March 25, 2026 • 37 mins
The city is shut down. A cop – serving his first day on the security detail – acts heroically. Word spreads to Councilman Davis’s disbelieving family, and emotions run high.
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Speaker 1 (00:09):
Officer Richard Burt Ritchie has been on the security detail
for Council Speaker Gifford Miller just a couple of weeks.
July twenty third is his first day protecting Miller at
a council meeting in City Hall.
Speaker 2 (00:21):
Reporters, people from the public, just people all over the place.
There was something with the Puerto Rican Day parade and
there were some young girls.
Speaker 1 (00:33):
Gifford Miller takes his place at the podium in the
council chamber. Carldialba takes lunch. The little girls from the
Puerto Rican Day Parade receive their commendation, and then we
hear a pop two eight pm. These are the actual
(00:54):
shots recorded by a video camera in the chamber.
Speaker 2 (00:58):
And then I look up and a balcony and I
see the gunman with his arm out firing a gun.
It's like WHOA. He was in a suit, his arm
was out, and I am on the chamber's floor, so.
Speaker 3 (01:14):
I'm looking up.
Speaker 2 (01:18):
I didn't see anyone else up there but him. I
guess I kind of had a tunnel vision and the
training kicked in and I took out my gun and
I aimed it, and something that we don't practice at
the range I had to aim up. I don't remember
(01:48):
seeing him fall or anything. It's just like he just disappeared.
Speaker 1 (02:00):
Forty caliber handgun was recovered in the city wall.
Speaker 3 (02:03):
Will somebody tell me that Jeffery who?
Speaker 1 (02:05):
Was it a coincidence?
Speaker 4 (02:06):
Jeffery who did it?
Speaker 5 (02:08):
There were times when I thought that he was unstable,
and there were times when I thought maybe you shouldn't
carry a gun.
Speaker 1 (02:14):
He alleged he was a victim of the flatnawn.
Speaker 6 (02:17):
This is not just killing somebody because you want de seat.
Speaker 1 (02:23):
There are times when everyone sees the same thing, the
same event, from a different perspective and understands what happened
in very different ways. They might depend on where they
were standing, or what they knew, or how they felt
about the people involved, or what they wanted to believe.
(02:44):
What happened at New York City Hall on July twenty,
two thousand and three is one of those times. I'm
Jamal Jordan. This Russhiak Councilman Peter Vlone Junior are standing
(03:09):
on the floor of the chamber about fifteen feet behind.
Officer Richie burt Bert is in plain close, not in uniform.
Speaker 7 (03:17):
I see a guy with a gun with his back
towards me, shooting up towards the balcony. I was debating
at the time whether I should make a run at
this guy. But something about Richie's mannerisms just legend believe
that this was the guy who was supposed to have
a gun and not the actual bad guy.
Speaker 1 (03:32):
I'm glad I didn't do anything stupid like tackling.
Speaker 4 (03:34):
Richie sees the guy, pulls his gun, shoots six times,
hit the guy four cons out of six.
Speaker 1 (03:40):
This is probably thirty five forty feet easy. Council speaker
Gifford Miller initially thought Richie might have shot James E.
Davis by mistake, but Richie claims that he was never
in doubt despite the distance thirty five forty feet away.
He says he would have recognized that Davis, who had
occasionally been his instructor at the police academy, and after
(04:04):
the fact, Gifford Miller is mostly shuck by how cool
Richie had stayed under pressure in a stressful situation.
Speaker 4 (04:10):
If you're like five feet from me and I try
to shoot you, I'll hit you fifty percent of the times.
Speaker 1 (04:16):
Hard to hit somebody harder than you think.
Speaker 8 (04:20):
I could see the expression of the people in the
first row, they're like jumping back because they're right there.
Speaker 1 (04:27):
Councilman Charles Barron, I don't.
Speaker 8 (04:29):
Know how the detective didn't hit anybody else, because he
had to shoot up there, and all of the folk
were behind the shooting. I think it's a miracle that
he didn't hit anybody else.
Speaker 1 (04:42):
It is nothing short of a miracle that none of
the shots hits nannocent bystander. And they may also have
been lucky that Richie Burt was newing the job, because,
as Gifford Miller understood it, a more experienced officer assigned
to executive protection would know that unless the threat is
hit the person to protect, you do not engage the shooter.
Speaker 4 (05:04):
If Richie had gone through the extensive training of how
to protect a particular principle, he probably wouldn't have shot
the sammar And if he hadn't shot be a Sandling like,
god knows what would have happened.
Speaker 1 (05:19):
The last time Gary Altman ha seen his twenty one
year old daughter Ariel, she was sitting inches from James
Davis and his guests in the balcony.
Speaker 9 (05:28):
I kept saying, my daughter's up there, or where where's
my daughter.
Speaker 1 (05:32):
I can't see her. I think my daughter's up there.
Gary rushes out of the building, hoping to find Ariel,
but he doesn't see her. He's frantic. Security lets him
back inside.
Speaker 9 (05:47):
I go back in, and I run back upstairs to
the chambers to look at I don't go to the balcony,
you know, I don't know why didn't I go look
in the balcony.
Speaker 1 (06:00):
In his phone rings.
