WEBVTT - Elliot Williams: Five Bullets 0:00:00.600 --> 0:00:05.240 This story contains adult content and language. Listener discretion is advised. 0:00:13.720 --> 0:00:16.880 He saw a shine in his eyes and a smile 0:00:16.960 --> 0:00:19.439 on his face and felt that he was being played with, 0:00:19.640 --> 0:00:21.720 and because he's being played with like a cat and 0:00:21.800 --> 0:00:24.079 mouse or whatever else, he needed to take action. 0:00:31.280 --> 0:00:35.120 I'm Kate Winkler Dawson, a nonfiction author and journalism professor 0:00:35.200 --> 0:00:37.920 in Austin, Texas. I'm also the co host of the 0:00:37.960 --> 0:00:41.800 podcast Buried Bones on Exactly Right, and throughout my career, 0:00:42.040 --> 0:00:45.800 research for my many audio and book projects has taken 0:00:45.840 --> 0:00:49.080 me around the world. On Wicked Words, I sit down 0:00:49.120 --> 0:00:53.880 with the people I've met along the way, amazing writers, journalists, filmmakers, 0:00:53.880 --> 0:00:58.320 and podcasters who have investigated and reported on notorious true 0:00:58.320 --> 0:01:02.080 crime cases. This is about the choices writers make, both 0:01:02.160 --> 0:01:05.080 good and bad, and it's a deep dive into the 0:01:05.200 --> 0:01:10.640 unpublished details behind their stories. We're talking about a very 0:01:10.640 --> 0:01:13.880 famous case this week. In nineteen eighty four, Bernie Gets 0:01:14.120 --> 0:01:17.520 shot four black teenagers on a subway in Manhattan. He 0:01:17.680 --> 0:01:19.920 was hailed as a hero in the press, a man 0:01:19.959 --> 0:01:22.960 who stopped would be robbers. But as the public learned 0:01:23.000 --> 0:01:26.800 more about the evidence and about Gets himself, the stories 0:01:26.840 --> 0:01:30.640 seem to shift. Elliott Williams is a CNN legal analyst 0:01:30.760 --> 0:01:33.399 and former federal prosecutor, and he wrote a book about 0:01:33.400 --> 0:01:36.720 the case called Five Bullets. The story of Bernie Gets 0:01:36.920 --> 0:01:41.080 New York's explosive eighties and the subway vigilante trial that 0:01:41.120 --> 0:01:46.959 divided the nation. Give me context for where we are, 0:01:47.400 --> 0:01:50.560 what time period, and what is New York City like 0:01:51.000 --> 0:01:51.960 in this time period. 0:01:52.400 --> 0:01:57.200 No one can really comprehend today what nineteen eighties and 0:01:57.280 --> 0:02:01.040 nineteen seventies New York really looked like. When we think 0:02:01.160 --> 0:02:07.080 about Labradoodal New York, when we think about Lululemon and 0:02:07.280 --> 0:02:11.640 Whole Foods New York, and Skyscraper New York and Tech 0:02:11.639 --> 0:02:14.280 Company New York, it's very different than the nineteen eighties. 0:02:14.440 --> 0:02:20.280 And the world of this book is a gritty, grimy 0:02:20.320 --> 0:02:23.000 place that's just not the New York of our imagination. 0:02:23.120 --> 0:02:25.080 Think about some of the films that came out of 0:02:25.080 --> 0:02:28.440 the nineteen seventies about New York City, Death Wish, which 0:02:28.480 --> 0:02:30.959 comes up a lot in my book Saturday Night Fever. 0:02:31.560 --> 0:02:35.200 The Warriors Escape from New York are all about somewhat 0:02:35.240 --> 0:02:39.880 of a healthscape where it's rough, it's dirty, it's overcome 0:02:39.919 --> 0:02:45.480 with litter, the city faces rampant corruption scandals. The city 0:02:45.560 --> 0:02:49.080 is broken, mismanaged and seeking bailouts from the federal government. 0:02:49.080 --> 0:02:53.919 It's firing teachers and sanitation workers. In nineteen seventy seven, 0:02:53.960 --> 0:02:57.680 there's a blackout, which happens in every municipality in America, 0:02:57.720 --> 0:03:00.120 and I start the book Five Bullets with this. But 0:03:00.160 --> 0:03:03.040 the blackout, unlike say the blackout in two thousand and 0:03:03.040 --> 0:03:05.679 three that many listeners might be familiar with, where people 0:03:05.720 --> 0:03:08.400 are outside doing the waltz on the street and rolling 0:03:08.440 --> 0:03:12.000 out there their barbecues and having cookouts and cooking jerk 0:03:12.080 --> 0:03:18.520 chicken and sipping mimosas it becomes the most vicious single 0:03:18.880 --> 0:03:22.959 evening in New York City history. Literally, The New York Post, 0:03:23.040 --> 0:03:25.280 I believe, our time magazine Pardon calls it twenty four 0:03:25.320 --> 0:03:31.280 hours of terror, where arson, looting, homicide, assaults just take 0:03:31.320 --> 0:03:34.320 the city over. And that's indicative of how rough New 0:03:34.400 --> 0:03:37.760 York City was at the time. Homicide rate was I believe, 0:03:37.760 --> 0:03:41.480 seventeen hundred a year, which is about four or five 0:03:41.640 --> 0:03:44.360 times greater than it is now. So it's just a 0:03:44.400 --> 0:03:47.320 different place and like nothing we've seen today. 0:03:47.520 --> 0:03:50.400 I was in New York in two thousand and four. 0:03:50.440 --> 0:03:51.960 I lived in New York off and on for about 0:03:51.960 --> 0:03:55.240 ten years. In two thousand and four, I think, and 0:03:55.520 --> 0:03:57.520 we had a blackout, and I was scared to death 0:03:57.560 --> 0:03:59.880 because I had read all about the seventy seven blackout, 0:04:00.400 --> 0:04:02.440 and yeah, it was pretty much the way you described. 0:04:02.440 --> 0:04:04.720 I was in the East Village in Tompkins Square Park. 0:04:04.760 --> 0:04:08.120 They were doing bongo drums. And what was nice about 0:04:08.360 --> 0:04:10.200 the time period where I lived in New York was 0:04:10.240 --> 0:04:14.119 when that happened. You have bodega's and they're passing out 0:04:14.440 --> 0:04:16.760 free water because of course they have no electricity. And 0:04:16.800 --> 0:04:18.560 I mean, you know, people were really pulling together. And 0:04:18.600 --> 0:04:21.920 of course this is post nine to eleven. So in 0:04:22.080 --> 0:04:24.880 eighty four when your story is taking place, who is 0:04:24.920 --> 0:04:28.719 in charge? I am mixed up between Dinkins or who's 0:04:28.760 --> 0:04:29.760 the mayor at this time? 0:04:29.920 --> 0:04:32.120 This is Coach, this is Kach, and this is Ed 0:04:32.200 --> 0:04:35.320 Koch at his height, and he gets re elected in 0:04:35.400 --> 0:04:39.080 nineteen eighty five. Really at his peak, he was New 0:04:39.160 --> 0:04:42.320 York City had had a string of Look, everybody's a 0:04:42.320 --> 0:04:46.000 Democrat for the most part, or a Republican who today 0:04:46.040 --> 0:04:48.160 would be a Democrat. In John V. Lindsay, who was 0:04:48.200 --> 0:04:50.880 mayor two mayors before, but the mayor I spoke about 0:04:50.920 --> 0:04:53.920 the rampant corruption and problematic that was Abraham Beam, who 0:04:53.960 --> 0:04:57.000 was the mayor before. Kach Koch gets elected really on 0:04:57.040 --> 0:05:00.240 a law and order and sort of toughness platform, on 0:05:00.760 --> 0:05:04.200 a centrist We are not safe. Public safety is a 0:05:04.200 --> 0:05:08.320 big concern in the city. I represent you Brooklyn, part 0:05:08.320 --> 0:05:11.080 of me, Brooklyn, parts of Brooklyn, but definitely Queens and 0:05:11.360 --> 0:05:13.919 Staten Island and the sort of outer Borrows and the 0:05:13.960 --> 0:05:17.440 working class ethnic whites. And really we're big fans of him. 0:05:17.480 --> 0:05:21.159 Cotchin eighty five, So just after, really just after the 0:05:21.200 --> 0:05:24.440 incident in my book, Cotchin eighty five gets elected and 0:05:24.440 --> 0:05:25.920 I think the first mayor ever to get elected on 0:05:25.960 --> 0:05:29.200 both the Democratic and Republican Party platforms and like seventy 0:05:29.200 --> 0:05:31.640 five percent of the vote. So he's at his height, 0:05:32.160 --> 0:05:34.720 and he's sort of the guy who, for better or 0:05:34.760 --> 0:05:37.960 for worse, is credited in many ways for kind of 0:05:38.000 --> 0:05:41.520 turning around or at least starting the turnaround of New 0:05:41.600 --> 0:05:43.600 York City from the grit and the grime to the 0:05:43.640 --> 0:05:46.560 you know, like I said, labradoodal New York. Now, if 0:05:46.560 --> 0:05:49.960 anybody's read the book Gods of New York by Jonathan Maller, 0:05:50.000 --> 0:05:52.880 which came out in twenty twenty five in the summer. 