The Pols, the Police, and the Gerry Curls
Conlon, Edward
Edward Conlon The Pols, the Police, and the Gerry Curls Inside one of New York's most notorious Dominican drug gangs. W ashington Heights has a fair claim to being the largest retail drug market...
...There are, at present, eight names on the plaque...
...Daniel, too...
...Next year we'll have guys who make the Gerry Curls look like boy scouts...
...It was okay when they sent their kids to school, the dealers weren't up yet, but coming home they had to go through it...
...Roberto Gonzalez was already in custody, having been arrested the night before for shooting off his .357 in the middle of the street...
...At that moment, a helicopter passed overhead and, for a few seconds, the scene was brightly illuminated...
...Operation Heartbreak Hotel" was successfully directed against a man named Euclides Lantigua, who dealt ten to twenty kilos per day...
...Remittances to the Dominican Republic exceed half a billion dollars annually, the overwhelming majority of which is from drug revenues...
...An intimate familiarity with the layout of every building, its broken doors, blind alleys, and dark corners, is also vital for a cop in pursuit and retreat...
...On the other hand, it was sort of routine...
...attorney investigated, indicted, and tried Occhipinti, and he was acquitted of the corruption charges but convicted of civil rights violations, which essentially consisted of a pattern of improper searches, and falsifying the paperwork afterward...
...People were terrified," he said...
...The legitimate tenants of the building were less under siege than in a state of surrender...
...He holstered his gun and rushed him...
...after the incident, Rafi, who had never possessed the sunniest outlook on human nature, decided to restrict to his immediate family any trust he was obliged to extend...
...O'Keefe's radio transmissions and the accounts of his partners...
...Several subordinates came to realize that their interests were no longer common...
...Gilmore had them evicted from their apartments, to find that they had broken in and returned to business within a day...
...O'Keefe hurried to intercept him, anxious to make contact on the street for his own safety as well as to prevent his escape...
...He returned to the wall and peered over, and saw that it was a sheer drop six stories to the alley below...
...There was a protest by Dominican merchants, who charged not only that their civil rights had been violated, but also that Occhipinti had been robbing them...
...The man, an undercover detective, had never met them before but his close study of their operations combined with their assumptions about his appearance enabled them to form a brisk working partnership...
...The Martinezes were no more enlightened on race than other moral issues—somewhat ironically, as Rafi's dark complexion inspired the nickname "Moline," a Dominican term for a kind of black fish—but Gilmore felt that events had transcended, or deteriorated, beyond categoric ethnic tensions into a purely individual realm...
...His relationships with residents not only kept him abreast of the minute changes in the community, its potential or pressing difficulties and its best resources, but also provided him with a sense of personal safety...
...Reputedly, he began as a car thief, but by 1986 he was known to the police as a dealer, though one of no greater promise or menace than any of the hundreds of young men in the neighborhood who man their posts on street corners or stoops in attitudes of watchful leisure...
...Though Gilmore professed no bitterness toward the Martinezes, he might be easily forgiven were he to do so...
...later, the Cardinal visited his home in Queens, but O'Keefe declined to receive him...
...Two of the men fled back into the apartment, followed by the police officer, and the other two—Dagoberto Pichardo and Daniel Brito—took to the roof, pursued by Parrino...
...Now it's pretty common...
...Garcia was so slippery with perspiration that EMS personnel found it almost impossible to attach any adhesive to his body...
...A plaque inside the 34th precinct lists the names of police officers killed in the line of duty...
...Once more, he was startled by a hand in the dark, and he pushed it away...
...O'Keefe, in addition, was maligned as corrupt, with some claiming that he was in the pay of drug dealers and others saying that he had robbed them...
...R afi Martinez's gang, which was better organized than all but a few, dealt to both users and dealers, in amounts ranging from a gram to ten kilos...
...Augusto was a smartass younger brother...
...Rafi was greedy," said Camacho...
...On July 3, 1992, O'Keefe shot and killed Garcia in the lobby of an apartment on 162nd Street...
...Reyes was a kind and gregarious busybody, who interpreted for fellow Latinos in their commercial or city dealings, and cared deeply about the neighborhood...
...With blacks, in particular, there has been tension, with cultural divisions exacerbated by competition for political influence and social services...
...Radically different versions of the event were circulated in the days that followed, inspired chiefly by accounts from two sisters, Juana Madera, aged 36, and Anna Rodriguez, 42...
...That country has no extradition treaty with the United States, and a number of men wanted for homicide, including Pedro Gil, have made their escape home...
...The groups might reach a kind of entente, if business is sufficient and the gang leaders are so inclined, or there can be open warfare...
...The disputes between customers, between dealers, and between dealers and customers, were not infrequently resolved with automatic weapons...
...In your own area, you're more comfortable...
...O'Keefe hit Garcia with his radio, and Garcia drew his gun and pointed it at him...
...Both tumbled into the lobby and the struggle began: Garcia punched 40 The American Spectator November 1994 him and tried to break free, dragging him further into the building...
...Subsequent investigations cleared the officers involved and found that, in both cases, they had acted not only properly, but with exceptional courage and ability...
