Thread: Harlem Mosque Incident 1970's

Courtesy of NY Finest News


The inspector is holding Det. Randy Jurgensen. He was struck in the head by airmail. Look at the photo of the cop holding his gun in the air after having just fired it. He was PO Lucian D'alessio of the 28 Anti-Crime. He was later killed by a drunk driver.

Harlem Mosque Incident 1970's
April 14, 1972, was one of the darkest days in the NYPD history.Patrolmen Phil Cardillo and Vito Navarra were riding in 28 sector George. They were the first RMP to respond to a 10‑13 on the second floor at 102 West 116 Street.

After arriving and entering the building which was a mosque they questioned about 10 muslims at the front desk about the call. Suddenly the muslims shouted "Allah Akhbar", more muslims came from rooms, then the officers were beaten and stomped by numerous black muslims.

A minute or two later Patrolmen Vic Padilla and Ivan Negron of the 25 pct. arrived and were also badly beaten and knocked to the ground. Navarra was able to crawl to the front door which was then slammed shut by the muslims. He told the responding cops that Cardillo was still inside. Thru a small window in the front door cops could see Cardillo on the floor being kicked by the surrounding mob. Padilla was down and being stomped and his gun was taken. Ptl. Negron was being beaten and he was fighting off numerous hands that were attempting to rip the gun from his holster.

One of the muslims, six foot four and 260 pounds, Louis 17X Dupree grabbed Cardillo's gun, ripped it from the holster and fired a round into Cardillo. The cops at the front door smashed the glass and afraid of hitting the fallen cops, fired five rounds over the heads of the muslims. Padilla, seeing Louis Dupree running with the gun, fired three rounds. More 10‑13's are called.

The cops broke in the front door. The seventeen muslims ran to the basement. Cops flooded through the door and chased the fleeing muslims down the stairs. The cops had them against the wall and began searching for the missing guns. Cardillo is removed to St. Lukes hospital. At the same time, outside the mosque a large crowd of about a thousand locals begin to riot.

Cars were overturned, bricks are coming off the roofs, and cops and media people are being assaulted. While this is going on Deputy Chief Inspector William Knapp arrived and went into the basement and spoke with Inspector John Haugh the 28 pct CO. Insp. Haugh had responded to the 10‑13. He told the cops to guard the prisoners.

Knapp called Commissioner Pat Murphy and advised him of the turmoil inside and outside the mosque. While Knapp was talking on the phone he heard shouting. He turned and saw Louis Farrakhan and Charlie Rangel leading a large group of muslims down the basement stairs. Farrakhan was shouting that all the cops must leave the temple. Knapp tells Haugh to move to the street.

Now Deputy Commissioner Ben Ward arrives, with Farrakhan at his side he shouts to the superior officers that the cops immediately leave the mosque. The crime scene was abandoned. Farrakhan and Rangel are shouting to the superior officers "If you stay, there is nothing we can do to protect you. You'll be overrun. There'll be rioting. People may be killed." Farrakhan and Rangel 'promise' that the prisoners would come to the 24 pct. at five o'clock to be questioned. Do you think anyone showed up? Phil Cardillo died six days later. Mayor John Lindsay and Commissioner Pat Murphy did NOT attend the funeral.

A few days after Cardillo was buried. Deputy Commissioner Ben Ward was quoted in the Amsterdam news: I believe that my investigation has pointed out, at least to my satisfaction, that there were some errors made on the part of the police. For the errors, and for the consequence of those errors, I apologize to minister Farrakhan."

http://policeny.com/pchmptlmog16jglnk.html

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/05/12/ny...n-72.html?_r=0

Thanks for the link Shapka.

Harlem Split on Plan to Honor Officer Killed in Mosque in ’72

Associated Press

On April 14, 1972, crowds gathered on Lenox Avenue at 116th Street in front of a Nation of Islam mosque after police officers responding to a call were attacked there.

By ANNE BARNARD

Published: May 11, 2012

Stirring emotions that date back 40 years to days of violent tension between African-American Muslims and the police, a Harlem community board is weighing whether to name a street after a police officer who was shot in 1972 inside a renowned Harlem mosque. People in the neighborhood wonder whether the gesture will reopen old wounds or help heal them.



