Speaker 1: This is Latino USA, the radio journal of News and
Speaker 1: Curture Latino USC latin Latino USA.
Speaker 2: I'm Maria Inojosa.
Speaker 3: We bring you stories that are underreported but that mattered to.
Speaker 2: You, overlooked by the rest of the media.
Speaker 3: And while the country is struggling to deal with these,
Speaker 3: we listen to the stories of Black and Latino Studios United,
Speaker 3: Latino Front, a cultural renaissance organizing at the forefront of
Speaker 3: the movement.
Speaker 1: I'm Maria Inojosa, nose Bayan. Hey Latino USA, listener, gomoistas.
Speaker 1: We have a treat for you today, especially if you're
Speaker 1: a fan of true crime. Our colleagues over at Orbit
Speaker 1: Media just released a news series. It's called The Burden,
Speaker 1: and it tells the story of NYPD detective Lewis N. Scarcella,
Speaker 1: who was legendary for cracking the toughest cases and putting
Speaker 1: away the worst criminals back in the nineteen nineties, so
Speaker 1: much so that this guy had a nickname the But
Speaker 1: underneath Scarcella's success, something obscure apparently lurked, something a group
Speaker 1: of convicted murderers turned jailhouse lawyers would uncover with the
Speaker 1: help of a relentless new York Times reporter. On episode
Speaker 1: one of The Burden, we meet that journalist, her name
Speaker 1: is Francis or Frenchie Droblis, who acts on a tip
Speaker 1: about this group of men in jail who happened to
Speaker 1: share something. They were all arrested by the same detective.
Speaker 1: His name Scarcella. But is this a story about a
Speaker 1: police officer turned into a hero or a villain? No,
Speaker 1: of course not, and that's what hosts Steve Fishman and
Speaker 1: Dax Devlon Ross are going to dive into. Here's episode
Speaker 1: one of the Burden.
Speaker 2: Enjoy the show, Dax, this is the first story I
Speaker 2: ever heard Louis Scarcella tell.
Speaker 4: The legendary New York detective tell me more so.
Speaker 2: Detective Scarcella is with his partner. They're testifying in court
Speaker 2: one day. It's lunchtime. The court breaks and Detective Scarcella
Speaker 2: and his partner decide that this is the moment to
Speaker 2: track down a murder suspect. We park right here, right here.
Speaker 5: There was an Italian guy right here smoking a shrew,
Speaker 5: I said Ben Bennygoy, and I showed him the picture.
Speaker 4: He looked at the picture, he backed up and he.
Speaker 2: Points to the White House. Lo and beholds of me.
Speaker 5: Six foot three hundred pounds.
Speaker 4: Comes out of the house.
Speaker 2: I said, that's him. I said, I'm going to run
Speaker 2: him down.
Speaker 5: I gunned the car stch jump out.
Speaker 2: I run over him.
Speaker 4: I put the gun on him.
Speaker 5: He's got a sig sour in his waistband, all big
Speaker 5: sig sur I jump on him.
Speaker 2: He's going for the gun.
Speaker 4: I put my glock to his head and pulled the trigger.
Speaker 4: But the gun's no good.
Speaker 6: My gun's no good.
Speaker 2: I kilt him my pawn to shoot him.
Speaker 4: He's bucking me.
Speaker 5: He's bucking me like a bronco.
Speaker 4: I grab him and I knock into the ground.
Speaker 2: Do you ever imagine that clock goes off?
Speaker 5: I mean I intended it to. I intended it to.
Speaker 2: What do you want me to do?
Speaker 6: He's got a six hour going for a six I
Speaker 6: want am?
Speaker 2: I supposed to kiss him. Welcome to Louise Brooklyn, where
Speaker 2: bad guys were around every corner and it was up
Speaker 2: to the hective Scarcella to protect the people.
Speaker 5: They needed me, and I loved doing it.
Speaker 2: Louis heyday was the eighties and nineties, and back then
Speaker 2: all New Yorkers, even the most liberal calumnists, wanted law
Speaker 2: and order.
Speaker 7: When you have babies being shot in their grandmother's arms,
Speaker 7: people's throats being slit for a.
Speaker 4: Five dollars vial of crack, I don't care where those
Speaker 4: prisons are and when I'm sent there for long terms.
Speaker 2: Louis Garcela had movie star good looks, smoked a cigar everywhere,
Speaker 2: and he was tough. He seemed like he was the
Speaker 2: kind of tough cop the city needed.
