Origins of the 33rd Pct

33rd Detective Squad

Members of the 33rd Detective Squad

Photos

 Origins of the 33rd Pct

Today, the New York City Police Department’s 34th Precinct covers the northern tip of Manhattan from W 181st Street to the borough's end at 225th Street. At this point, the boroughs of Manhattan and the Bronx share a common border defined by the narrow Spuyten Duyvil Creek that join the northern Harlem River along with the Hudson River. This area is better known as Inwood and it composes roughly half of what the 34th Precinct once covered. The other half, Washington Heights, can be defined as the area of Manhattan from W 155th Street reaching W 181 Street, and like Inwood, from the Hudson River to the Harlem River, covered by the 33rd Precinct. It wasn’t always that way.
In 1992, the 34th Precinct was Manhattan's largest precinct in terms of territory and the nation's deadliest in terms of body count. It was a year that brought 122 homicides, hundreds of shootings and stabbings, thousands of narcotics related arrests, and a year that placed the 34th Precinct in the radar screen of dozens of local, state, federal and international law enforcement agencies. The precinct mirrored what was going on in New York City, cocaine had the city in a stranglehold and the NYPD was simply, for all the department's best efforts, understaffed, overwhelmed with resources stretched thin.
With well over 300 police officers and 30 detectives, augmented by numerous NYPD-Federal task forces, citywide narcotics and street crime units, the 34th precinct resembled a fortress. But crime was rampant and the homicides became an embarrassment for the NYPD, and for then Major David Dinkins. In the three years leading up to 1992, there were well over 350 homicides in the precinct, and the vast majorities were drug related. Every three days there was a homicide and in between, there could be several people shot but alive. Shots were being fired on the rooftops of the 5 story walk-ups, back yards and in the basements where drug dealers honed their marksmanship. Shots were being fired in the city parks, schoolyards, parking lots and in the streets. It seemed as if everyone had guns, they were packing large caliber semi-auto firearms that outmatched the NYPD’s still-regulation 6-shot revolvers. Crime scene tape, gloves, and other first responder refuse can be seen littering the sidewalks.

Why were people being murdered? They were being murdered for selling drugs in the wrong building, they were being murdered for selling drugs on the wrong block, they were being murdered for their drugs, they were being murdered for their drug money, they were being murdered for stealing from one another, they were being murdered for snitching, they were being murdered to prevent snitching, they were being murdered for selling "bogus" drugs, they were being murdered for marijuana, for cocaine, for crack, they were being murdered for illegal betting, they were being murdered for counterfeit money.

They were being murdered while hard at work in their bodegas and beauty salons, they were being murdered while working hard driving their taxis, they were being murdered to retaliate for a murdered family member, they were being murdered to settle an old score from their native Dominican Republic, they were being murdered by spurned lovers, they were being murdered while playing in a swimming pool, they were being murdered while running an errand for their mother, they were even being murdered while holding babies in their arms.
They were strangled, shot, stabbed, bludgeoned, burned, thrown off roofs. They were drowned, tortured, dismembered, they were discovered immediately, they were discovered in an advanced state of decomposition. They were identified and claimed, they were unidentified and sent to a potters field. They died alone and sometimes in multiples.
 

There was El Feo, Freddy Kruger, Lenin, and the Wild Cowboys with their 16 million dollar-a-year drug trade, trail of bodies throughout the Bronx and Washington Heights. There were also the Jeri Curls, Post Ave Boys and other lesser-known drug gangs. These gangs conducted business in a highly organized and efficient manner employing 15 year old look outs, naked mothers weighing and packing drugs, cab drivers making deliveries, and bodegas laundering money. They had electronic equipment to alert stash houses when the police entered an apartment building. They had video equipment installed in the lobbies to observe who was entering the building, “steerer" with customers, police, or rival drug gangs, their main concern. They also had walkie-talkies to communicate with each other and scanners to monitor when the “Locomotion” was on the block. One who did not know any better would have sworn that the whole community was involved in the drug trade, and that the drug gangs had their blessings.

The community, largely composed of Spanish speaking immigrants from the Dominican Republic, reacted negatively to the hard-handed policing the NYPD chose to employ in an attempt to dismantle these drug gangs and stem the violence. The police, feeling a lack of support from the community and City Hall, overwhelmed by the violence and drug trade, and often a lack of cooperation from too many,  was distrustful of the community.