0:05:53.040 --> 0:05:55.520 It sort of picks up where my book leaves off. 0:05:55.560 --> 0:05:57.520 Where my book is about the grit and grime of 0:05:57.520 --> 0:06:00.360 the late seventies into the early nineteen eighties, and one 0:06:00.440 --> 0:06:03.599 emblematic incident that came from that. His about the rebirth 0:06:03.600 --> 0:06:05.800 of New York from eighty six to nineteen ninety, and 0:06:05.839 --> 0:06:09.039 you sort of some of the characters transfer from one 0:06:09.440 --> 0:06:11.760 to another and sort of an interesting arc of a 0:06:11.800 --> 0:06:14.719 city in crisis, which is really what my book was about. 0:06:15.279 --> 0:06:18.200 Now, let's talk about the racial tensions, which I know 0:06:18.640 --> 0:06:21.240 you know really play such a large part in your book. 0:06:21.960 --> 0:06:24.680 Describe what this is like, Is this sort of segregation 0:06:25.240 --> 0:06:29.000 situation in the city where you don't have people living 0:06:29.040 --> 0:06:32.200 together as they might now or what really was it like? 0:06:32.600 --> 0:06:35.440 It was rough? And something I refer to in the 0:06:35.440 --> 0:06:39.640 book Five Bullets is this idea of there's a racial incident, 0:06:39.800 --> 0:06:43.359 there's a protest and unrest. Al Sharpton shows up, the 0:06:43.400 --> 0:06:46.840 mayor issues a statement calling for calm. It blows over 0:06:47.160 --> 0:06:50.680 and then simmers underneath the surface until the next one 0:06:50.680 --> 0:06:53.640 happens about a year later, and New York city through 0:06:53.960 --> 0:06:57.200 starting in the late seventies deep into the frankly into 0:06:57.200 --> 0:07:00.840 the nineteen nineties. I clocked it ATCHI probably about every 0:07:00.920 --> 0:07:03.599 year year and a half there was some major above 0:07:03.720 --> 0:07:07.799 the fold incident that galvanized and just sort of got 0:07:07.880 --> 0:07:11.480 in the city's consciousness. Now, obviously there's Bernard Getzen. I 0:07:11.560 --> 0:07:13.320 assume we're going to talk about that a little bit today, 0:07:13.720 --> 0:07:16.440 the corusue in the book Five Bullets. But then in 0:07:16.520 --> 0:07:19.640 nineteen eighty three, I believe Eleanor Bumpers is shot by 0:07:19.680 --> 0:07:24.040 police officers in her home during an eviction with a 0:07:24.080 --> 0:07:26.640 shotg They shoot her with a shotgun. She's being evicted, 0:07:26.640 --> 0:07:30.160 but she's also a grandmother who's mentally ill and naked 0:07:30.360 --> 0:07:32.960 as they kill her, and that causes a big polarization 0:07:33.000 --> 0:07:36.120 in the city. There's Howard Beach and benson Hurst and 0:07:36.160 --> 0:07:38.920 Crown Heights, and I throw them all out together because 0:07:39.160 --> 0:07:41.800 even having grown up there, they all blur together. For me. 0:07:42.400 --> 0:07:45.560 One of them is the guy who's looking for a 0:07:45.680 --> 0:07:49.320 pontiac in a neighborhood in Brooklyn, in a white neighborhood 0:07:49.320 --> 0:07:53.080 in Brooklyn, These white guys with baseball bats and guns 0:07:53.160 --> 0:07:55.040 or screaming ethnic slurs at him, telling him to get 0:07:55.040 --> 0:07:57.120 out because they thought he was there to meet white girls. 0:07:57.320 --> 0:08:00.000 So they chase him, run him down. He ends up 0:08:00.040 --> 0:08:02.880 getting hit by a cars he's crossing a highway. Another one, 0:08:03.240 --> 0:08:07.400 same thing, crossing into the wrong side of town, chased 0:08:07.400 --> 0:08:10.760 down and beaten to death by baseball bat wheeling white guys. 0:08:10.400 --> 0:08:13.440 That Benson Hurston, Howard Beach. I just can't remember which 0:08:13.440 --> 0:08:20.240 one was which Crown Heights was Lebovich. Jewish caravan runs 0:08:20.280 --> 0:08:23.920 over a couple kids, two of them, one gets injured, 0:08:23.920 --> 0:08:26.640 one dies, a boy named Gavin Cato, and that causes 0:08:26.680 --> 0:08:30.200 a lot of black and Orthodox Jewish tension. And ultimately 0:08:30.240 --> 0:08:32.320 that was a big one at the center. You saw 0:08:32.360 --> 0:08:34.440 Al Sharpton at the center of it. I talk about 0:08:34.440 --> 0:08:37.120 it quite a bit in the book. That got really 0:08:37.240 --> 0:08:39.240 ugly because there was a lot of rioting and looting 0:08:39.320 --> 0:08:42.719 of Jewish businesses in Crown Heights, Brooklyn. Then you move 0:08:42.840 --> 0:08:45.640 later into the nineteen eighties, you get the Central Park five, 0:08:45.679 --> 0:08:49.319 which everybody knows about, which these five young men accused 0:08:49.320 --> 0:08:53.840 of a horrific sexual assault ends up to be inaccurate. 