Speaker 8: He was everybody's idea of the prince of the city.
Speaker 8: He was the guy who solved the hardest cases and
Speaker 8: made sure the worst killers were brought to justice.
Speaker 2: Louis Garcella was known as the closes, the one who
Speaker 2: got the confession, and with that came fame. He was
Speaker 2: on the Doctor Phil's show, No One Knows the Art
Speaker 2: of getting confessions better than twenty nine year better in
Speaker 2: New York City homicide detectives, and.
Speaker 4: He earned the respect of his peers.
Speaker 6: Louise, my god, he's my man, you know, he's my friend,
Speaker 6: the hell of a cop, the rat detective.
Speaker 4: God forbid something happened to me or my family.
Speaker 9: I would want Louis Scarcella to do the investigation. A
Speaker 9: collot of trust in him.
Speaker 2: He looks like shit. Now we'll go all this shit.
Speaker 4: Steve the poor the poor guy that beat the balls
Speaker 4: off him, like, you know that's right. Years later, the
Speaker 4: Louis Scarcella story changed. The once decorated detective now stands
Speaker 4: accused of coaching witnesses, coercing confessions, and trading drugs for testimony.
Speaker 1: Garsola cracked numerous murder cases in the eighties and nineties,
Speaker 1: but his techniques had been questioned.
Speaker 8: A group of invicted murder says it all comes back
Speaker 8: to one rogue official and they want their names clear.
Speaker 5: Oh yeah, I'm the devil in disgraced devil. Yeah yeah, Well,
Speaker 5: what can I tell you?
Speaker 2: I'm Steve Fishman. I've lived in New York a long time.
Speaker 2: I've been writing about crime for a long time. As
Speaker 2: a journalist, I've interviewed cops, prosecutors, criminals, son of Sam
Speaker 2: Bernie Madoff. They opened up to me. I felt I
Speaker 2: knew a lot about the criminal justice system. So when
Speaker 2: I heard these headlines about Scarcela, my thought, this cannot
Speaker 2: be the whole story. Was this really about one rogue
Speaker 2: cop who what hoodwinked an entire system?
Speaker 4: And I'm dak Stevlin Ross, journalist, author, lawyer. I've written
Speaker 4: about criminal justice for years. I know what it's like
Speaker 4: to be wrongfully arrested personally, and I'm interested in the
Speaker 4: people who went to jail and maybe shouldn't have.
Speaker 2: We're gonna go deep. Is Louis a hero, cop, a scapegoat,
Speaker 2: or a super villain who helped put away more than
Speaker 2: twenty innocent men, men who now want revenge.
Speaker 4: I don't know, man, Maybe they want vindication.
Speaker 2: You know that's what Louis Scarcella feels he deserves too.
Speaker 4: I'll tell you what though, Well, you need to know
Speaker 4: the truth, both about Louis Scarcela and the band of
Speaker 4: convicted murders who took him on, and about the city.
Speaker 10: We live in stonecloud of comments commonstrate to you.
Speaker 2: Can't run for shelter.
Speaker 4: There's nothing you can't.
Speaker 2: Do from orbit me. This is the burden today on
Speaker 2: the show the Scoop, you gotta hold all time?
Speaker 4: All right, Steve, where do we begin?
Speaker 2: We begin with the person who broke the Louis Scarcella
Speaker 2: story long before you or I got involved. That's Francis Robless,
Speaker 2: known to her New York Times colleagues as Frenchie.
Speaker 7: The Porto Rican grow known as Frenchie.
Speaker 2: I do not speak for Frenchie's from Queens, from an
Speaker 2: Italian neighborhood called Howard Beach.
Speaker 9: Howard Beach was a astoundingly racist place.
Speaker 2: And growing up there, it taught Frenchie to be fierce.
Speaker 9: My best friend in elementary school was Perto Rican, and
Speaker 9: so this one kid was like, hey, pldorica Isy switch
Speaker 9: Lane and my girlfriend Jenevieve and I we went to
Speaker 9: his house.
Speaker 7: In sixth grade.
Speaker 9: We rang the doorbell and his mother answered the door
Speaker 9: and she was pregnant or belly outza wherever is Anthony home?
Speaker 9: And she's like ane. So he comes and he's you know,
Speaker 9: you can see he's kind of looking at us rather suspiciously,
Speaker 9: like one of the two Puerto Rican girls that I
Speaker 9: believe in school doing at my door. And we beat
Speaker 9: the crap out of him right there in front of
Speaker 9: his mother.