...He was so well versed in their practices and past that, although perhaps they couldn't quite place him, they were comfortable and willing to do business...
...For several years, one of its most formidable entrepreneurs was a gruff, stingy, and humorless young man named Rafael Martinez, who arrived there as a teenager in the mid-eighties as an illegal alien from the Dominican Republic...
...He worked with other police units, such as Tactical Narcotics Team and Manhattan North Narcotics, but the repeated raids produced no significant arrests...
...to bide his time and resolve the problem himself...
...And when they reappeared, a block away at 614 West 157th, Gilmore's disappointment was tempered with a modicum of relief...
...The intricate and sometimes makeshift connections between basements or roofs provide abundant opportunities for escape and ambush...
...He was in the group of police that pursued Dagoberto Pichardo, and it was the slimmest of chances that sent him into an apartment after another fleeing suspect instead of backing up his lieutenant on the roof...
...The recognition that dealers swelled the ranks of the demonstrators, and had caused most of the violence, was later supported by a consensus of street intelligence...
...Candles, flowers, and a graffiti mural of passionate hearts and torches made a shrine of the building where Garcia was "assassinated," and O'Keefe was burned in effigy...
...A group might consist of five members, or forty...
...Widespread cheering was reported in the crowd...
...District Attorney Morgenthau declined to pursue charges of perjury against Juana Madera and Anna Rodriguez...
...Back on the roof, Parrino saw only Brito, standing by the wall at a distance of some twenty-five feet...
...The young men around him flaunt cash, or tug at the guns in their waistbands, sometimes spinning around to model the success of their concealment...
...Though it can be difficult for a landlord to evict a tenant who deals drugs, for a building to become wholly overrun usually involves an owner who is either indifferent to the problem or actively complicit...
...It wasn't a matter of intense hatred, which one I disliked the most...
...Eight gang members volunteered to cooperate, including Irah Vinas, the former girlfriend Rafi had kneecapped and married off to his brother Augusto, and Augusto himself, in exchange for sentences that will range between three and eight years to life...
...When we took him out," said Barnitt, "I don't think the price even fluctuated...
...O'Keefe identified himself, and reached for Garcia's shoulder as he pushed open the door...
...Nancy Ryan, chief of the homicide bureau of the Manhattan DA's office, spoke with greater criminal experience than Martinez when she said, "One of the strange things you learn in this business is that if you're shot in the head, and you're a bad person, your chances of survival are usually pretty good...
...In another, he said that Parrino stepped on Pichardo's hands, causing him to fall...
...Garcia fell back and spun, gun still in hand, and O'Keefe fired again...
...At the same time, you had to make it seen and respected that if they hurt you, it would all Heights, the balance of power was never in their favor, whether they sought to counter social chaos or a relatively efficient criminal conspiracy...
...Perhaps the key participant in the Buczek investigation was Immigrationjured...
...He has never been identified...
...Housing Police Officer John Williamson, aged 25, was struck in the head and killed instantly...
...Gonzalez's face is twisted in a grimace of pure rage, and he brings his hands together in the air in a two-handed pistol grip and lowers them to shoot, again and again and again...
...He had a gas station, a trucking company, three houses, eight or nine cars, God knows how much money...
...But there is an unusual cohesion as well, as the largest number of business owners and unemployed are both from the same ethnic group...
...The riots—civilian unrest, whatever you want—it was pretty intense," said Gilmore...
...Staring forward, with barely a movement, he taps one man's thigh to send him racing off on some unexplained errand...
...In contrast to other kinds of organized crime, where hierarchy, territory, and protocol are rigidly ordered and widely 36 The American Spectator November 1994 recognized, most of the drug dealers in Washington Heights operate in loose bands...
...With resources of time and manpower extending their reach, HIDTA was able to follow one of the major customers to New Jersey after a purchase, and seized just under three kilos of cocaine...
...You had to make them think you had powers...
...In September, when separate grand juries declined to indict both O'Keefe and Parrino, a massive police deployment helped keep the neighborhood calm...
...Fearing that he was coming to the assistance of Garcia, they chased him, grabbed him, and took the gun—a fully loaded .357 magnum revolver—but did not arrest him, as O'Keefe's screams for help then came over the radio...
...A little broader and taller than average, with a manner that is both direct and distinctly cautious, he asked that this article omit references to his private life, for personal and professional reasons...
...CI The American Spectator November 1994 47...
...They did not have flashlights, and the only illumination came from nearby police helicopters that had been dispatched as part of the anti-looting effort...
...A cousin also worked with him for a time, but he hadn't the stomach for the work and left the business...
...Augusto calmly unburdened himself of his brothers' sins from his cell and on the stand, with no evident trepidation or regret...
...Five kilos of cocaine were recovered in a bloody pillowcase...
...However silly, it proved Rafi's last coherent bit of strategy...
...It also fueled the indignation of Gilmore, whose beat stretched from 155th Street to 171st, east of Broadway...
...He also had to ensure that the rules of engagement were strictly understood, on both sides, for both his physical safety and his mental health...