Summer of 1992 was a hot, humid, and violent month in New York City and while children were cooling off with opened fire hydrants, the detectives and officers of the 34th Precinct were sweltering in a building that lacked air-conditioning. Well, it had air-conditioning but it just never worked. Everything pleasant was overlooked, and everything depressing was magnified.
The community was tired of waking up to bodies and crime scene tape while the cops were getting tired of shoot-outs and a hostile community. The cops felt that while under siege, Mayor Dave Dinkins and City Hall was simply not interested. Bottles would rain from rooftops, patrol cars would have tires cut, and fabricated civilian complaints filed against the most active cops. Cops would often make arrests only to be bogged down with the arrest process which at times left only a dozen cops or so to patrol an area with almost a half million residents. Drug dealers ruled!
Non-Hispanic detectives were frustrated at the lack of direct communication with victims and witnesses for it seemed as if something always got lost in the translation.  Hispanic detectives were equally as frustrated for although the cases were distributed evenly, they often neglected their cases and fell behind their work while assisting their non-Hispanic counterparts with investigations, interviews, and incoming phone calls. The language barrier tore into the efficiency of one of the NYPD’s best, experienced, and well-oiled detective squads. Many homicide investigations were abruptly stopped not for lack of leads or witnesses but all too often for lack of overtime. No one cared about the killings in the Heights enough to authorize the same overtime and manpower that would be authorized in a homicide investigation on the "Upper East Side". Often those investigations were then placed on the back burner never to be picked up again, for a new homicide would come in and given priority until the next one. All too often, a perpetrator would be identified in a homicide investigation only to ascertain that he had fled to his native Dominican Republic where extraditions were all but impossible. Case closed with a wanted card. Other  times a homicide suspect under severe interrogation would be patted on the back, given a business card and told to come back because over the radio, calls for "male shot -likely to die" would echo the squad room walls. Suspect never to be seen again.
 

Kiko Garcia (thumb up) with suspected fellow drug crew members.

Suspected drug dealer “Pella” with possible crew member. Note Vol. # on “magazine cover” (Vol # 162)

Summer of 1992 was taking its toll on the community, cops, and detectives; reaching the summit on July 3 when Jose “Kiko” Garcia and the 34th Precinct’s anti-crime unit known on the streets as the “Locomotion” met. Kiko Garcia, a convicted drug dealer and part of a drug gang on W 162 St, was armed with a gun on W 162nd St and St Nicholas Ave when an unmarked anti-crime unit with three officers observed him. Suspecting that he was armed with a gun,  as Garcia walked into the block on W 162St., one officer got out of the vehicle to follow Garcia, while the other officers circled the block in an attempt to trap and arrest Garcia. As the officer followed Garcia, a crowd of onlookers who were watching the incident develop started shouting "bajando" to warn Garcia. As Garcia  ducked into 505 W 162nd, the officer confronted him. A struggle ensued inside the building lobby where a tall and athletic Garcia was gaining the upper hand and drew his weapon. The officer responded in kind and fatally shot Garcia.
 

New York City Mayor David Dinkins comforts the mother of convicted drug dealer Kiko Garcia.

“Napalm the ‘hood” yelled into his police radio an unidentified police officer.

Six days of riots engulfed Washington Heights when witnesses alleged that Garcia was shot after he was beaten with a police radio and while he begged for his life (and his mother). Over a hundred cars were burned, destroyed or damaged. An NYPD helicopter returned to Floyd Bennett  Field in Brooklyn with a bullet hole.  Cops were forced to travel in convoys as Molotov cocktails were being flung about the Heights and shots were being fired at police cars.  There was a civilian fatality as well as scores of injured officers. The New York National Guard was placed on alert by the state governor as the rioting approached it's third day. Thousands of police officers from throughout the city were deployed into the neighborhood,  one cop yelled “napalm the hood” into his police radio much to the dismay of the mayor and community leaders; an internal affairs investigation would fail to apprehend him. Mayor Dinkins, without waiting for a proper and thorough investigation to be conducted, and in a move that many would later say cost him reelection, immediately all but condemned the police via the media. He demanded the "truth" as if the police were lying. He had the city pay for Garcia’s funeral expenses and met with Garcia’s mother, not the officer whose life was almost snuffed out by a convicted drug dealer. Perception was that Garcia was simply executed for no reason by a rogue cop and Dinkins added fuel to the flames. Thousands of protesters and anarchists, led by Ruth Messinger and other city council members, marched on the 34th Pct from 505 W 162 St as hundreds of officers in riot gear surrounded the 34th and maintained a buffer zone.

Then a bomb was laid on the lap of Mayor Dinkins, a video surfaced from a narcotics unit showing Kiko Garcia and his drug crew with drugs and guns.The video was recorded by ....Kiko Garcia et al, and was recovered during an arrest long before Dinkins had ever heard of Kiko Garcia. Dinkins and community leaders had egg on their faces. Although eventually a Grand Jury cleared the officer, and ruled the shooting a justifiable homicide, relations between the 34th Pct and the community had hit rock bottom.

The NYPD, citing an overwhelmed 34th Pct, decided to divide the precinct in half with the 34th Pct covering the Inwood area of Manhattan and the new 33rd Pct covering Washington Heights. The precinct would open in 1994 on W 165th Street, where it would inherit some of the most crime-infested blocks in New York City.





 

33rd Detective Squad

Members of the 33rd Detective Squad 1994-2006
* denotes commissioning squad members

Lieutenant

Sergeant

Detective

  Police Administrative Aide   

  Simplicio, Richard
Williams, Andre  

Civilian Aide   

Francisco, Mildia *