Speaker 2: This was the nineteen eighties and Frenchie was in high school,
Speaker 2: living in a dangerous neighborhood in a dangerous city. One night,
Speaker 2: her mother was a victim. Her mother was carjacked, a
Speaker 2: gun was put to her head right in front of
Speaker 2: their house, and then her mother was summoned to the
Speaker 2: police station to identify the carjacker in the lineup, the
Speaker 2: man who'd been arrested in the stolen vehicle.
Speaker 9: And the detective puts his right hand on his left
Speaker 9: arm and he makes like a figure of the number two,
Speaker 9: you know, holding up two fingers, and he looks at
Speaker 9: my mother, telling her.
Speaker 7: To choose number two.
Speaker 9: So my mother goes in there. She looks at the guys.
Speaker 9: She has no idea who it is. She doesn't remember.
Speaker 9: It was dark, you know, she had a gun in
Speaker 9: her face, So she picked number two. I remember thinking.
Speaker 7: Well, screw him. You know, he was driving a stolen car.
Speaker 9: He's at the very least was involved in car theft.
Speaker 4: Guilty enough for her.
Speaker 2: Yeah, back then, it didn't matter to Frenchie if this
Speaker 2: guy did this crime. But later French she became a reporter,
Speaker 2: first at the Miami Herald and then at the New
Speaker 2: York Times, and their views evolved.
Speaker 9: You know, maybe my mother helped send the innocent person
Speaker 9: to prison. He got seven years. Everybody was in on it.
Speaker 9: Everybody it was in on the game. The cops were
Speaker 9: in on it, the witnesses were in on it, and
Speaker 9: the prosecutor probably knew that my mother didn't know who
Speaker 9: he was and was like whatever she said, Number.
Speaker 7: Two, number two.
Speaker 4: Fast forward to twenty thirteen and Frenchy is at the
Speaker 4: New York Times. She's itching for a good story, a
Speaker 4: big story, something that will make a splash. One day,
Speaker 4: she's on a routine assignment when she meets someone interesting.
Speaker 9: Was a guy named Derek Hamilton, who was an ex
Speaker 9: Cohn who had been kind of like a jail house lawyer.
Speaker 11: You meet her and Hispanic woman, beautiful, long hair, you know,
Speaker 11: made up.
Speaker 4: And this is Derek remembering meeting Frenchie for the first time.
Speaker 4: He's a bigger guy, broadcast, about six foot two. He's
Speaker 4: got a single gold tooth in the front and a
Speaker 4: shaved head, big presence.
Speaker 11: I've been in Queens Boulevard, Course Street from the courthouse.
Speaker 11: There was some restaurant there and we had dinner at twelve.
Speaker 9: And so we're just chatting and he says, oh, you know,
Speaker 9: I see that you're kind of interested in this issue
Speaker 9: of you know, the Brooklyn Dida's office having screwed somebody over.
Speaker 9: I know a lot of cases in Brooklyn of wrongful convictions.
Speaker 7: Okay, really okay, good.
Speaker 9: You know, I was kind of in the New York
Speaker 9: office sharpening pencils, so that seemed like a good idea
Speaker 9: to me.
Speaker 7: And to follow up on that tip.
Speaker 2: So Frenchie brings it to her editor and I'm like, oh,
Speaker 2: I have a tip.
Speaker 9: You know, there's a lot of wrongfully convicted guys in Brooklyn,
Speaker 9: and I have a good source.
Speaker 7: He was a jail house lawyer.
Speaker 9: And so my editor says to me, well, what else
Speaker 9: do the cases have in common? Like what connects them?
Speaker 9: I was so offended by that question. I was like, well,
Speaker 9: I don't know, maybe they didn't do it like that
Speaker 9: connects them. You know, maybe they're all black, you know,
Speaker 9: and the railroaded.
Speaker 7: By the criminal justice system.
Speaker 9: Like I just thought it was such a hoity toity
Speaker 9: New York Times view of journalism that I couldn't just
Speaker 9: come up with the wrongful conviction. I had to come
Speaker 9: up with what connects them?
Speaker 7: So I nod politely, you know, yes, ma'am.
Speaker 9: And I'm like I go back to my desk, kind
Speaker 9: of grumbling under my breath, and I called Derek and
Speaker 9: I'm like, all right, well, this editor of mine wants
Speaker 9: to know what connects these cases, and he goes, well,
Speaker 9: a lot of them are the same cop and his
Speaker 9: name is Luis Garsov.