Speaker 10 (06:06):
For whatever reason, I noticed these two guys in the row.
They were sitting to my right, like these two well
dressed guys.
Speaker 1 (06:16):
Rye al Altman is working at City Hall as a
summer intern. She doesn't recognize the man sitting amongst the
guests and staffers in the balcony. I didn't know who
James Davis was.
Speaker 10 (06:26):
Some of the other interns I was with didn't know
who he was, and they were kind of wondering why
he was up in the balcony with us.
Speaker 1 (06:31):
As the meeting is starting, the two men get up
from their seats just a few feet from where she's sitting.
Speaker 10 (06:37):
Then at one point they started walking across. As they're
walking in front of where I am, James Davis is
in front of the other guy and he just pulls
a gun out and starts shooting at him.
Speaker 1 (06:53):
The man shoots James Davis multiple times in the back.
Speaker 10 (06:58):
I had never heard gunshots. I'm definitely not close like that.
Speaker 1 (07:03):
Her first thought is that this cannot be real.
Speaker 10 (07:07):
Why is someone acting out a shooting like what's happening?
Like it just I I thought it was fake, even
though that makes no sense, But how could it be real?
And then people started running out and I followed them
and we ran down the stairs. Was he coming behind us?
I mean, the thought was he might be coming down. Also,
(07:32):
my mind went to like nine to eleven. This is
what it would have been like, like the franticness of
running out of the towers.
Speaker 1 (07:41):
On the day of the shooting, Ariel Laltman told reporters
that Neil asked you it stood about four feet from her.
She had watched as he gritted his teeth and aimed
his weapon at James Davis's back and kept firing down
at him even after James had fallen to the floor.
She described Neil as completely still, his only movement coming
(08:02):
from his trigger finger. He looks very serious, very angry.
She told reporters. He had his arm extended, just firing
and firing. Fifteen minutes after the shooting. Her ears were
still rinking from the shots. The pandemonium and the screen
(08:34):
Post reporter Frankie Edosian and several others have barricaded themselves
into a large meeting room just off the chambers.
Speaker 6 (08:42):
I called my editor just very quickly, and I said,
I don't know what's going on, but I've just witnessed
a shooting in City Hall and I think someone's dead.
Speaker 1 (08:51):
In the room with Frankie is Betsy got Bound, the
city's public advocate.
Speaker 6 (08:56):
Public advocate was the highest ranking person in that room
with us, and she began comforting everyone and telling people
everything's under control.
Speaker 3 (09:04):
The NYPDS here.
Speaker 1 (09:07):
Betsy gotbamb is in her mid sixties, just the third
woman to ever hold the position of public Advocate in
New York City. Amid the fear and the chaos, she's
a calming presence. Some of the people in the room
are clearly still in shock.
Speaker 11 (09:22):
These people were hysterical, you know, kind of on the
floor writhing. So I became very calm, very sort of
trying to help everybody. And I always carry as Brandon
Danex to my briefcase, and I just remember saying hey,
to this particular woman who was completely hysterical. Can I
(09:42):
give you something to help you? I broken and gave
it to her, and she took half. We could have
been going to jail for that, but it didn't matter.
I just remember that.
Speaker 1 (09:51):
Vividly paramedics that are out, along with more police and
swatcare in the media.
Speaker 6 (10:06):
I got to the window to look out, and of
course it was massive chaos, and I saw an ambulance
in the stretcher take somebody out.
Speaker 1 (10:14):
So put up that it was changed and people fitted weeping.
The local ABC News affiliated supporting lives filling in details
as they get them.
Speaker 12 (10:28):
Here is some of the latest information that we have
just gotten and we understand right now that Brooklyn Councilman
James Davis. Brooklyn Councilman James Davis is among one of
the two victims. He has apparently been shot twice in
the chest now. This is according to a police officer
at the scene.
Speaker 1 (10:50):
Brooklyn council Member Yvette Clark was just outside the chambers
when the shooting started. She ran out of the city
Hall building dur offices across the street. She's watching the
live coverage on local news. That's how she learns about
her good friend and colleague, James Davis.
Speaker 12 (11:06):
We have some very sad news to report. We have
just had a confirm from two sources that James Davis
has died. Brooklyn Councilman James Davis has passed away. Certainly,
this is very sad news, very devastating to family, friends,
and to all New Yorkers.
Speaker 1 (11:27):
I just cried and cried and cried, and I just,
I mean, I couldn't get it.
Speaker 13 (11:33):
Together because James and I were so very close, and
every time I hear about gun violence, I think about
James E.
Speaker 1 (11:42):
Davis.
Speaker 13 (11:43):
The type of gun violence that we've experienced in urban
settings like New York, Chicago, Detroit, all of that is
what James stood against. That's what the irony about his
death was.
Speaker 1 (12:00):
For Evet Clerk. This connection between James E. Davis and
gun violence. It isn't just because of the way he died.
Event and James are born in the same hospital around
the same time. Their parents were friends. Now they were
both part of the black political scene in central Brooklyn
and it served together on the city Council for the
(12:21):
past year and a half. Yvette knew what mattered to
James E. Davis that gun violence was his single most
important issue as a politician. That same day, James had
been planning to introduce a bill at the Stated Meeting
about violence in the workplace, but violence had found him instead.