0:08:53.920 --> 0:08:56.839 Donald Trump, then just a real estate developer takes out 0:08:56.880 --> 0:08:59.720 an ad in the New York Times calling for their 0:08:59.760 --> 0:09:04.640 ex acution. There was Amadu Diallo, an immigrant, standing on 0:09:04.679 --> 0:09:06.920 his porch holding a wallet that police shot him forty 0:09:06.920 --> 0:09:09.800 one times. So anyway, all of this happens, and it's 0:09:09.960 --> 0:09:13.280 literally every year from probably seventy seven, seventy eight to 0:09:13.960 --> 0:09:16.679 up into the nineties, and they just kept happening, and 0:09:16.840 --> 0:09:19.920 it was just simmering under the surface in a way 0:09:20.000 --> 0:09:23.040 that we all internalize, I think as people from the area. 0:09:26.360 --> 0:09:29.520 What was the safety like on the subway system in 0:09:29.559 --> 0:09:31.679 the eighties, because you know, I lived in New York 0:09:31.720 --> 0:09:35.440 starting I would say ninety seven until probably about you know, 0:09:35.480 --> 0:09:39.080 two thousand and four, two thousand and five, and I 0:09:39.120 --> 0:09:41.000 felt safe on the subways. Now, I was also not 0:09:41.040 --> 0:09:43.920 somebody riding the subways at midnight. Yeah, and you know 0:09:43.960 --> 0:09:46.920 I was living in Lower Manhattan. So what was it 0:09:47.000 --> 0:09:50.440 like in the eighties? I suspect a little scary depending 0:09:50.480 --> 0:09:51.400 on where you were. 0:09:51.400 --> 0:09:53.560 Oh yeah, and no doubt. And I was in the 0:09:53.559 --> 0:09:55.800 city because I was in law school at that time 0:09:55.800 --> 0:09:59.080 in the city from ninety eight to two really, and 0:09:59.120 --> 0:10:01.400 so at the same time, the subway was not bad 0:10:01.600 --> 0:10:03.520 at that point. It was not. And by then the 0:10:03.559 --> 0:10:06.040 cars had started getting modernized and so on, so it 0:10:06.080 --> 0:10:08.720 was just a different experience. The subway was rough, and 0:10:08.800 --> 0:10:11.200 something I talk about a fair amount in the book 0:10:11.800 --> 0:10:14.800 is the amount of crime that took place in the 0:10:14.840 --> 0:10:18.760 subway also was at an all time high, where you're 0:10:18.800 --> 0:10:24.120 talking about hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of assaults, snatches 0:10:24.160 --> 0:10:27.240 and grabs, whatever the grammatical plural would be. But the 0:10:27.280 --> 0:10:33.080 assaults not many homicides or serious serious assaults, but bad ones, 0:10:33.200 --> 0:10:38.440 really horrible things that made daily life exceptionally difficult for people. 0:10:38.559 --> 0:10:40.960 Now another one, and I'm not going to come out 0:10:40.960 --> 0:10:45.240 here embracing the broken windows theory of policing, which is 0:10:45.280 --> 0:10:50.439 that brit and grime and roughness make people commit worse crimes. Right, 0:10:50.720 --> 0:10:53.080 That was the whole thing with Giuliani in the nineteen nineties. 0:10:53.080 --> 0:10:55.360 But New York City's subways were dirty. They were a 0:10:55.440 --> 0:10:59.679 place that people through their trash, people went to the bathroom, 0:11:00.080 --> 0:11:02.120 they were all and I talk about this in the book. 0:11:02.280 --> 0:11:06.960 Every subway car in nineteen whatever year, every single one, 0:11:07.080 --> 0:11:09.440 every single inch of every single one was covered in graffiti. 