...Most chilling is a scene where Roberto Gonzalez, bristling with menace, half-dancing on the street, animatedly re-enacts some event to Rafi, who stands, as ever, secure and implacable...
...In both cases, police officers gave consistent statements over time that were supported by physical evidence which, in the Garcia case, included toxicology, pathology, and ballistic reports, as well as After its import by Colombians, most of the cocaine used between New England and the Carolinas passes through Dominican hands...
...If a couch or carpet was damaged in a raid, it was replaced immediately with an identical item...
...Almost 7 percent of Jamaicans obtained these visas, and over 15 percent of Indians, but only three-tenths of one percent of Dominicans qualified...
...But the real violence didn't start until Loren and Moreta came up...
...They'd come up to you and say, 'Look, I've dealt before, but these people are bad.' They used to say, 'You could fill a cemetery with the people we killed.— Though the DA refused to speak of crimes that police were unable to reliably connect to the Gerry Curls, included in the files on the case is a large color photograph of the remains of a man found on the roof of 550 West 157th...
...The police don't really control the streets in any part of the city, but in most places they successfully compete for them...
...Some of them would take you out in a second...
...Still, it seemed that they were mostly "spinning their wheels," as one cop put it...
...there may be two groups on a block or there may be half a dozen or more...
...Two officers were injured in the hail of garbage, bottles, tree limbs, and other debris hurled from the crowd...
...This information had all come from Gilmore and the people of 157th Street...
...You have to get that message out, not as a `dis' but just to let them know...
...There was casual prostitution, and frequent robberies...
...Both in New York and the Dominican Republic, these vast sums of money have served to capitalize legitimate businesses, from fleets of cabs to beauty parlors to clothing boutiques...
...Five-Fifty is on the corner of a major intersection, with a subway entrance a few feet from the door, and a natural location for dealing...
...With no sign of the vandals and little hope of finding them, the police headed back to the street, but as they descended past the sixth floor landing, with Parrino in the lead, four men emerged from an apartment...
...At 550, however, someone might drop him a note, or manage to arrange a meeting in private, and he was able to hold what he called "underground tenant meetings...
...Parrino assumed Pichardo was on a ledge or fire escape on the other side of the wall, and, again in the dark, he slowly moved toward him...
...Remittances to the Dominican Republic exceed half a billion dollars annually, the overwhelming majority of which is from drug revenues...
...When I came here, in '88, a kilo was a big score...
...There is no kingpin in Washington Heights, no figure like John Gotti or Nicky Barnes, the heroin boss of Harlem in the 1970s...
...After so many years of vain labor to connect Rafi with his enterprise, it must have struck the prosecution as near-divine favor to obtain his signed statement that said, in effect, "I sell drugs in huge quantities...
...Fifty-five businesses were targeted, resulting in twenty-five arrests and forty-three deportations...
...Rafi would make each new worker go to the same barbershop for the cut...
...Mobs filled the nights with the sounds of broken glass and the smell of smoke, setting fires in trash cans and to overturned cars...
...More people came forward, and while it seemed futile, it made possible the operations that eventually brought the gang down...
...While local consumption is considerable, its position amid the Harlem River Drive, the Henry Hudson Parkway, and the George Washington Bridge make the neighborhood the first urban access point for upstate and out-of-state users and mid-level dealers...
...The massive conspiracy, drug, gun, and homicide case would take a year and a half to litigate...
...As they had it, Garcia stood on the street until he was attacked by O'Keefe, apparently without provocation or even comment, and dragged into the building...
...It is a difficult and delicate task to measure the penetration of drug money into the infrastructure, a virtual impossibility and half an insult in the asking...
...The American Spectator November 1994 37 common...
...By a conservative estimate, that amounts to an annual distribution in the range of several tons...
...In his view, the end of the violence had less to do with any public action or inaction than its cost to the drug dealers who could not do business amid the mayhem and police saturation of the area...
...The U.S...
...A fter two years of extraordinary persistence, it seemed at last that Gilmore had, if not beaten the Gerry Curls, at least worn them down...
...At 614, however, he said that the arrival of the Gerry Curls was so sudden and forceful that landlord, superintendent, and tenants were overwhelmed...
...Rafi would turn 20 the year of his shooting, and his brother Papin was a year older...
...It was not until Gilmore impressed the gravity of the situation upon Terry Quinn, an investigator for the Manhattan DA, that larg46 The American Spectator November 1994 er forces were marshaled against Rafi Martinez and his gang...
...As it happened, while Reyes may have made a complaint at some point, he was not responsible for the raid...
...Gilmore had worked there since 1986, a few months after graduation from the police academy...
...Buczek was caught in the crossfire between rival drug gangs on 161st Street, and his killer escaped to the Dominican Republic...
...It was a struggle, a real battle...
...For those months, investigators set up an observation post in a nearby apartment and shot still photos and videotape of the gang, over a hundred hours of which would be presented at trial...
...The two officers in the car planned to circle the block, and meet O'Keefe as he approached the suspect on foot...
...When asked if race affected his tortuously extended relations with the Gerry Curls, Gilmore was dismissive of the thought...
...Other people have shot at them, also...