Speaker 3 (12:55):
I was told that it was James that had been shocked.
Speaker 1 (12:58):
I don't know who told me.
Speaker 3 (13:00):
That really hurt me a.
Speaker 1 (13:01):
Lot, councilmen hiring montsrat.
Speaker 14 (13:04):
Still was wrestling with myself because literally right before he
got shot, I was talking to him. Minutes before I'm
talking to James. Inside City Hall. There's police officers, there's
metal detectors, there's.
Speaker 3 (13:19):
Undercover intel cops.
Speaker 14 (13:21):
The mayor is there, the public advocate is there, fifty
one members of the city Council. You're not gonna find
a safer place in New York City.
Speaker 1 (13:30):
Amazing.
Speaker 14 (13:37):
So I went to the hospital. I was the only
council member that I know when no one else.
Speaker 1 (13:42):
Went puns like James Davis had been a cop before
he became a council member.
Speaker 14 (13:48):
It so happens that one of the captains that was
there on the scene was a friend of mine, Captain
Freddie Maldonado. And I go up there and I said, Freddie,
what's up?
Speaker 1 (13:59):
He just shook his head.
Speaker 14 (14:01):
He says, he's gone, Iram, He's gone. I cried, and
then I asked to see James, and the captain spoke
to the doctor and they let me see him. And
there I remember the eerie sound of the unzipping of
(14:23):
the body bag, and then I saw the holes in
James's body. I think to some degree, I was still
in disbelief until I saw him.
Speaker 3 (14:35):
And then I saw him and he was gone.
Speaker 1 (14:44):
I think his mother was on the way there. I'm
not sure if his brother had even gotten there yet.
Speaker 5 (14:53):
My brother and I was doing something called Family Day
Fashion upon where we put on a fashion show in
the park.
Speaker 1 (15:01):
James Davis's brother, Jeffrey Davis, is working with an after
school program in Brooklyn, which is housed at a local
middle school in summer, and he and his brother James
are organizing events for young people in the community.
Speaker 5 (15:14):
So I was going to pick up the flies, and
I had a colleague with me, and we drove downtown lunchtime,
and when we came back to the school, all my
colleagues are in tears and they're just looking at me.
What's wrong, what's the matter? No one said anything. Tears
are rolling down David Eyes. And then one of them
said your brother, And I said, what about my brother?
Speaker 3 (15:35):
Your brother? They said, get in the car and go
to city Hall.
Speaker 1 (15:39):
Jeffrey's colleague, a young woman who had driven him to
downtown Brooklyn, offer us to take him into Manhattan.
Speaker 5 (15:45):
En route to city Hall, she turned on the radio
and I heard on the news Councilman James D. Davis
has been fatally shut.
Speaker 1 (15:54):
They're both stunned. This news has a terrible finality to it.
Jeffrey in the passenger seat, is unable to move past
one single crucial word.
Speaker 5 (16:06):
A colleague's looking at me like this, and I'm saying,
what does fatal meet?
Speaker 3 (16:09):
I'm in a pattic. What does fatal meet? When they
say fatal, what's what does fatal need?
Speaker 5 (16:15):
She didn't want to respond, and I jumped out the car.
Speaker 1 (16:22):
They're in downtown Brooklyn on a busy street, approaching the bridge.
There's traffic all around them at a standstill.
Speaker 5 (16:29):
Helicopters were overhead and people are rushing and talking, and
I was asking, cause, what does fatal mean?
Speaker 3 (16:35):
What does fatal mean?
Speaker 5 (16:36):
And these are strangers now, and I've seen the police
officer in his car and I said, I'm Jeffrey Davis.
They say something happened to my brother in city Hall.
They said, fatally shut He radioed in and said all right,
soddle me and he put the sign renes on and everything.
Speaker 1 (16:53):
With the sirens blaring. The police clear traffic out of
the way, and they raced across the bridge. But the
police car doesn't lead in the city Hall. Instead there
I've at downtown Peakman Hospital.
Speaker 5 (17:10):
When I arrived there, there was pandemonium when news cameras.
Speaker 3 (17:15):
People are in tears and crying.
Speaker 5 (17:17):
Dozens and dozens and dozens of police officers were in
the front. The bridge was closed off, the streets were
closed off.
Speaker 1 (17:24):
Helicopters across from the hospital entrance, news cameras and reporters
have assembled.
Speaker 5 (17:31):
We need thirty cameras all across the street lined up.
I paid them no mind. I just went in the hospital.
Speaker 1 (17:38):
Police and hospital staff started to lead Jeffrey to a
small room up to one side.
Speaker 5 (17:44):
They're bringing me in now, They said, this is his brother,
and right there in the lobbya.
Speaker 1 (17:49):
Collapsed James Davis is one of four siblings, but he
was always closest with this younger brother, Jeffrey.
Speaker 5 (18:03):
My brother and I were seventeen months apart, so we
were raised like twins, bump beds, same souls. That's how
they raised us, because we were that close in age.
Speaker 1 (18:15):
Jeffrey took us to where he and James grew up,
a modest four story building on Brooklyn Avenue in Crown Heights,
which I'm.