Speaker 4: This smoke behind the story that's after the break Welcome back.
Speaker 4: Derek Hamilton was out of prison but still connected to
Speaker 4: people on the inside. He's a self taught lawyer, learned
Speaker 4: the law behind bars, and he was still in the
Speaker 4: prison grape vine.
Speaker 7: So I meet with Derek again.
Speaker 9: And Derek, you know, he was interesting because he knew
Speaker 9: some things, but he did not know a lot of things.
Speaker 9: He told me kind of loosey goosey stuff like he said,
Speaker 9: oh that this guy was notorious for using the same
Speaker 9: witness over and over again, but he didn't know the
Speaker 9: names of the defendants who had had the same witness
Speaker 9: testify against them.
Speaker 7: And he did not know the name of the witness.
Speaker 9: So I was like, oh, brother, you know, here I
Speaker 9: am talking this up to my editor like I'm some
Speaker 9: hotshot who's going to crack this cane. And I got nothing,
Speaker 9: And I thought, oh my god, you know what am
Speaker 9: I going to do?
Speaker 2: Now?
Speaker 7: You know, I don't have anywhere to turn.
Speaker 2: So she went back to Derek. She needed the name
Speaker 2: of that very talented witness, and that's when Derek gives
Speaker 2: her a legal document. This was a document written by
Speaker 2: one of his friends still in jail, another jailhouse lawyer.
Speaker 2: It's called a four forty motion, and it's what you
Speaker 2: file if you're trying to get your conviction overturned.
Speaker 9: So he gives me Shabacca chaqurs for forty.
Speaker 6: I probably rewrote that one hundred times because I wanted
Speaker 6: to make sure that I was saying what I wanted
Speaker 6: to say.
Speaker 4: This is Shabacca Shakur. Scarcella helped convict Shabacca of a
Speaker 4: double murder, which he says he didn't do. His four
Speaker 4: forty was impressive, sixty pages of legal argument written while
Speaker 4: he was part of a prison law firm. That's right,
Speaker 4: a law firm formed in prison and run by convicted murderers,
Speaker 4: all of whom claimed innocence. More on that later. Schbacca
Speaker 4: and Derek got close in prison. Now Derek urges Shabaka
Speaker 4: to talk to Frenchy.
Speaker 2: So I called her.
Speaker 6: She was like, okay, you said, scar Seller is a
Speaker 6: crooked cop. I read your brief. I said, listen. I
Speaker 6: gave a list of names, a list of you know,
Speaker 6: people she could talk to. Information that would substantiate that
Speaker 6: he was a crooked cop. And I remember telling her,
Speaker 6: like you an investigative reporter, go and investigate.
Speaker 4: In that dense document, two pages focused on Louis Garcella.
Speaker 9: He says in this document, it says something something. Lewis
Speaker 9: Garcella was notorious in Brooklyn for his you know, unethical
Speaker 9: and you.
Speaker 7: Know, framing people basically.
Speaker 9: In fact, he was known to use the same witness
Speaker 9: over and over again, a woman named Teresa Gomes.
Speaker 7: And I'm like, you know, that's it.
Speaker 8: That's the name.
Speaker 7: That's what I've been waiting for.
Speaker 9: I'm already to find out the name of the of
Speaker 9: the of the witness.
Speaker 2: So Frenchie has the name. Now she does what a
Speaker 2: lot of us do when we're hunting for information. She googles.
Speaker 9: That's my big investigative reporting secret. So I google Lewis
Speaker 9: Garsella and Teresa Gomes together. You know, I don't know
Speaker 9: what I thought I was going to find. And I
Speaker 9: got a hit, and I'm like, well, this is curious.
Speaker 9: It was like some random Google forum, a cigar smoker
Speaker 9: forum where somebody has asked I think the question on
Speaker 9: the forum was when did you first smoke your first
Speaker 9: great cigar.
Speaker 4: Okay, so a cigar smoker's form not exactly where I'd
Speaker 4: expect to find a lead about a.
Speaker 2: Crooked exactly, but what she comes across there turns out
Speaker 2: to be crucial to her understanding of the entire story.