0:11:09.960 --> 0:11:14.720 And it became a contest among graffiti artists who have 0:11:14.920 --> 0:11:19.000 tagged at least one subway car in every one of 0:11:19.040 --> 0:11:21.400 the five boroughs, and they were called kings. You became 0:11:21.440 --> 0:11:24.720 a king if you tagged up graffiti in every one 0:11:24.760 --> 0:11:27.000 of the burrows of the city. Now again you look 0:11:27.000 --> 0:11:29.520 at them now and their relics. In many ways, they're 0:11:29.520 --> 0:11:32.319 almost beautiful and there if you were to wash one 0:11:32.400 --> 0:11:35.800 down and just see the graffiti covering them, it's a 0:11:35.840 --> 0:11:40.800 fascinating artistic group of compositions. That said, it is all 0:11:40.840 --> 0:11:45.160 indicative of how rough the subway was. Signs didn't work, 0:11:45.320 --> 0:11:49.640 maps didn't work, windows were broken. Trains were constantly breaking 0:11:49.720 --> 0:11:53.280 down and on fire and derailing at a rate far 0:11:53.360 --> 0:11:57.280 more than any subway system we could think of today. Now, 0:11:57.320 --> 0:12:00.000 obviously you hear about sometimes fires or derail the unhappy. 0:12:00.320 --> 0:12:04.520 It's a cost of machinery in our world. But it 0:12:04.559 --> 0:12:07.880 was really bad, and people relied on the subway. They 0:12:07.920 --> 0:12:10.040 needed it. It is the best way to get around 0:12:10.040 --> 0:12:12.439 New York City. But it was rough. 0:12:12.640 --> 0:12:15.280 What about the transit police? Were they understaffed? I can't 0:12:15.280 --> 0:12:17.120 imagine they weren't. Aren't they always? 0:12:17.280 --> 0:12:22.360 Oh, horribly horribly understaffed, horribly understaffed and also not fully 0:12:22.600 --> 0:12:24.319 And I say this having worked in law enforcement for 0:12:24.440 --> 0:12:27.319 quite some time before being a journalist. They were never 0:12:27.679 --> 0:12:31.360 fully syncd up with the NYPD, and so their radios 0:12:31.360 --> 0:12:34.240 were on different frequencies, for instance. And so you would 0:12:34.280 --> 0:12:37.840 have a major incident underground and both NYPD and New 0:12:37.920 --> 0:12:40.440 York Transit cops were working on it, but they couldn't 0:12:40.440 --> 0:12:42.760 talk to each other over their walkie talkie. So that's 0:12:43.240 --> 0:12:47.360 just the incompetence of eighties New York that set some 0:12:47.400 --> 0:12:48.439 of the scene here. 0:12:48.640 --> 0:12:51.200 Let's go ahead and get into the crux of the book. 0:12:51.240 --> 0:12:53.400 Is the incident that happened that sparked all of this. 0:12:53.760 --> 0:12:56.360 Tell me about the day that it happened. And let's 0:12:56.360 --> 0:12:58.960 start with the victims, who were the four teenage the 0:12:58.960 --> 0:13:01.679 four black teenage who were on the subway when they 0:13:01.800 --> 0:13:03.720 encounter burning gets that day. 0:13:04.640 --> 0:13:07.679 Okay, so there's four eighteen and nineteen year old young men. 0:13:07.720 --> 0:13:11.400 They live in a housing project called Claremont Village. It's 0:13:11.559 --> 0:13:15.600 regarded as a heralded facility, if you want to call 0:13:15.600 --> 0:13:18.360 it that, but a heralded concept in public housing where 0:13:18.679 --> 0:13:24.720 they combined all of these edifices under one major, massive, 0:13:24.800 --> 0:13:28.760 sprawling complex. It's really now the size literally of a 0:13:28.800 --> 0:13:33.360 small college campus. It's I think it was thirty thousand residents, 0:13:33.720 --> 0:13:36.680 although up to seventy thousand lived in it because people had, 0:13:36.720 --> 0:13:39.800 you know, would multi generational families and friends living together 0:13:39.840 --> 0:13:42.800 and so on. So it was this crowded, big housing project. 