Speaker 5 (18:22):
Sure too, that's right.
Speaker 3 (18:28):
My brother lied moved to the apartment.
Speaker 5 (18:31):
This is a four family. We're downstairs in the house
plot as children. As we got older, he had his
apartment and I had mine.
Speaker 1 (18:39):
The Davis family moved here in nineteen seventy one. They
lived on the ground floor. Later, James and Jeffrey each
took apartments upstairs. In two thousand and three, they both
lived on the third floor, across the hall from one another.
Speaker 5 (18:53):
At two or three o'clock in the morning, we used
to go in the hallway and when the days so
we can always meet the middle like this and cash
out how the day went, and strategist.
Speaker 3 (19:02):
And so forth.
Speaker 1 (19:03):
It's a little Jeffrey remembers their Crown Heights neighborhood is
almost idyllic.
Speaker 5 (19:10):
We've got to experience a lot of wonderful things from
Found Heights.
Speaker 3 (19:13):
We had Easter Park with it. We have there's benches,
people playing chess and checkers. We'd walked to Kingston.
Speaker 5 (19:18):
Avenues with his restaurants ice Cream, Pallas, and then the
same thing with no Strath Avenue.
Speaker 1 (19:22):
Their father was the corrections officer. Their mother was a
nurse and politically active, taking her boys to protests and
demonstrations from an early age the Union.
Speaker 5 (19:33):
So she used to go to Washington, d C. And
bring us along five, six, seven years old at these
enormous rallies, looking observing, seeing all the posters and the signs.
So we've been around that a whole life, indirectly training us.
Speaker 1 (19:46):
Jeffrey sees these early trips as the foundation of their
political education. Particularly for James.
Speaker 3 (19:52):
It's almost like a musician.
Speaker 5 (19:53):
If the parents see that you like music, they'll bring
home the guitar, they sing my brother. They've seen in
the direction that he was going, and they just kind
of fet them along with it.
Speaker 1 (20:03):
Like this, James clearly had ambition. While he was a
student at Pace University, he qualified for the New York
Daily News Golden Gloves boxing tournament in coverage of about
the announcers are amused but also maybe a little impressed
(20:24):
that this twenty five year old believes he's bound for
high office in New York City. In the.
Speaker 14 (20:31):
Games, David.
Speaker 1 (20:37):
And Andre a terminator of polls.
Speaker 8 (20:42):
So we've got a terminator going up against the mayor
because James Davis of the gold is the youngster is
a loss students Pace University who says Sunday he wants
to be mayor.
Speaker 1 (20:54):
As time went on, James's sense of the road ahead evolved.
He saw a series of steps rising to greater and
greater heights. Jeffrey believes it to this day.
Speaker 3 (21:04):
He was definitely on his way to the White House.
Speaker 5 (21:07):
Definitely, He's gonna do the maya Congress president, definitely.
Speaker 1 (21:13):
In the late nineteen eighties, not long after that Golden
Gloves fight against Andre, terminator, Coles James opened the church
and their building on Brooklyn Avenue.
Speaker 3 (21:23):
It was an abasement of this building.
Speaker 5 (21:25):
Small ten people and some days nobody comes, and then
you can hear them. Now they're preaching to the walls
as though there was a thousand people he was preaching to.
Speaker 1 (21:33):
But for all his ambition and faith, the world around
James could be a hard place on the streets of
Brooklyn and Queens and Howard Beach and Benson Hurst, and
in Manhattan. New York City simmers with racial tension. A
young black man is beaten to death by a bob.
A black teen is shot by the NYPD. Five high
(21:53):
school students are arrested and prosecuted for assaulting a white
woman in Central Park. They're innocent, but it only comes
out much later. James gets his own personal education. One
evening on the street in front of his house.
Speaker 5 (22:15):
My mom's car was right in front of the door,
and at that time my brother was in the ministry.
He went outside with a couple of parishioners to get
in the car, and about three or four patrol cars
pulled up on them very aggressively, and you know, freeze
and took the guns out.
Speaker 15 (22:33):
I was a victim of police brutality, and right in
front of the house.
Speaker 1 (22:36):
That's James Davis. He spoke about the experience the writer
Henry Goldschmid in nineteen ninety seven.
Speaker 15 (22:41):
You know, two white cops assumed that I was still
in my mother's car. They'd seen it was a Jewish neighborhood,
and they seen me as a black man, and they
put guns at my head and slammed my head on
the back of the police car.
Speaker 1 (22:51):
The family seeds was happening and rushes outside.
Speaker 3 (22:55):
I came running out, my mother, my father became running.
Speaker 5 (22:57):
Out to the door to tell cops that this is
cluck and we were trying to tell him, and they
wrestled meat down and get back freeze.
Speaker 1 (23:05):
James is arrested.
Speaker 5 (23:08):
They drove him down to the seventy first precinct there
in Crown Heights on Empire Boulevard. Ultimately they did the
had check and everything and seeing that it was my
mother's car, and they let him go.
Speaker 3 (23:16):
But it was humiliating and embarrassing for a young minister.
Speaker 5 (23:22):
He was very upset, very angry, and terrified all at
the same time.