...Madera occupied a second-floor apartment at 505 West 162nd, and her sister's son, Jose Rodriguez, was staying with her at the time...
...The American Spectator November 1994 41 Lieut...
...No arrests were made...
...For his efforts, he became the target of extraordinary vilification, as well as numerous death threats...
...O'Keefe managed to fire first...
...One of the thieves escaped, wounded, the other was killed, and Papin was shot in the chest...
...The noise continued through the night...
...During the riots, you would always hear cops point to the different people in masks and say, matter-of-factly, 'Look at him, he deals on 171st,' or 'He works for so-and-so," he said...
...Drugs and violence abounded within a hundred yards that had nothing to do with the Gerry Curls...
...Scenes of less dramatic value but greater evidentiary power show a young black man, jauntily walking along with the brothers, slapping hands and joking...
...Gilmore also said that the majority of people in Washington Heights, Dominican or not, supported the police during the riots but kept silent out of prudence and fear...
...At Columbia Presbyterian Hospital, he was pronounced dead...
...Jose Gonzales Garcia could have been your son, or even you," said Messinger, denouncing what she styled an act of police brutality...
...Almost 40 percent of all arrivals in Manhattan came from the Dominican Republic, with China, at less than 20 percent, a distant second...
...Loren, he was a real vicious personality...
...O'Keefe was seen, quite credibly, as a public servant who acted in self-defense in desperate circumstances...
...The basement at 550 West 157th is ominous even in daylight, a dimly lit, red brick catacomb with tunnel-like halls that lead through a maze of alcoves, storage spaces, and other rooms...
...The gross national product of that country is $2 billion...
...It was saying, 'Hey, stop, there are kids here.' You can't take it personally, you'd go crazy...
...On occasion, dealers have tried to pull Gilmore inside such underground redoubts...
...He would stand in front of the building for hours at a time, bringing business The events of July were disastrous for police morale...
...Now, his father will have a very comfortable retirement...
...Parrino was able to see that Brito intended to run, but also that he did not appear to be armed...
...Roberto Gonzalez was acquitted of the murder of Jose Reyes but was convicted of other crimes, and Snyder sentenced him to 12 1/2 to 25 years, the maximum term...
...Augusto was 17, Loren 15, and Daniel, the youngest, was 14...
...The man who shot him, known as "Chino," had been a close friend...
...His first conversation with New York law enforcement that endured beyond the words "Move it" was probably in Columbia Presbyterian Hospital, where he recuperated for several months after being shot in the head by his partner in the drug trade in January 1987 as he lay on a couch in his apartment...
...He drew his gun, ordered Brito to freeze, and approached...
...The Bush Justice Department was unmoved by the material, and went so far as to impugn its integrity as sounding "scripted" in parts...
...As Detective Charles Barnitt of the Manhattan North Narcotics Unit said, "Those wires are humming day and night...
...In Washingtonapartments with generators connected to windows, to electrocute you—bullets flying...
...Others point their hands like guns, play-shooting each other like little boys...
...He shrugged, unwilling to dwell on it...
...When he put up signs to call a tenant meeting, they were more concerned...
...Protests followed in the days ahead, and riots in the nights, and on the night of July 6, a man named Dagoberto Pichardo fell from the roof of a six-story building, also after a confrontation with the police...
...When they crossed Broadway, they were no longer on his beat...
...In upper Washington Heights and Inwood, they have displaced Irish and Jews...
...In the streets, the fires and violence continued, sporadically, for several days...
...Scheduled to end with a candlelight vigil at a church, the protest was diverted at 181st and Broadway and moved toward the precinct, a block away...
...Their numbers have been augmented by a large number of illegal aliens...
...Pichardo died in an ambulance on the way to the hospital...
...Moreta had a nasty disposition also...
...Judge Leslie Crocker Snyder sentenced Rafi to a term of 213 years to life in prison...
...Brito, who had recovered from his blows, got up and ran for the door...
...It was scary," said Camacho, elaborating on the implicit threat...
...The customer Was regular and valued, and Rafi indulgently wrote a receipt for the precise price and weight of thedrugs sold...
...Garcia thrust his forearm at O'Keefe's throat and rushed forward...
...moving downtown, toward historic Harlem, they have pushed aside African-Americans...
...A detective spoke with him, but no productive information was obtained and no arrest was made...
...Often a dealer will not be the tenant of record—the Gerry Curls went so far as to have an associate rent apartments for them under an alias—and dealers will break into vacant apartments to set up shop...
...Shortly after the murder, a multi-agency task force called Project Bodega was formed to investigate grocery stores suspected to be involved in gun-, drug-, and alien-smuggling as well as other criminal activities...
...he controversy was a modest prelude to that which T surrounded Officer Michael O'Keefe after the death of Jose "Kiko" Garcia...
...Afraid that his own boss would suspect him of stealing, the buyer asked Rafi to help him explain the situation...
...In the past, the legitimate frustrations of the community have found combined expression with the provocations of the criminals, with disastrous results...
...Robert Jackall, a professor of sociology at Williams College, spent six months in the 34th precinct studying the organizational behavior of the police, and the riots coincided with his period of research...