0:13:42.800 --> 0:13:44.120 And to be clear, you know, we were talking about 0:13:44.120 --> 0:13:47.400 safety a bit. The projects in the early nineteen eighties 0:13:47.440 --> 0:13:50.240 were quite safe for people who lived there. It wasn't 0:13:50.360 --> 0:13:54.040 until the introduction of crack cocaine in nineteen eighty five 0:13:54.080 --> 0:13:56.240 to New York City that really made that the projects 0:13:56.240 --> 0:13:59.600 what we think of today as this place of crime 0:13:59.679 --> 0:14:01.920 and grit and so on. It pushed a lot of 0:14:01.920 --> 0:14:05.000 the crime into the housing projects. So these four guys 0:14:05.240 --> 0:14:09.480 live relatively, I don't want to say, not cloistered, but 0:14:09.679 --> 0:14:14.120 they had family lives Daryl Caby, Barry Allen, Troy Knty, 0:14:14.200 --> 0:14:18.520 and James Ramsur. Darryl Caby is the most interesting story, 0:14:18.600 --> 0:14:20.720 or the most sort of heart wrenching story of all 0:14:20.760 --> 0:14:23.480 the people. He grew up with his mother, Shirley. He 0:14:23.560 --> 0:14:26.520 lived with her and a bunch of siblings in the house. Well, 0:14:26.720 --> 0:14:29.960 his dad wasn't around because his dad was a taxi 0:14:30.040 --> 0:14:33.520 driver who'd gotten run over by his own cab because 0:14:33.520 --> 0:14:36.720 he was fighting off a carjacker, which might be the 0:14:36.760 --> 0:14:41.560 most single nineteen eighties Claremont Village, Bronx, New York story 0:14:41.600 --> 0:14:45.960 of all the others. They'd known each other, they'd engaged 0:14:46.040 --> 0:14:50.040 in some crimes together, but really they were young men 0:14:50.240 --> 0:14:53.200 in and around the projects, so they'd interacted together and 0:14:53.200 --> 0:14:57.040 committed some crimes together. The big one that they where 0:14:57.040 --> 0:15:01.120 they knew each other from was a common crime from 0:15:01.240 --> 0:15:04.080 young men of that time, and it was breaking open 0:15:04.200 --> 0:15:09.240 video game machines downtown. So fun bit of history. Right 0:15:09.320 --> 0:15:13.560 around nineteen eighty or so, the video game Space Invaders 0:15:14.200 --> 0:15:17.640 is invented, is it comes out and creates a boom 0:15:18.160 --> 0:15:22.440 in video arcades across the United States. Well, because there 0:15:22.480 --> 0:15:25.320 was all this this new concept of video game machines 0:15:25.480 --> 0:15:28.360 became really widespread in businesses like bars and bodegas that 0:15:28.400 --> 0:15:30.880 took a lot of cash. Well, the problem is that 0:15:31.080 --> 0:15:32.640 a video game machine, if you ever looked at one, 0:15:32.720 --> 0:15:34.680 was a giant piggy bank. It can hold hundreds, if 0:15:34.720 --> 0:15:36.360 not thousands, of dollars at a time. Well, the guys were 0:15:36.360 --> 0:15:39.320 going downtown to break open video game machines. It was 0:15:39.360 --> 0:15:42.400 a common crime. It just is what everybody did. You 0:15:42.480 --> 0:15:44.560 just get a screwdriver. Pop it open. One guy pretends 0:15:44.600 --> 0:15:47.680 to play the game while other guys pop it open. 0:15:47.800 --> 0:15:49.480 You just grab the quarters and run away. Well, they 0:15:49.480 --> 0:15:51.960 were on the subway. They had a couple screwdrivers on them. 0:15:52.000 --> 0:15:55.680 Pay attention there. And we're on the subway heading downtown 0:15:55.800 --> 0:15:59.480 to Pace University in Lower Manhattan to break video game machines. 0:15:59.520 --> 0:16:03.840 And they get on this train around midday. They're goofing around. 0:16:04.000 --> 0:16:06.840 They're causing noise, they're doing pull ups on the bars, 0:16:06.840 --> 0:16:10.520 they're shadow boxing, and they're also going around to different 0:16:10.520 --> 0:16:12.920 people on the train asking for cigarettes and matches and 0:16:12.960 --> 0:16:17.160 causing certainly a disturbance. Now some of the people think, eh, 0:16:17.240 --> 0:16:19.320 I don't I'm not crazy about how these guys are behaving. 