Speaker 3 (23:27):
We come from a good family.
Speaker 5 (23:29):
Remember this as a middle class community, so the neighbors
are looking and it was a complete embarrassment.
Speaker 1 (23:40):
But James found a way to reframe this incident for himself.
Speaker 15 (23:44):
I took him negative and turned it into a positive.
I became a police officer and became a police academy
instructor and trained those cops kids that did that incident.
Speaker 1 (23:52):
To me, He's told Draftgar that he would find a
way into power in the city and do something good
with it.
Speaker 5 (24:00):
He said, I want to become a police officer to
make change within the police department.
Speaker 16 (24:08):
I met him April thirtieth, nineteen ninety one.
Speaker 1 (24:12):
Lloyd Pipersburg is James Davis's the former partner on the
force and a friend. He came up to me, extended
his hand and I was.
Speaker 16 (24:22):
Kind of taken aback, but he had a bright smile
and he goes, I am James E.
Speaker 1 (24:27):
Davis. And if you know James, you know he always
put the stress on the e. James had been a
corrections officer Mirkers Island, New York City's largest jail, but
it didn't feel like the right place for him. He
wanted to reach table before they ended up behind bars.
He wanted to be out in the streets. He met
(24:47):
Lloyd when they were both students at the Police Academy.
After graduation, the Police Department gave them their first posts
was showing off. We were signed to the same place.
Transit District thirty two.
Speaker 16 (25:00):
District thirty two is located on Franklin Avenue in Eastern Parkway.
Speaker 1 (25:06):
This is James's own neighborhood, Crown Heights. You've never lived
dash far outside the patrol area half a block.
Speaker 17 (25:14):
Yeah, there were sounds on patrol.
Speaker 1 (25:16):
You go check on his mother. As a transit cop,
he was assigned to a subway line that he and
his new partner, Lloyd Pipersburg, who James nickname Pipes, would
ride all night.
Speaker 16 (25:27):
This is eight pm to four am. So you got
some serious news riding the trains. James's fears you'd approach them.
You guys, what saw man, It's just the way he
came at them. You let him know I can't speak
your language.
Speaker 1 (25:43):
Often.
Speaker 16 (25:43):
I'm gonna admit I was a little bit uncomfortable with say,
but I watched the worker's magic so often that I
just came to realize, dude, this is his gift.
Speaker 1 (25:53):
They also patrol the streets that run under the elevated
tracks of their train line.
Speaker 16 (25:59):
One day, we're in the we're here over the radio.
They had been a stabbing and James looks at the
angoes Pipes, let's go, And I'm like, but James, we
were assigned to here.
Speaker 1 (26:08):
You know, we have to stay under the two in
the three line. James convinced his Pipes to leave their
post and try to find the assailant with the knife.
They drive slowly around the neighborhood, further and further from
their assigned route, and the description of the guy comes
over radio. James says, BOYD, look that's him.
Speaker 16 (26:28):
So we jumped out showing us we find a knife
in his pocket. James was like, we got a colu man,
we got a collar, and I was like, we're off post.
Speaker 1 (26:40):
So we put it over the air and some units arrived.
I was like, you guys, you can take it to
the guy.
Speaker 3 (26:47):
This is the knife.
Speaker 1 (26:47):
There's no reason for transit coup to have been out there.
If James had wanted the glory, if making this first
big arrest, his partner was not going to bend the
rules to get it.
Speaker 16 (26:58):
We get back into the car and James did not
speak to me for probably four days.
Speaker 1 (27:05):
He was infurious with me.
Speaker 17 (27:09):
And when we started talking again, it says to me,
your pipes the job will have explained us being there.
I've come to know after thirty four years of service.
He was absolutely right. You do something heroic like that
and the details is irrelevant at that point.
Speaker 6 (27:29):
You know.
Speaker 1 (27:46):
When Llurid Pipersberg hears about the shooting over the police radio,
he rushes over the city Hall. He flashes his badge
and starts talking to a cop outside the gates, and.
Speaker 18 (27:58):
The cops just started talking and it's like a faucet
and he's saying, yeah, there was a shooting and the
chambers and a lot of kids worked there. I think
the two or three people got hip and the councilman
was one of them.
Speaker 16 (28:12):
Mike just started to feel tight because I didn't hear
what I wanted to hear, which was there was a
shooting and James E. Davis took the die out. He
then told me that they were still looking for the shooter.
And he looked at me and he goes, you're gonna
ring thevests, are you? The thing that stuck in my
mind was did he just say the shooters on the loose.
Speaker 12 (28:33):
Possible shooter going into the train station I'm assuming as
the train station, the hole on the City Hall st.
Speaker 10 (28:40):
On Broadway or possibly on the chamber of street.
Speaker 1 (28:43):
Shot by the day and Lloyd is now a plain
clothes pop working for the police Commissioner. He hardly ever
wears the bullet professed he was trying to suggest you
maybe need to get stop. But at this point I
was angry and my thoughts in my mind was I
don't need to be careful for him. He needs to
be careful for me.
Speaker 3 (29:03):
You know, maybe surely he.
Speaker 1 (29:04):
Isn't over yet.
