The Coffey Files by Coffey Joseph; Schmetterer Jerry;

Author:Coffey, Joseph; Schmetterer, Jerry;
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: MysteriousPress.com/Open Road
Published: 2016-05-05T04:00:00+00:00

V

TERROR

Although no terrorist attack was ever carried out against Joe Frazier, it was clear that elements existed in the United States at that time that would find some motive for murder. Later in his career Joe Coffey came face to face with such factions.

Joe reported to uniform patrol in East Harlem’s 25th Precinct in March 1973. He was quickly placed in the mix with the other precinct sergeants and charged with supervising the precinct’s patrol officers, both on foot and in the worn-out green and white RMPs—radio motor patrol units.

Uniform patrol was the front line of police work. When the public thought of a police officer, the picture that most often came to their mind was of a tall Irish-looking young man in a deep blue, heavy woolen uniform with an uncomfortable-looking high collar. On the man’s chest would be a gleaming silver badge in the shape of a shield. Joe Coffey fit that picture to a T, except that his badge was gold because of his rank and he had three light blue stripes on his arm.

It wasn’t his first assignment in uniform. Directly out of the Police Academy, Joe was selected for duty in the elite Tactical Patrol Force (TPF). That was a unit of cops six feet tall or taller who were used as a reserve force for duty in especially troubled areas. During the campus disruptions of the sixties the TPF developed a reputation among students as storm troopers whose only mission was to bust the skulls of young people exercising their constitutional rights. It was while serving in the TPF that Coffey first met the future chief of detectives who would have a profound effect on his career, James Sullivan.

But uniform work was not the kind of police work he wanted to do. He looked at it as a necessary evil, a short, detour from his upward path in the detective division. Each day as he buttoned the heavy winter blouse, before beginning his tour through one of the toughest neighborhoods in the city, he reminded himself of Frank Hogan’s promise. He expected to spend only the minimum amount of time—six months—in the two-five before being transferred back to the Detective Division as a detective sergeant in the office of Queens District Attorney Thomas Mackell. The threats of William Aronwald, the federal prosecutor whom Joe had accused of foot-dragging in the Vatican case, to block his path to promotion did not enter his mind.

Shortly after he arrived in East Harlem similar threats came from another direction. One afternoon the radio in Coffey’s patrol car barked an order for him to return to the station house. When he got there he found a lieutenant and a sergeant from the Internal Affairs Division—the unit that investigates corrupt cops—waiting to speak to him.

Sitting in the precinct commander’s office, the two men from “downtown” offered Coffey the opportunity to join their elite unit. They explained that very few cops are given the chance to perform such important work. They said service in IAD was a quick route to promotion.

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