...Street-level operations in many neighborhoods are also controlled by Dominicans...
...A mother might find her child playing with crackvials...
...For many cops, however, the summer of the riots dispelled any doubts about who kept the peace in Washington Heights, such as it is, and it wasn't them...
...Reputation is a critically important tool, and more than haircuts and cars, the Gerry Curls made their reputation through violence, through what they inflicted on others and what they survived themselves...
...He was covered with blood, and a police officer had to pry G,arcia's revolver from his hand...
...Brito found sanctuary in the first-floor apartment of a friend...
...It could be the Fourth of July with that happening...
...More than one officer expressed relief that it was a lieutenant on the roof with Pichardo, and that his rank and record provided some degree of insulation from the political heat...
...The buyer had been sent to acquire three kilos, but didn't have the entire amount of the purchase price, which would have been approximately $60,000...
...People come here, and they're shown this is a way to make money...
...Three months later, when police assisted in a towing operation on 175th Street—cars are commonly triple-parked in the area, and ambulances have been unable to drive down some streets—a 21-year-old Dominican named Pedro Gil threw a bucket of spackling compound from the roof of an apartment building...
...It didn't happen often...
...He lies on a bed of charcoal briquettes, with his hands bound behind his back, his shirt in charred tatters on his chest, and his face burnt back over his skull...
...Most bad blocks see a fair amount of bloodshed, with some groups on the rise and others in decline, and the vast amount of cash in movement attracts thieves who themselves must be reckless and violent to an exceptional degree...
...I remember the first time a guy brought a kilo in, everybody gathered around to see it...
...Jose Rodriguez was a drug dealer, the friend and employer of Kiko Garcia...
...Testimony in the Gerry Curls case indicated that the superintendent at 550 assisted the gang but not the landlord, although Gilmore expressed mild derision at the mention of his name...
...While his rapid speech often resembles that of a social worker, with frequent references to empowerment, opportunity, and self-esteem, he is a street-combat veteran, well-practiced in the use of force...
...More Dominicans obtained second preference visas than any other group...
...Finding no one, the two officers inspected the U-shaped roof, which was bounded by a brick parapet wall, just over three feet in height...
...Gilmore, who had less contact with the tenants of 614, saw virtually all his sources shut down...
...W ashington Heights has a fair claim to being the largest retail drug market in the United States...
...It was not without justifiable hesitation that he crossed the street to continue his pursuit of the gang...
...W ith its domination of both legitimate and criminal enterprise in Latino areas, the Dominican community has had a perhaps necessarily ambiguous relationship with the police...
...A s ever, the Gerry Curls made an impression in court, arriving for trial with shaved heads...
...Every one of them was dangerous in their own way," said James Gilmore, a policeman who walked the streets of Washington Heights at the time...
...Another undercover, also black, offered bona fides in the form of Daniel's beeper number, at a time when he was, safely and conveniently, in the Dominican Republic...
...The sisters claimed to have followed them into the building, and then moved to the landing at the top of the second-floor stairs, where they saw Garcia offer no resistance to a savage beating, but simply call out for his mother and ask why he was being hurt...
...It is an intrepid social scientist who walks into a chamber of commerce meeting to ask how many crooks are in the room...
...On the foot post, it was an everyday thing," Gilmore said...
...After a trip home to the Dominican Republic, Rafi decided Edward Conlon is a writer living in the Bronx...
...and Naturalization Service Agent Joseph Occhipinti, a highly decorated, 22-year veteran...
...As the van approached, it was struck by bottles, and the group ran into an apartment building...
...An autopsy revealed that he was both shot and stabbed...
...For a few weeks there was no sight of them...
...The Pichardo investigation included evidence gathered by FBI agents who rappelled off the roof of the Audubon Avenue building from which he fell...
...The events of July were disastrous for police morale...
...Two firemen suffered thirdThe American Spectator November 1994 39 degree burns over large parts of their bodies...
...Just after 9:30, there was a report of bottles thrown from a rooftop, and the van responded to the scene to find a group of people gathered around a burning car at the intersection of 172nd Street and Audubon Avenue...
...Christopher Hoban, a plainclothes narcotics detective, was killed in a buy-and-bust operation in Manhattanville...
...When police arrived at the scene, Garcia was alive, and O'Keefe was so exhausted and stunned that he was barely able to speak...
...When the gang began to establish itself, Reyes had words with them, which they found an amusement as much as an annoyance...
...The behavior is typical of an attempt to conceal a weapon, and in this case, the concealment was unusually half-hearted and inept (the gun turned out to be a .38 remodeled for a longer barrel and large, rubber hand-grips...
...Astonished, he broke loose, caught a glimpse of Pichardo, whom he could see from the chest up, and hit Brito hard enough to knock him to the ground...
...The officers gave chase, led by Parrino, who was with one other officer as he reached the top floor of the six-story building...
...gun...
...The real hero is Jimmy Gilmore," he said, pausing before a laugh: "I wish Loren understood that...
...Mayor Dinkins and Cardinal O'Connor walked the streets, made speeches, and met with the Garcia family, urging calm...