Speaker 16 (29:07):
I asked when we Senior James this condition, and he
said he didn't. But they did take him out of
here in the ambulance and he didn't look too good
to him.
Speaker 1 (29:16):
Lloyd rogester Beakman Hospital. On his way there, the lieutenant calls.
Speaker 16 (29:22):
He says to me, very compassionately, I pre sure if
you don't go in until I get there.
Speaker 1 (29:29):
The lieutenant's call confirms that Lloyd is already feeling it's bad.
Outside the hospital, cameras and police are everywhere. The lieutenant
arrives and they head in together. I'm escorted into the er.
Speaker 16 (29:48):
Lieutenant says to me, we're going to pass your friend's body.
Do not look at him, and I said, okay. So
this day I regret that I listened. I wish I
would have looked, but I think they didn't want me
to be traumatized because this is just a shooting victim.
This is my friend. But in my partial vision I
could see him there. So we passed him and people
(30:11):
are crying and everything else councilman Larry C. Brook is
also at Beacon Hospital. He was in the chamber when
the shots went off. He's with another council member, Maria Bias,
was hyperventilating.
Speaker 19 (30:24):
Maria Bias, she just couldn't take it. So afterwards he
asked me to go with it to the hospital.
Speaker 1 (30:31):
There he sees James Davis's.
Speaker 20 (30:34):
Mother, Elma Elma Davis, when she came running into the hospital,
and she looked at me because she knew me, and
I just had to kind of like.
Speaker 19 (30:49):
Turn away because I didn't want to be the one
to tell her because she said it went and I
just I was I couldn't do it.
Speaker 16 (31:05):
People asking with's Jeffrey is Jeffrey on the way that
type of thing, and the office sudden he was there
in the greeting room and he has his hands almost
like he's wringing his answers that he's about to lay
down on anoleum or something. And he goes, all right,
so what do we got here? And he's wringing his
(31:26):
hands and the answer.
Speaker 21 (31:28):
Was obvious, but no one could actually say anything the
way he asks the question. At that moment, I had
realized just how much like his brother he was in
terms of his presence. He's not a huge man, but
he commands a room.
Speaker 16 (31:45):
So when no one answered him, he got a little
perturbed and he goes, so what do we got here?
Speaker 1 (31:52):
I'm looking right at him at this point, watching the
change come over him.
Speaker 16 (31:57):
It was like the storm clouds gathering, and he goes,
what the fuck is going on here?
Speaker 3 (32:02):
Huh?
Speaker 16 (32:03):
And then he starts to really loosen, So what the
fuck is going on? And his arms are in the
air and several people rush to kind of restrain him.
Speaker 5 (32:14):
I said, I want to see him, and they said no,
and I said I want to see him. So now
my boy said by and I'm yelling I want to
see him like this, wail my brother.
Speaker 1 (32:22):
He is furious, Why appen to my brother? Why appen
to my brother? He gets so out of control.
Speaker 3 (32:27):
The Moncena Vermano has to.
Speaker 16 (32:29):
Grab him from the back, which is arm reached around
his chest to restrain him because it oklay Jefferson, So
I hit any people?
Speaker 1 (32:36):
Monsignor Robert Vermano is a chaplain for the New York
City Police Department. He's a big man, a barrel, chesty,
priesty guy. Looked like he could have been a boxer
or football player. He just held Jeffrey. He saved him
from behind on a bear hug.
Speaker 16 (32:52):
And there was this police officer in uniform standing behind
the chaplain.
Speaker 1 (32:55):
So Jeffrey is wriggling out.
Speaker 22 (32:58):
He gets his hand free and he jabs his finger
into the CoP's chests, right beside his shield, and he goes,
how the hell could this happen with you right there,
you mother suckers?
Speaker 3 (33:09):
Well how.
Speaker 1 (33:13):
In this crowded room full of chaos and grief, Jeffrey
spots his brother's old partner.
Speaker 16 (33:19):
Jeffrey looks at me and he goes, oh, Pipes is here. Okay,
all right, Pipes is here, and he founds right down.
It was the weirdest thing. It was like he thought
that someone on his side was there.
Speaker 1 (33:35):
The hospital staff lead Jeffrey into a small room off
the lobby.
Speaker 5 (33:40):
My mother was there ready, but I just looked into
the eyes and I said, where is he? And they
said you can't see him, the police officers and then
doctors and so far.
Speaker 3 (33:48):
I said, I want to see him.
Speaker 1 (33:49):
Jeffrey is told to wait with his mother. A few
minutes pass, and then a hospital staffer returns and takes
him back to the er to see his brother, James E.
Davis is laid out on a gurney.
Speaker 5 (34:05):
He had the what's the name in his mouth, the
thing that you do oxygen with, and he just got
to hear cuts.
Speaker 3 (34:10):
He was clean, and I went and I talked to him.
Speaker 5 (34:12):
I rubbed us here yet good, here waves and I said,
you and I spoke about these days, the possibility of
this happening, and for me to continue with the message
and to continue to.
Speaker 11 (34:26):
Go off.
Speaker 1 (34:28):
Even now, more than twenty years after this day. Jeffrey
breaks down as he remembers it.
Speaker 3 (34:35):
And that's what happened.