0:16:19.960 --> 0:16:22.320 But and maybe even some even got up to move. 0:16:22.800 --> 0:16:26.040 But no one was directly threatened by them or injured 0:16:26.080 --> 0:16:26.400 by them. 0:16:26.760 --> 0:16:29.840 So these guys are sort of troublemakers. No violence in 0:16:29.880 --> 0:16:31.200 their history that you know of. 0:16:31.360 --> 0:16:33.960 Oh, it's definitely violence in their history. No violence on 0:16:34.000 --> 0:16:36.000 this train, like they certainly two of them, and I 0:16:36.080 --> 0:16:38.440 want to say Ramser and one other I want to 0:16:38.480 --> 0:16:41.720 say Canty or KB had gotten They knew each other 0:16:41.760 --> 0:16:44.400 through a fist fight, through their buddies, like one of 0:16:44.440 --> 0:16:46.880 them had gotten like I think, and forgive me it's 0:16:46.920 --> 0:16:50.600 I think it was Kanty's brother fights Ramser's friend fights Ramster, 0:16:50.600 --> 0:16:52.480 and they knew each other, so they're not tight. But 0:16:52.560 --> 0:16:55.040 they all had and let's be clear, they had copious 0:16:55.440 --> 0:17:00.600 criminal histories. Rams gets really bad in the future, however, 0:17:00.960 --> 0:17:03.520 it's a lot of the thefts and the robberies, and 0:17:03.560 --> 0:17:08.040 stealing from Macy's and stealing from kids, stealing from charities, 0:17:08.119 --> 0:17:10.239 a lot of stealing. It's a lot of stealing. And 0:17:10.640 --> 0:17:14.880 all four had at some point in varying degrees, had 0:17:14.960 --> 0:17:20.000 issues with cocaine. Crack, as I've mentioned, doesn't really hit 0:17:20.040 --> 0:17:22.399 the projects in New York until nineteen eighty five, but 0:17:22.760 --> 0:17:25.240 one of them had starts smoking marijuana at age thirteen 0:17:25.359 --> 0:17:28.280 and then tries cocaine certainly through his teen years. So 0:17:28.280 --> 0:17:33.080 they all are reflective as much of society's failures as 0:17:33.160 --> 0:17:37.159 their own and their tragic stories, no matter how you 0:17:37.160 --> 0:17:39.480 look at it. But to be clear, they all had 0:17:39.520 --> 0:17:42.280 criminal records, and a couple of them were pending on 0:17:42.400 --> 0:17:44.359 warrants at the time they were on the train. 0:17:47.800 --> 0:17:50.480 So on this train, what burrow are we in? And 0:17:50.520 --> 0:17:53.399 how many people are we talking about in this one carriage. 0:17:53.440 --> 0:17:55.280 They start in the Bronx and it's a train that 0:17:55.359 --> 0:17:58.120 starts up if folks know the geography of New York City, 0:17:58.119 --> 0:18:01.320 it starts in the Bronx, head south through Manhattan, then 0:18:01.440 --> 0:18:04.000 makes the left turn into Brooklyn and goes deep into 0:18:04.000 --> 0:18:07.320 Brooklyn on the train car. By the time the incident 0:18:07.400 --> 0:18:11.920 goes down, there's about two dozen a dozen to two 0:18:11.960 --> 0:18:14.639 dozen people fifteen twenty and no one ever had a 0:18:14.680 --> 0:18:17.520 clear count. But it's not an empty car, but it's 0:18:17.560 --> 0:18:18.840 not a packed one, okay. 0:18:19.080 --> 0:18:21.720 And you know this is people standing and sitting and 0:18:21.760 --> 0:18:24.080 all of that. And these guys, these four guys are 0:18:24.119 --> 0:18:27.199 just sort of as a group, just not harassing necessarily, 0:18:27.240 --> 0:18:29.880 but just causing an uproar. And I'm certainly making people 0:18:29.880 --> 0:18:31.440 feel uncomfortable. 0:18:31.040 --> 0:18:33.640 Certainly making people feel uncomfortable. And that is the important 0:18:33.880 --> 0:18:36.640 takeaway before we get to burn ourd gets who gets 0:18:36.640 --> 0:18:38.720 on the train a little bit later in the West 0:18:38.800 --> 0:18:43.119 Village in southern Manhattan, people were uncomfortable. Now a few 0:18:43.200 --> 0:18:45.359 of the band and I spoke to one of the 0:18:45.400 --> 0:18:48.440 passengers still alive, and he said, look, I've ridden the 0:18:48.480 --> 0:18:51.520 subway a lot before, I've seen these kinds of guys around. 0:18:52.240 --> 0:18:54.800 I'm not crazy about their behavior, but this is just 0:18:54.880 --> 0:18:56.960 part of a cost of life in a big city. 0:18:57.000 --> 0:18:58.720 You're going to find young guys who are goofing off 0:18:58.720 --> 0:19:03.120 on a train, maybe even threatening people. But everyone's in agreement. 