Associated Press

Officer Phillip W. Cardillo was fatally shot in a Nation of Islam mosque at a time of tense race relations.

Robert Caplin for The New York Times

A proposal to name a Harlem street after an officer killed in the neighborhood 40 years ago has drawn some opposition.

On April 14, 1972,Officer Phillip W. Cardillo was one of five officers who entered the mosque, at 116th Street and Lenox Avenue — then the New York headquarters of Louis Farrakhan’s Nation of Islam — responding to a report of a police officer in trouble inside.

It was a particularly incendiary alarm at a time of high-profile murders of police officers by radical groups around the country and crackling tension between the police and residents of black neighborhoods after riots had convulsed many cities in the preceding years.

The call turned out to be spurious, and a melee ensued in which someone grabbed Officer Cardillo’s gun and shot him; he died six days later.

Amid fears of violence in the neighborhood, police officials ordered the officers out of the mosque and apologized to the mosque’s leaders, who said they believed they were being invaded by a hostile police force.

The events left lingering resentment among some police officers who say that politics derailed the investigation. No one has ever been convicted in Officer Cardillo’s killing.

Now, the Police Department and advocates for officers want to add “Officer Phillip Cardillo Way” to the street signs on 123rd Street, between Frederick Douglass Boulevard and St. Nicholas Avenue, a short block that is seven blocks from the mosque and abuts the 28th Precinct station house. They say they have collected 2,300 signatures supporting the proposal, including many from the neighborhood.

To Randy Jurgensen, a retired police detective who was there when the shooting took place and investigated it, enough time has passed that the proposed street naming can be viewed not as an endorsement of either side or a statement about 1970s politics, but as a simple memorial to an officer who died in the line of duty.
“This is not going to be a huge celebration,” he said.

“It’s going to be held with dignity and it’s going to be quietly done, because this is about a police officer who gave his life. That’s all.”

But for Harlem residents, especially those old enough to remember the events, it may not be that simple, as became clear at a community board meeting on Thursday in which board members insisted that advocates of the street naming — led by Inspector Rodney Harrison, a former commander of the 28th Precinct — deliver a letter proving they had consulted with local imams.

Street names are particularly resonant in the district. Figures like Adam Clayton Powell Jr., Martin Luther King Jr. and Malcolm X have their names attached to major thoroughfares. And while Harlem has moved on from internal disputes that divided the neighborhood after the 1972 shooting, some would rather not reopen the subject, said a person familiar with the street-naming procedure, who asked not to be identified because of the sensitivity of the continuing process.

“There’s some history here,” the person said, adding that some residents want to make sure that the views of those who opposed the police are also heard. “It’s sensitive.”

Today, the domed mosque is a landmark of a transformed, gentrifying Harlem, and its imam, Izak-El Mu’eed Pasha, served as the New York Police Department’s first Muslim chaplain. It houses a different congregation, the Malcolm Shabazz Mosque. The Nation of Islam’s Mosque No. 7 has moved to another Harlem site.

The fate of the proposal hangs, for the moment, on the cooperation of the imams of those mosques — at a time when cooperation with the police is a delicate matter in New York’s Muslim community. Tensions between some Muslims and the police are largely of a different nature from 40 years ago; they stem from widespread surveillance of mosques and Muslim organizations in the years after Sept. 11, and are accompanied by efforts on both sides to improve understanding.

Inspector Harrison, who according to Mr. Jergensen often consults with the imams on routine police matters like crime prevention, met with them several times and was told that they would neither support nor oppose the naming.
Board members said they wanted to see a letter from the imams confirming that, or to have them attend a meeting, according to two people present; Inspector Harrison said he doubted either option would be possible. “They are not going to come in here and say thumbs up,” he said, according to a report on the Web site DNAInfo.com New York, which covered the meeting.

The imams did not return phone calls on Friday.

Mr. Jurgensen said the renaming was one way of achieving closure for Officer Cardillo’s children, who were very young when he died, especially since, a police spokesman said, the recent reopening of the case “did not yield any new conclusive evidence.”

“We are not looking to open old wounds,” Inspector Harrison told the board, “but to heal old wounds.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/05/12/ny...n-72.html?_r=0