Speaker 1 (34:39):
Jeffrey gathers himself, feeling like everything is different now that
his life has changed forever.
Speaker 5 (34:46):
I took a deep breath and I said, I'm going outside.
I'm going home. I went out at the hospital. The
police have followed me, saying no, we're going to drive
you home. Don't get on the train. And then that's
when the media got wind of who I was.
Speaker 3 (34:59):
And they come down.
Speaker 1 (35:02):
Reporters and camera crews raced from across the street.
Speaker 5 (35:04):
Fifteen twenty cameras surrounded me to the point where I
couldn't breathe, and he started asking questions, how do you
think this happened?
Speaker 3 (35:12):
Why do you think this happened? How can this happen
in city hall?
Speaker 1 (35:16):
Return to wash here and tell us that's what I'm
concerned about.
Speaker 3 (35:18):
How could this that happened in cityo?
Speaker 8 (35:20):
I'm not afraid?
Speaker 3 (35:21):
How could this have happened in city hall? Somebody tell
me that Jeffrey? Was it a coincidence? Jeffrey?
Speaker 8 (35:26):
Who did it?
Speaker 1 (35:27):
I don't know who did it.
Speaker 3 (35:28):
The system didn't.
Speaker 5 (35:30):
Must have been five or six rows of media with
the microphones and cameras talking to me, and I was
very upset, but I wanted to express myself about racism
and the system, saying the system killed him.
Speaker 3 (35:43):
Hate and this kind of hate led to his death.
Speaker 1 (35:47):
But James E. Davis was not killed by an idea.
He was shot multiple times at close range in the
balcony of the council Chamber by a man named Neil
ask You, who, for reasons unknown, very much wanted him dead.
That's next time on Rorshak Murder at City Hall. Rorshak
(36:18):
Murder at City Hall is a production of iHeart Podcasts
in partnership with Best Case Studios. It's based on Death
in the Chamber by Brent Katz. It's written and executive
produced by Brent Katz and Adam Pinkis produced by Charlotte
Morley and co produced by me Jamal Jordan, Edited and
mixed by Max Michael Miller. For this episode, Dean White
(36:38):
did additional sound sign Original music was composed by Tunday
Adavimpe and Walder Zobie. Our Chaiable producer Isabelle d'Orval, consulting
producer Amir Loomis. Development production assistance from David Michael Archiabal
content provided by Spectrum News New York One. Additional material
by ABC, CBS and Henry Goldschmidt. Our iHeart Team is
(36:59):
Ali Perry, Carl Cadel and Anna Stumph follow and Rate
Rorschach Wherever you get your podcasts
Officer Richard Burt Ritchie has been on the security detail
for Council Speaker Gifford Miller just a couple of weeks.
July twenty third is his first day protecting Miller at
a council meeting in City Hall.
Speaker 2 (00:21):
Reporters, people from the public, just people all over the place.
There was something with the Puerto Rican Day parade and
there were some young girls.
Speaker 1 (00:33):
Gifford Miller takes his place at the podium in the
council chamber. Carldialba takes lunch. The little girls from the
Puerto Rican Day Parade receive their commendation, and then we
hear a pop two eight pm. These are the actual
(00:54):
shots recorded by a video camera in the chamber.
Speaker 2 (00:58):
And then I look up and a balcony and I
see the gunman with his arm out firing a gun.
It's like WHOA. He was in a suit, his arm
was out, and I am on the chamber's floor, so.
Speaker 3 (01:14):
I'm looking up.
Speaker 2 (01:18):
I didn't see anyone else up there but him. I
guess I kind of had a tunnel vision and the
training kicked in and I took out my gun and
I aimed it, and something that we don't practice at
the range I had to aim up. I don't remember
(01:48):
seeing him fall or anything. It's just like he just disappeared.
Speaker 1 (02:00):
Forty caliber handgun was recovered in the city wall.
Speaker 3 (02:03):
Will somebody tell me that Jeffery who?
Speaker 1 (02:05):
Was it a coincidence?
Speaker 4 (02:06):
Jeffery who did it?
Speaker 5 (02:08):
There were times when I thought that he was unstable,
and there were times when I thought maybe you shouldn't
carry a gun.
Speaker 1 (02:14):
He alleged he was a victim of the flatnawn.
Speaker 6 (02:17):
This is not just killing somebody because you want de seat.
Speaker 1 (02:23):
There are times when everyone sees the same thing, the
same event, from a different perspective and understands what happened
in very different ways. They might depend on where they
were standing, or what they knew, or how they felt
about the people involved, or what they wanted to believe.
(02:44):
What happened at New York City Hall on July twenty,
two thousand and three is one of those times. I'm
Jamal Jordan. This Russhiak Councilman Peter Vlone Junior are standing
(03:09):
on the floor of the chamber about fifteen feet behind.
Officer Richie burt Bert is in plain close, not in uniform.
Speaker 7 (03:17):
I see a guy with a gun with his back
towards me, shooting up towards the balcony. I was debating
at the time whether I should make a run at
this guy. But something about Richie's mannerisms just legend believe
that this was the guy who was supposed to have
a gun and not the actual bad guy.