Speaker 9: This guy a man answers. The first cigar which truly
Speaker 9: made me realize how much I was going to enjoy cigars,
Speaker 9: was smoked in nineteen eighty eight at a bar on
Speaker 9: Remsen Street in Brooklyn, New York called Callahan's. The cigar
Speaker 9: was given to me by a legendary detective of the
Speaker 9: Brooklyn North Homicide Squad named Louis Scarcela. Lewis had been
Speaker 9: the detective on the first two murder cases I prosecuted,
Speaker 9: both of which featured the same witness testifying against the
Speaker 9: same defendant for two different murders. The defendant was a
Speaker 9: dealer named Robert Hill. The witness was named Teresa Gomez,
Speaker 9: a woman who was even then ravaged from head to
Speaker 9: toe by the scourge of crack cocaine. It was near
Speaker 9: falling to even think that anyone would believe Gomez about anything,
Speaker 9: let alone the fact that she witnessed the same guy
Speaker 9: kill two different people, and the guy signs it it's
Speaker 9: the district attorney, and he's now at charge.
Speaker 4: Here's what I'm wondering, what the fuck the assistant district attorney,
Speaker 4: he's not the district attorney, Just to be clear about that,
Speaker 4: is basically saying that no one should have believed his witness,
Speaker 4: the one he put on the stand, who happens to
Speaker 4: be the lone eye witnessed in two alleged murders by
Speaker 4: Robert Hill on two different occasions.
Speaker 9: My head mark is probably still on the roof of
Speaker 9: the New York Times office from my jumping up and
Speaker 9: down and realizing that I had hit badr.
Speaker 2: So Frenchie was excited by her discovery. I want to
Speaker 2: point out, though, that what the prosecutor is saying is
Speaker 2: that he'd be stunned if a jury believed Teresa Gomez.
Speaker 2: What he's not saying is that she's lying.
Speaker 4: So Frenchie now has the name of this troubled and
Speaker 4: doupling witness, and now she's also got the name of
Speaker 4: the person Teresa help convictive murder want Robert Hill, former
Speaker 4: drug dealer. So Steve, where does she go from here?
Speaker 2: She goes to prison unannounced to find Robert Hill. Frenchie
Speaker 2: is waiting in the visitors room for Robert Hill. He's
Speaker 2: serving eighteen years to life. He's not expecting her.
Speaker 9: So this guy comes in and he walks with a
Speaker 9: cane and he's kind of hunched over and he has.
Speaker 7: Very very long dreadlocks all down his back.
Speaker 9: And I see him looking around the room like, you
Speaker 9: know oo, So I don't see anybody here who's here
Speaker 9: to see me, And so I raised my hands and
Speaker 9: he looks at me like, you know, who.
Speaker 7: The heck is that, you know?
Speaker 9: But all right, fine, you know, he doesn't have anything
Speaker 9: better to do. So he sits down and I'll probably
Speaker 9: never forget this moment for the rest of my life.
Speaker 9: I said to him. You know, my name is Francis Rolez.
Speaker 9: I'm a reporter for the New York Times. I'm doing
Speaker 9: a story on Teresa Gomez. And he just froze and
Speaker 9: his eyes welled up with tears, and he said, I've
Speaker 9: been telling people about Teresa Gomez for twenty five years.
Speaker 9: And I said, well, now somebody's listening.
Speaker 2: But for Robert Hill, talking about Teresa Gomez is not
Speaker 2: an easy decision. He's about to come up for parole.
Speaker 2: And one of the things that's drilled into somebody applying
Speaker 2: for parole is you got to go in, take responsibility,
Speaker 2: show remorse, you got to ask forgiveness. Now that's going
Speaker 2: to be hard to do if you're also telling a
Speaker 2: New York Times reporter, hey, I didn't do it.
Speaker 9: And he said to me, is this going to mess
Speaker 9: up my parole? And I remember I said something that
Speaker 9: you know, ethically I should not have said, and I
Speaker 9: probably shouldn't even repeat that I said, but I said it.
Speaker 9: I said, this isn't going to mess up your parole.
Speaker 9: I said this is going to get you exonerated. And
Speaker 9: I said something so ridiculous because I believed it.
Speaker 2: That's our frenchie. She'll save your life at your peril.
Speaker 2: And Robert Hill, let's face it, he needs his life saved,
Speaker 2: so maybe it's worth the risk. Hill starts talking and
Speaker 2: he tells frenchie Teresa Gomez is a liar. Frenchie goes
Speaker 2: on her way, and soon she's working on a front
Speaker 2: page story for the Times, one that she hopes will
Speaker 2: make a splash.