...Old people were terrified...
...A police raid of the Madera-Rodriguez apartment several months before produced cocaine and marijuana, a loaded .38, forty-five additional rounds of ammunition, and a videotape of Garcia and Rodriguez tossing packages of cocaine in the air, in the street, in bright daylight...
...Roger Parrino, who directed Special Operations for the precinct, was in charge at the scene, and he ordered that the police stand fast and not move into the crowd...
...A march from the site of Garcia's death on 162nd Street to the 34th Precinct, at 182nd Street, ended with an abortive attempt to storm the precinct...
...His own investigations produced evidence that claimed much of the testimony against Occhipinti was perO'Keefe and his two partners, Thomas McPartland and Matteo Brattesani, observed Garcia at a busy drug location, repeatedly tugging at a bulge in his jacket, just above the waistband...
...Over the next year and a half, he brought his four brothers and an uncle to the United States...
...Quinn brought in a newly formed task force called HIDTA, for High Intensity Drug Trafficking Area, which drew from the NYPD, DEA, and the district attorney's office...
...conversely, third- and sixth-preference visas, for individuals who possess certain medical and technical skills, went to Dominicans in extremely low numbers...
...There was a conscious effort to forge an organizational identity and high-profile style...
...In July 1993, after a police car accidentally struck and killed a motorcyclist, four young men took molotov cocktails and bombed a fire station...
...The gross national product of that country is $2 billion...
...Although disrupting traffic might seem petty beside murder and multiple-kilo cocaine transactions, it somehow seemed more wanton...
...Passers-by might be stopped and searched to make sure they were not police officers, and one of the brothers might decide not to let traffic pass that day, on the sidewalk or the street, out of boredom, bravado, or spite...
...And when their apartment was raided, they believed they had a problem that demanded immediate and decisive response...
...Nonetheless, Gonzales waited for Reyes for three days, in the compartment where trash was stored, until the old man walked out to Broadway...
...Like other Caribbean immigrants, Dominicans arrived primarily on "second preference" visas, as unmarried sons and daughters of permanent residents...
...In June 1992, he began to serve a 37-month sentence...
...As he washed up and changed clothes, he heard an outcry in the street outside, and shouts that the police had thrown someone from the roof...
...The memory of recent riots in Crown Heights and Los Angeles was vivid—and the Democratic Convention was to begin in New York in ten days...
...The sturdily built O'Keefe was nearly six inches shorter than Garcia, who was high on cocaine and slick with sweat...
...He could have retired in 1990 a very rich man...
...People were actually crying, they thought they'd never live a normal life again...
...Madera and Rodriguez were friends of Garcia, and they had dinner together in the apartment on the night of the shooting...
...At sentencing, Rafi protested his innocence, claiming that his prosecution was motivated by individuals who were jealous of his success, and Loren made the brief, chilling statement that the only reason he was there was Fernando Camacho...
...Chasing people with guns, people shooting at you, going into apartments—there areend...
...Domestic drug consumption may be in decline, but it remains unquestionably and almost immeasurably vast...
...Passers-by might be stopped and searched to make sure they were not police officers, and one of the brothers might decide not to let traffic pass that day, on the sidewalk or the street, out of boredom, bravado, or spite...
...The most recent casualty was Michael Buczek, who was one of two police officers killed by drug dealers on October 18, 1988...
...Camacho, who maintained an affable tone even when speaking of the worst murders, requested that no personal information be disclosed, a precaution that seemed all the more sensible in the light of a recent conviction of an imprisoned drug dealer for conspiracy to murder another ADA in the office...
...At the time, Rafi probably also did not realize that the event would propel his career from that of a petty street dealer to leader of one of the most effective, profitable, and feared criminal organizations in upper Manhattan...
...After the nearly five-month trial, the jury deliberated for five days before returning guilty verdicts on the conspiracy, drug, and weapons charges, the Chino murder, and the Espinal shooting...
...When he had the doors to the apartments removed by the landlord, locksmiths and contractors were hired to replace them...
...If you didn't do that, you jeopardize your own life...
...The brothers had new cars—a Jeep, a Mercedes, a Maxima, and a Supra, among others—painted in their signature gold colors...
...The flourishing drug trade brought a variety of attendant dangers and squalors...
...That seemed to bother them more than getting arrested," he said, "They'd make threats, throw things—bricks, bottles, what have you—off the roof...
...The only resistance came from Jose Reyes, a 66-year-old retired city worker who lived with his sister...
...Rafi and Papin were more quiet and businesslike...
...A detective who canvassed the building within an hour after the incident spoke to Madera...
...Minor players were snared, and when a major one was brought in, bail was posted and he would immediately return to work...
...O'Keefe tried to grab the gun from Garcia and radioed for help, but in the tumult of the moment was unable to give the correct address...
...When he lost consciousness, Madera said, O'Keefe rolled him over on his stomach and shot him in the back...
...You'd even get complaints about them from other dealers...
...When Brito left the apartment, he told bystanders that the police had indeed thrown Pichardo to his death, and the next day he made himself available for interviews...
...You can communicate with people and cover yourself...