0:19:03.240 --> 0:19:06.160 They did not harm anyone on the train. They were 0:19:06.240 --> 0:19:09.720 certainly causing a, let's say, a nuisance, but didn't pull 0:19:09.760 --> 0:19:11.639 one of the screwdrivers out or try to fight with 0:19:11.640 --> 0:19:12.840 anybody or anything like that. 0:19:12.840 --> 0:19:14.440 That's what I was going to ask, because you hinted 0:19:14.480 --> 0:19:17.199 at the screwdrivers, so they're not pulling these out in 0:19:17.240 --> 0:19:20.119 any way at least. Okay, no, no, So we have 0:19:20.240 --> 0:19:22.760 then Bernard Getz getting on the train. You said in 0:19:22.800 --> 0:19:25.960 the west village. Tell me about his background. How old 0:19:26.000 --> 0:19:28.320 he is, you know all of that stuff. Electrical engineer, 0:19:28.359 --> 0:19:28.800 is that right? 0:19:29.080 --> 0:19:31.960 Electrical engineer and a very very bright one. He'd gone 0:19:31.960 --> 0:19:36.760 to NYU, so he'd grown up relatively privileged in Westchester County, 0:19:36.800 --> 0:19:39.960 starts in Queens, grows up in Westchester County, New York, 0:19:40.000 --> 0:19:42.280 which is just north of the city, just above Bronx, 0:19:42.720 --> 0:19:46.159 and privileged. His dad was, i want to say, in 0:19:46.400 --> 0:19:48.600 the same line of work in engineering, and so on. 0:19:49.119 --> 0:19:52.320 I think the galvanizing There were a few galvanizing moments 0:19:52.320 --> 0:19:54.320 in Bernard Gets his life, and I think all identify 0:19:54.359 --> 0:19:59.480 two of them. One is when he is a early 0:19:59.600 --> 0:20:05.040 teenage his father gets arrested and accused for sexually assaulting 0:20:05.640 --> 0:20:08.439 a few teenagers. These two boys who are regarded as 0:20:08.480 --> 0:20:12.760 troublemakers in town. Now, the Gets family regarded it as 0:20:12.920 --> 0:20:17.280 singling out their wealthy father and politically connected father, that 0:20:17.280 --> 0:20:23.240 that opponents of Dad had really turned on Dad and 0:20:23.480 --> 0:20:27.480 wanted to embarrass him. So he ultimately sends up spending 0:20:27.480 --> 0:20:31.199 some time in jail over this result. Now, this is 0:20:31.240 --> 0:20:34.479 one of the moments that begins Bernard Gets his total 0:20:34.680 --> 0:20:39.440 lack of disillusionment with the criminal justice system. He regards 0:20:40.000 --> 0:20:42.600 throughout life, including my interview with him, he regards criminal 0:20:42.680 --> 0:20:46.120 justice system as not focused on keeping people safe, being 0:20:46.240 --> 0:20:51.120 rife with bias, and ultimately a place where criminals get 0:20:51.119 --> 0:20:55.040 coddled and game the system out. And it turned him off. 0:20:55.200 --> 0:20:58.960 So that big moment happens. Number one. Number two, he's 0:20:59.000 --> 0:21:02.679 actually mugged nineteen eighty one. He's carrying a bunch of 0:21:02.680 --> 0:21:05.920 engineering equipment on the subway. Once again, rough stuff in 0:21:05.960 --> 0:21:07.520 the early nineteen eighties, but he's carrying a bunch of 0:21:07.600 --> 0:21:11.199 electrical equipment. Three young black dudes jumped him for his 0:21:11.359 --> 0:21:14.920 sheepskin jacket. They jump him, start pounding on him. Two 0:21:14.960 --> 0:21:17.240 of them get away. The cops grab one of them, 0:21:17.720 --> 0:21:22.080 and gets completely disillusioned with the system there too, saying 0:21:22.080 --> 0:21:25.920 that why are the cops so focused on protecting this guy? 0:21:26.000 --> 0:21:27.919 Why did they only question him for two hours and 0:21:28.000 --> 0:21:30.880 me for six hours? All they care about is this guy. 0:21:31.560 --> 0:21:33.399 I'm the one who's the victim here. Why is this 0:21:33.440 --> 0:21:36.040 guy not going to jail? The kid just gets charged 0:21:36.080 --> 0:21:40.440 with criminal mischief I believe, not assault or anything over 0:21:40.480 --> 0:21:43.760 the fight that they get into. So for all these reasons, 0:21:43.760 --> 0:21:47.560 at a certain point, Bernie gets starts carrying firearms, and 0:21:48.200 --> 0:21:53.160 he vowed after that assault at Mugging to never get 0:21:53.240 --> 0:21:55.600 victimized again. He was going to start carrying firearms, and 0:21:55.600 --> 0:21:58.199 so over the course of a pretty long period, he 0:21:58.280 --> 0:22:02.360 starts amassing a bunch of different firearms, handguns, some legally, 0:22:02.720 --> 0:22:04.720 many of them, not selling them and giving them to 0:22:04.760 --> 0:22:07.679