Speaker 4: Standard journalism practice is to get a comment from everyone
Speaker 4: mentioned in a story, especially a high stake story. Like
Speaker 4: this one. She calls the District Attorney's office.
Speaker 9: It's like six o'clock that Thursday, and I call the
Speaker 9: spokesman and I said, I got a two thousand and
Speaker 9: five hundred word article about all these guys, you know,
Speaker 9: say that they were wrongly accused, and you know what
Speaker 9: it doesn't have It doesn't have a quote from the
Speaker 9: Brooklyn District Attorney's office. Because your quote was so pathetic.
Speaker 9: I said, so we're going to do a doue over
Speaker 9: and it's the one question, do over do you stand
Speaker 9: behind these convictions or not?
Speaker 4: That's it.
Speaker 7: We're not going to negotiate a response.
Speaker 9: We're not going to be like, oh if the record
Speaker 9: background upside down inside out, what's your answer? And so
Speaker 9: the spokesman said, oh, quite back, Okay, call me back,
Speaker 9: say call back, and he said, well, you have to
Speaker 9: come back.
Speaker 2: To the office tomorrow.
Speaker 9: I'm crying out loud. I go to the Brooklyn District
Speaker 9: Attorney's office, sit down, like, all right, what is it.
Speaker 9: We're reopening all of Scarcella's cases.
Speaker 4: And I'm like, oh my god.
Speaker 9: So I go back to the office and I find
Speaker 9: the editor, the same person that had originally asked me
Speaker 9: what connects these cases?
Speaker 7: And I said, you're not going to believe this.
Speaker 9: The DA is reopening all of his cases.
Speaker 7: They're going to go back thirty years.
Speaker 9: And her eyes welled up in tears.
Speaker 2: And she said, oh my god.
Speaker 7: She goes, these are lies.
Speaker 9: These are real lives that you're impacting.
Speaker 4: Frenchie story breaks on May eleventh, twenty thirteen, the headline
Speaker 4: review of fifty Brooklyn murder cases ordered. The story lays
Speaker 4: it all out how Teresa Gomez says she witnessed six
Speaker 4: separate murders. Who's see six murders? And Frenchie tells other
Speaker 4: stories like Shabacca's, how Scarcella told the court he had
Speaker 4: made an incriminating statement that Shabacca says he never made.
Speaker 2: A copy of Frenchi's story eventually arrives at the prison library.
Speaker 6: It got spread around, you know, word went like wildfire,
Speaker 6: and everybody had their own copy that they took back
Speaker 6: to their cell.
Speaker 2: By this point, Sabacca's been incarcerated for twenty two years.
Speaker 4: I had a couple of copies.
Speaker 6: I even mail copies out for people like yo, look,
Speaker 6: so we was excited about it. And I think that
Speaker 6: that was the first time that I knew, like I
Speaker 6: always thought I was going to get out, But I
Speaker 6: knew I was going to get out.
Speaker 4: Then Sabacca's friend Derek, the one who said all of
Speaker 4: this in motion. At first, he's pleased when he sees
Speaker 4: the article, but then he gets angry. This is personal,
Speaker 4: you see. Scarcela was the cop who arrested Derek for murder,
Speaker 4: a murder, he insists he didn't do.
Speaker 11: You gotta understand something, man, My kids grew up without
Speaker 11: a father.
Speaker 4: This basket was able to raise his.
Speaker 11: This god is a piece of shit, but he gets
Speaker 11: to run around.
Speaker 4: Like he's God.
Speaker 2: It's Derek and his jailhouse law firm that will lead
Speaker 2: the charge against Scarcella. With Derek and Louis, it will
Speaker 2: be a zero some game. If one rises, the other
Speaker 2: must fall. We gotta get at this out. Here's where
Speaker 2: I enter the story. It was a few years after
Speaker 2: Frenchy Scoop. I was a New York magazine journalist. Back then,
Speaker 2: I just moved to a new neighborhood in Brooklyn, and
Speaker 2: on a whim, I decided to open a cocktail bar.
Speaker 2: I did not have a grand vision. There was an
Speaker 2: empty space two hundred and twenty four square feet. How
Speaker 2: hard could it be? I called it IRVS after my dad,
Speaker 2: and I loved the place. The neighborhood loved it, The
Speaker 2: people on the block loved it. Some even worked there.
