knapp Commission did make a series of recommendations that were solid, including more formal education of police officers. The commission also decried the poor wages police officers received and recommended increases, which all officers overwhelmingly endorsed. The pay issue was brought home to us one day at roll call. The Seventh Division inspector stopped in to speak to us before we hit the street. He talked about the Knapp Commission's findings and recommendations and then got to the issue of the pay raise and said, almost matter-of-factly, “Listen, you guys, we're gonna be giving you better pay, so there's no need to steal.”
The Knapp Commission hearings affected me directly when the Bronx district attorney, Burton Roberts, held a press conference. Roberts was a larger-than-life figure with a boundless ego; he did not suffer fools lightly. As the police department was being bashed day after day in the press, Roberts decided to hold a press conference to show that in the Bronx, at least, there were good cops who did not succumb to theft and bribery. He decided to call the press conference with Bronx police officers who had made bribery arrests the prior year. Two dozen police officers were assembled in a conference room, and I was one of them. The plan was for all of the officers to form a semicircle around the D.A. while he made his announcement and pontificated on how there were many brave and honest police officers in the Bronx. Before the conference, I figured out the best position to be in to get my mug on television, since I did not have a speaking part (our role was that of blue potted plants, a role I would play on numerous occasions throughout my career). I maneuvered for a position next to and slightly behind the D.A. while the officers took their positions. When I gathered all of my friends that night to watch the press conference on TV, there was a great shot of the D.A. with my left hand slightly to the right of his face. As the camera zoomed out to get a panoramic view of all those assembled, it panned to the left and showed all of the fine officers to my right, missing Patrolman Timoney, who stood to the right of the D.A. That was my first appearance on television. As the years passed, I would manage to get other parts of my body in the picture and even every once in a while have a speaking part.
Plainclothes in Anti-Crime
The Anti-Units were regular patrol officers who were assigned to wear plainclothes within the precinct. Their main job was to deal with crime, specifically violent crime and burglaries. There was a quid pro quo deal between the anticrime officers and the police department. We got to work in plainclothes and use our private cars, and the police department had to supply only the gas. At the time, I was driving a 1966 blue Volkswagen Beetle with a sunroof and a rotted floor in back. You could actually see the ground under the car as it was moving. On more than one occasion I had to put prisoners in the back with the admonition to keep their feet raised so that they didn't fall through the floor.
My two partners in the Anti-Crime Unit were Joe Rooney and Richie Sabol. Sabol was the senior man on the team and was considered by most to be one of the top and toughest cops in the 44th. He was a veteran of fifteen years, having spent seven of those as a cop in Yonkers before joining the NYPD. Sabol had entered the Marine Corps at age seventeen and served a two-year stint during the Korean War. He had an easy-to-understand policing philosophy: “Our job is to protect the most vulnerable: the very young and the very old.” Joe Rooney was a blond-haired, blue-eyed cop with less time than I had on the job. While I had spent my first two years as a police trainee, Joe served those years in Vietnam. He was a very good street cop with a bit of a temper. Fortunately, Sabol controlled the worst tendencies of both Rooney and me.
In 1973, my brother, Ciaran, entered the NYPD, and after six months he was assigned to the 44th Precinct. Ciaran's