...The Dominican Republic supplied the largest number of immigrants to New York City in the past decade, roughly 25,000 per year...
...This, of course, was a lethal error, and according to ADA Camacho, there were others that Rafi committed out of a mistrust of his subordinates that was as well founded as it was short-sighted...
...Rumors abounded that both men died in unprovoked assaults, and public concern was amplified by lurid versions of the events, often uncritically broadcast by the media, which told of the unarmed men begging for their lives before summary executions...
...She vehemently denied it, and rushed to Rafi to warn him that the police were aware of the incident...
...We made arrests...
...They became known as the Gerry Curls, after their hairstyles, clean or close-shaven on the sides with a loose crop of curls on top...
...While the impulse to retreat could not have been stronger, and the need for secrecy never more extreme, some tenants even took surreptitious photographs of the gang from inside their apartments...
...The officer behind him stepped back to the sixth floor, saw one of the men grab for his waistband, and called out, "He has a Parrino began to follow but, winded and well behind him, quickly gave up the chase...
...the murders had a purpose and drugs made money, but the open and needless contempt to which the locals were routinely subject bewildered them, drove them into pliant capitulation...
...That evening, Lieutenant Parrino and four other officers patrolled the area in a police van...
...Their income was estimated to be $5 million a year...
...There is footage of Rafi, cold-eyed and unblinking, furtively handing off a small package, or counting bills in a thick wad of cash, indifferent to whoever might see...
...The three officers were in plain clothes, in an unmarked car, but feared that they would be recognized if they approached in the vehicle...
...After its import by Colombians, most of the cocaine used between New England and the Carolinas passes through Dominican hands...
...As the two men grappled beside the wall, Parrino discovered the whereabouts of Pichardo when a hand reached out and grabbed his arm, pinning him briefly to the wall...
...44 The American Spectator November 1994 to a standstill, but he had other problems to deal with on his beat...
...G ilmore, of course, had not been silent about Rafi Martinez, at the precinct or the DA's office...
...Loren was sentenced to 75 to life, Moreta and Papin, 50...
...He arrested buyers and sellers, and had their gold cars towed at every legal opportunity...
...Detective Barnitt said that crack has virtually disappeared from the area, but powder cocaine is as strong as ever, and heroin was becoming popular...
...Though Papin was soon arrested, Rafi posted bail for him and he never returned to court...
...While merchants are traditional supporters of law and order, drug dealers are not, and when the distinction between professions is blurred, the situation takes on a daunting complexity...
...The thought was not as pusillanimous as it might first appear: while the Gerry Curls made Gilmore's beat one of the worst in the city, their departure left him, still, with one of the worst beats in the city...
...More than one officer expressed relief that it was a lieutenant on the roof with Pichardo, and that his rank and record provided some degree of insulation from the political heat...
...Even their furniture, it seemed, was above the law...
...She told him, through an interpreter, that she had heard crying in the hallway and shots fired, but that she saw nothing...
...There was a sense that they were invincible...
...One gang member later said that Reyes spent so much effort keeping the building clean that he thought he was the superintendent...
...In one, he said that Pichardo was pushed...
...At 614 West 157th, all thought of cooperation with the police vanished...
...Moreta, at 27, was the eldest...
...But his uncle, known as Moreta, and his brothers Papin, Augusto, Loren, and Daniel adapted to the hazards with mettle and—in the case of Moreta and Loren—some relish...
...III A s a black American with a strong sense of heritage, and as a second-generation cop, James Gilmore may have an unusual perspective...
...The dealers monopolized the pay phones across the street from the building, roughing up anyone who mistook them for a public convenience...
...No one could take them down...
...Parents were concerned about their daughters, the ones who were afraid of them and the ones who were impressed with them, all the money and so on...
...Dominicans also have a low rate of naturalization, which is, in New York, a general predictor of occupational achievement, education level, and income...
...Gilmore described it as "infested," with constant action in the street, in the lobby, and as many as eighteen apartments inside...
...Young men in the crowd, many of whom were masked in bandannas, led the push against the line of police...
...This entrepreneurial spirit also extends to illegal businesses, and Dominicans dominate mid-level cocaine traffic on the East Coast...
...Few voices among the eminent stressed any presumption of his innocence, and fewer still professed a belief that his actions were necessary and just...
...On a crowded street, just after four on a sunny May afternoon, he walked up behind Reyes and discharged one shot from a .45 into the back of his head...
...In addition to the language barrier, the illegal status of many Dominicans fosters a mistrust of authority of all kinds, and their experience with the police in the Dominican Republic may not have inspired the greatest confidence in law enforcement...
...Strictly speaking, they were not his problem anymore...
...He then handcuffed Garcia, recovered the gun, checked the address, and called again for help...
...An unidentified voice on the tape claims, "It's legal here on these blocks, it's liberated...
...A gang member was assigned to a "Gilmore watch" to monitor his movements whenever he was on duty...
...After some time, the crowd began to disperse, and packs of young men moved downtown, overturning garbage cans, breaking windows, and setting fires...
...A woman who had been roughed up in an elevator by a gang member was asked about the assault by a detective...