Speaker 2: But that little dead end on which IRVS resided. What
Speaker 2: a block? Old school? Hey, it was like the nineties
Speaker 2: in New York City that block. One day there was
Speaker 2: a guy chasing somebody with a machete. Another day a
Speaker 2: guy ran down the block shooting at someone, fortunately not
Speaker 2: a terrific shot. Intellectually, politically, I'm skeptical of the police.
Speaker 2: I marched in the marches. Their methods sometimes frightened me.
Speaker 2: But when violence erupted on my block, the block where
Speaker 2: my bar resided, I needed someone to call. Who else
Speaker 2: was I going to call but the police. It turned
Speaker 2: out that Louis Scarcela had spent a good part of
Speaker 2: his career patrolling my bar's dead end block. And there
Speaker 2: was a moment I found myself wondering if I needed
Speaker 2: a tough cop to come in and restore some order
Speaker 2: so I could run my little business. Later, Louis would
Speaker 2: come by and he'd offer an appraisal, an appraisal which
Speaker 2: proved prophetic.
Speaker 4: I remember that bar distinctly. It was where I entered
Speaker 4: the story, coming there one night, sitting down with you
Speaker 4: and having the first big conversation about this series.
Speaker 2: I remember that first night you came, and I remember
Speaker 2: you telling me about your experiences with cops.
Speaker 4: To be clear, there's been more than one, so we
Speaker 4: could be talking about the time I got pulled over
Speaker 4: twice within about twenty minutes because I had a Vanilla
Speaker 4: Roma air freshener in my rear view mirror.
Speaker 2: Yes, you did. But the one I remember, the one
Speaker 2: that made an impression on me, starts with a pull
Speaker 2: up on a scaffold.
Speaker 4: I'm entering my third year of law school, standing on
Speaker 4: a street corner in Adams Morgan and Washington, DC. You know,
Speaker 4: I got my satchel on because at the time I
Speaker 4: used to wear a satchel night right, you know, keep
Speaker 4: my pal my poems in my satchel. And I was
Speaker 4: first starting to grow on my drop my dreads. I'm
Speaker 4: with my buddy, who's a study who the study he
Speaker 4: was at Georgetown Low and he decides to jump up
Speaker 4: on a scaffold and do a pull up. Okay, and
Speaker 4: I think I jumped up into maybe did a pull
Speaker 4: up with me, and we got down. I turned around
Speaker 4: the nose a cop. Don't where the fuck that came from?
Speaker 4: Just next to us. Get down on the ground, Get
Speaker 4: down the ground, and I me. You know, having done
Speaker 4: two years of law school at this point, I got it.
Speaker 4: I just I took primp pro. I'm just more like,
Speaker 4: I haven't violated any laws that you're just gonna come
Speaker 4: in broad daylight and tell me to get down. I'm
Speaker 4: get down on my knees. I'm not doing that. I
Speaker 4: don't know what happened. Five more police cars show up,
Speaker 4: and at some point my friend and I get separated.
Speaker 4: Somehow I end up in an alley on my back,
Speaker 4: and these had three or four on me.
Speaker 2: Oh my god.
Speaker 4: My family has Sunday dinner. I don't show up. No
Speaker 4: one knows where I am.
Speaker 2: I remember hearing that story and thinking, man, this is
Speaker 2: crazy law school students doing a pull up and then
Speaker 2: ended up getting beaten by cops. That's just racism, flat out.
Speaker 4: And you'd be right except for one thing. Those cops
Speaker 4: who arrested and beat me they were black. Wow.
Speaker 2: I did not expect that.
Speaker 4: Yeah, most people don't, But for me, what I took
Speaker 4: away from that is that a cop is always a cop,
Speaker 4: always blue, and to cops, I'm a black man, and
Speaker 4: to be a black man, at least in some spaces
Speaker 4: in this country, is to be a suspect.
Speaker 2: Well, here's what I can say. We enter this journey
Speaker 2: through different doors, don't we.
Speaker 4: Yes, we do, and it's gonna be quite a ride.
Speaker 2: Buckle up. In this series, we're gonna look at it
Speaker 2: all from the inside. We'll get deep on Scarsella.
Speaker 5: We're here, we're here in the belly of the beast,
Speaker 5: but we're here doing what we got to do, and
Speaker 5: we did it.
Speaker 2: We did God's work and we did it.
Speaker 11: To me, he's no better than a syrial change, right,
Speaker 11: because you chilled people's dreams.
Speaker 8: This diabolical character that he's been depicted as is just
Speaker 8: pure nonsense.
Speaker 2: If he had a great reputation.