...A few months later, a police officer His first conversation with New York law enforcement that endured beyond the words "Move it" was probably in Columbia Presbyterian Hospital, where he recuperated for several months after being shot in the head by his partner in the drug trade...
...Without these witnesses, the drug case was solid but the murders would have been less firm...
...T he first homicide that the police were able to decisively link to the Gerry Curls occurred in September 1989, when two men attempted to rob Papin of his cocaine supply...
...From Washington Heights, they have moved up to Inwood and down to Hamilton Heights, and across the river to the Bronx neighborhoods of University Heights and Highbridge...
...Because grand jury proceedings are conducted in secret, District Attorney Robert Morgenthau released a 45-page letter to Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly, which detailed the findings of an exhaustive and independent investigation...
...People know you and would make a call most people—if you were hurt or in trouble...
...When it was decided that enough evidence had been amassed, the entire Martinez family contingent was among the twenty-five gang members arrested one day in October...
...By 1988, they had a thriving business in two apartments at 550 West 157th Street, a handsome, ten-story building with an expansive lobby of black and white marble, with a fireplace and pilastered walls...
...He had just strolled over to the building, where he enthusiastically greeted Loren, Rafi, and other gang members by name, and spoke fondly of the old days at 550...
...Though there are exceptions, such as when one Dominican citizen kills another in the United States, or the individual has applied for American citizenship, the issue is a source of extreme frustration for the NYPD...
...While supporters of the mayor were cheered by the rel42 The American Spectator November 1994 atively limited duration and damage of the riots, his opponents charged him with capitulation to the forces of disorder and crime...
...Gilmore ordered the dealers off the street, sometimes several times a day...
...Occhipinti, 42, had served seven months, mostly in solitary confinement...
...For their part, McPartland and Brattesani were distracted by a man who ran across 162nd Street, brandishing a gun...
...Throughout upper Manhattan, there are scores of travel agencies and other businesses that specialize in electronic transfers of money, which does nothave to be reported in amounts under $10,000...
...The strains typical of poor, minority neighborhoods exist, between the police and the community and within the community itself...
...Though the sisters told tales that grew successively more vivid and macabre, and denied statements to law enforcement that had already been broadcast on radio and television, most of their stories had them coming upon Garcia and O'Keefe as they returned to the apartment after shopping...
...Daniel got three to nine, and is the only one of the brothers who will one day enjoy the profits of the years on 157th Street...
...But the car was spotted, the crowd shouted warnings, and Garcia moved for cover to the entrance of 505 West 162nd...
...There is no record of his arrest...
...The mayor invited the Garcia family to Gracie Mansion, and the city provided financial assistance for the funeral, which was held in the Dominican Republic...
...HIDTA began work on the Gerry Curls in June, the month after the Reyes murder, and continued through October...
...Raids had produced gun seizures and cocaine by the pound, and any number of detectives were occupied with the results of the gang's handiwork...
...Rafi left for the Dominican Republic and gave instructions to Roberto Gonzalez to take care of things...
...Quinn would organize the operation, and assistant district attorney Fernando Camacho would prosecute the case...
...Rafi could be nasty but he looked at trouble as something that could affect business...
...But others came to the dismal realization that what brought quiet to the streets had little to do with the price of a funeral...
...But days before stepping down from office, in January 1993, the president commuted the remainder of Occhipinti's sentence, without comment on the validity of the charges...
...Though they have settled by the thousands in parts of Brooklyn and Queens, Washington Heights is the primary destination for Dominican immigration...
...And he was wrong...
...In both cases, also, the victims were drug dealers, and the purported witnesses were drug dealer associates of the victims, who gave inconsistent and internally contradictory statements that had no basis in the physical evidence...
...T he march to the precinct, which took place on July 6, was led by Linares...
...There were vehement protests by INS agents and a number of politicians, most notably then-Congressman Guy Molinari, who took the extraordinary step of resigning in protest from all federally appointed posts, including the Legal Services Corporation, as well as the Bush re-election campaign...
...On the evening of July 3, The dealers monopolized the pay phones across the street from the building, roughing up anyone who mistook them for a public convenience...
...Augusto was young, and a lot of the young don't think, which is a danger in itself...
...At the same time, there is a strong entrepreneurial tradition in Dominican culture, and, in many Latino neighborhoods, small businesses such as restaurants and bodegas are disproportionately Dominican-owned...
...The mayor did not visit or call O'Keefe...
...Over the summer, the Gerry Curls sold the undercovers over a kilo of cocaine and two guns, one of which had been used to kill Chino...
...Although the mayor was judicious in his language, insisting only that an investigation of the incident would be thorough and impartial, other politicians, among them Borough President Ruth Messinger and City Councilman Guillermo Linares, whose district was created for the Dominican constituency, were less temperate...
...A fellow officer half-jokingly referred to him as "Malcolm X," ordinarily not an endorsement from a white cop, but intended with familiar affection and undiluted respect...
...Never a beloved leader, Rafi retained his own attorney but refused to subsidize anyone else's defense...
Vol. 27 • November 1994 • No. 11