Speaker 4: We'll enter a crazy world of violence.
Speaker 8: This guy runs right down the middle of eight their
Speaker 8: view and he's.
Speaker 4: Got a gun.
Speaker 2: Sergeant to you know, shot him.
Speaker 8: He goes down and oh my god, so like the
Speaker 8: wild West.
Speaker 4: And we'll hear from the politicians trying to tame it.
Speaker 9: I ain't prepared to do anything to take back our
Speaker 9: streets by night as well as by day.
Speaker 2: We'll dive into the Brooklyn criminal justice system. She definitely
Speaker 2: testified Hyazac Kite one day.
Speaker 3: He's a judge and he puts his arms around me
Speaker 3: and he says, we both know who this guy is.
Speaker 4: We both know he's guilty, and we'll follow Derek Hamilton
Speaker 4: and his band of convicted murderers who created their own
Speaker 4: law from them behind bars to take on Scarsella and
Speaker 4: fight for their freedom. It's guy's like god when it
Speaker 4: comes to criminal law.
Speaker 11: Everybody knows how to make emotions, but how many times
Speaker 11: do you really know what your burden is?
Speaker 6: Look, man, this is our team right here.
Speaker 2: I team.
Speaker 6: We're gonna work for these cases and we're gonna.
Speaker 2: Get out and targeting the detective at the center of
Speaker 2: it all.
Speaker 11: I say, damn, it's the same fuck or that frame me.
Speaker 5: If I did one nanogram one nanogram of what they
Speaker 5: said I did, and you know what I mean by
Speaker 5: one nanogram and infinitesimal, If I did one of the
Speaker 5: things that they said I did, I would have killed myself.
Speaker 4: I love myself.
Speaker 2: I'm not gonna kill myself. What do you love about yourself?
Speaker 2: I'm gonna tell you.
Speaker 5: I think.
Speaker 2: I'm a very good person.
Speaker 4: Yeah, we'll see about that.
Speaker 2: Next time. On The Burden, I try to get Louis
Speaker 2: go sell it, to give it all up. He used
Speaker 2: to be a talker. Dan with the bad headlines, he
Speaker 2: mostly shut up. Frenchie couldn't get him to talk. But
Speaker 2: I'm on a mission. Turns out that mission starts with
Speaker 2: a plunge into the freezing Atlantic.
Speaker 4: Make sure your baby's gonna come off today?
Speaker 2: Well I did it last time?
Speaker 4: Yeah, it did? Did That's next time. On The Burden, commonstrating.
Speaker 2: You can't run for shelter.
Speaker 4: There's nothing you can't do. The Burden is created by
Speaker 4: Steve Fishman. It's hosted and reported by Steve Fishman and myself,
Speaker 4: Dax Devlin Ross. Our story editor is Dan Bobkoff. Our
Speaker 4: senior producer is Simon Rittner. Our producer is Sonum Skelly.
Speaker 4: Our associate producer is Austin Smith. Our fact checker is
Speaker 4: Sona Abakan production coordinator is Davon Paradise. Mixing and sound
Speaker 4: design is provided by Mumble Media. Our executive producers are
Speaker 4: Fisher Stevens, Steve Fishman, and Evan Williams. Additional production help
Speaker 4: has been provided by Josie Holtzman, Isaac Kestenbaum, Naomi Brauner,
Speaker 4: Lucy Souchek, Drew Nellis, Micah Hazel, Priscilla A. Labi, Saxon Baird,
Speaker 4: Katie Simon and Katie Springer. We want to give us
Speaker 4: special thanks to Ellen Horn, Zach Stuart Pontier, Lizzie Jacobs,
Speaker 4: Nathan Tempe to Buy a Black, Rachel Morrissey, Mark Smirling
Speaker 4: and Lilah Robinson. Special thanks to Marcy Wiseman. We want
Speaker 4: to thank our agents, Ben Davis and Marissa Horowitz. Special
Speaker 4: thanks to my wife Alana.
Speaker 2: Special thanks to Rhea Julian my wife.
Speaker 4: Legal support has been provided by Mona Hoop at MKSR
Speaker 4: ll P, and a very special thanks to Evan Williams,
Speaker 4: one of our executive producers and the person who made
Speaker 4: this podcast possible. We are honored to feature the song
Speaker 4: Black Lightning The Bell Rings is our theme music. The
Speaker 4: Burden is a production of Orbit Media and association with
Speaker 4: Signal Company Number one