Speaker 1 (03:32):
I'm glad I didn't do anything stupid like tackling.
Speaker 4 (03:34):
Richie sees the guy, pulls his gun, shoots six times,
hit the guy four cons out of six.
Speaker 1 (03:40):
This is probably thirty five forty feet easy. Council speaker
Gifford Miller initially thought Richie might have shot James E.
Davis by mistake, but Richie claims that he was never
in doubt despite the distance thirty five forty feet away.
He says he would have recognized that Davis, who had
occasionally been his instructor at the police academy, and after
(04:04):
the fact, Gifford Miller is mostly shuck by how cool
Richie had stayed under pressure in a stressful situation.
Speaker 4 (04:10):
If you're like five feet from me and I try
to shoot you, I'll hit you fifty percent of the times.
Speaker 1 (04:16):
Hard to hit somebody harder than you think.
Speaker 8 (04:20):
I could see the expression of the people in the
first row, they're like jumping back because they're right there.
Speaker 1 (04:27):
Councilman Charles Barron, I don't.
Speaker 8 (04:29):
Know how the detective didn't hit anybody else, because he
had to shoot up there, and all of the folk
were behind the shooting. I think it's a miracle that
he didn't hit anybody else.
Speaker 1 (04:42):
It is nothing short of a miracle that none of
the shots hits nannocent bystander. And they may also have
been lucky that Richie Burt was newing the job, because,
as Gifford Miller understood it, a more experienced officer assigned
to executive protection would know that unless the threat is
hit the person to protect, you do not engage the shooter.
Speaker 4 (05:04):
If Richie had gone through the extensive training of how
to protect a particular principle, he probably wouldn't have shot
the sammar And if he hadn't shot be a Sandling like,
god knows what would have happened.
Speaker 1 (05:19):
The last time Gary Altman ha seen his twenty one
year old daughter Ariel, she was sitting inches from James
Davis and his guests in the balcony.
Speaker 9 (05:28):
I kept saying, my daughter's up there, or where where's
my daughter.
Speaker 1 (05:32):
I can't see her. I think my daughter's up there.
Gary rushes out of the building, hoping to find Ariel,
but he doesn't see her. He's frantic. Security lets him
back inside.
Speaker 9 (05:47):
I go back in, and I run back upstairs to
the chambers to look at I don't go to the balcony,
you know, I don't know why didn't I go look
in the balcony.
Speaker 1 (06:00):
In his phone rings.
Speaker 10 (06:06):
For whatever reason, I noticed these two guys in the row.
They were sitting to my right, like these two well
dressed guys.
Speaker 1 (06:16):
Rye al Altman is working at City Hall as a
summer intern. She doesn't recognize the man sitting amongst the
guests and staffers in the balcony. I didn't know who
James Davis was.
Speaker 10 (06:26):
Some of the other interns I was with didn't know
who he was, and they were kind of wondering why
he was up in the balcony with us.
Speaker 1 (06:31):
As the meeting is starting, the two men get up
from their seats just a few feet from where she's sitting.
Speaker 10 (06:37):
Then at one point they started walking across. As they're
walking in front of where I am, James Davis is
in front of the other guy and he just pulls
a gun out and starts shooting at him.
Speaker 1 (06:53):
The man shoots James Davis multiple times in the back.
Speaker 10 (06:58):
I had never heard gunshots. I'm definitely not close like that.
Speaker 1 (07:03):
Her first thought is that this cannot be real.
Speaker 10 (07:07):
Why is someone acting out a shooting like what's happening?
Like it just I I thought it was fake, even
though that makes no sense, But how could it be real?
And then people started running out and I followed them
and we ran down the stairs. Was he coming behind us?
I mean, the thought was he might be coming down. Also,
(07:32):
my mind went to like nine to eleven. This is
what it would have been like, like the franticness of
running out of the towers.
Speaker 1 (07:41):
On the day of the shooting, Ariel Laltman told reporters
that Neil asked you it stood about four feet from her.
She had watched as he gritted his teeth and aimed
his weapon at James Davis's back and kept firing down
at him even after James had fallen to the floor.
She described Neil as completely still, his only movement coming
(08:02):
from his trigger finger. He looks very serious, very angry.
She told reporters. He had his arm extended, just firing
and firing. Fifteen minutes after the shooting. Her ears were
still rinking from the shots. The pandemonium and the screen
(08:34):
Post reporter Frankie Edosian and several others have barricaded themselves
into a large meeting room just off the chambers.
Speaker 6 (08:42):
I called my editor just very quickly, and I said,
I don't know what's going on, but I've just witnessed
a shooting in City Hall and I think someone's dead.
Speaker 1 (08:51):
In the room with Frankie is Betsy got Bound, the
city's public advocate.
Speaker 6 (08:56):
Public advocate was the highest ranking person in that room
with us, and she began comforting everyone and telling people
everything's under control.
Speaker 3 (09:04):
The NYPDS here.
Speaker 1 (09:07):
Betsy gotbamb is in her mid sixties, just the third
woman to ever hold the position of public Advocate in
New York City. Amid the fear and the chaos, she's
a calming presence. Some of the people in the room
are clearly still in shock.
Speaker 11 (09:22):
These people were hysterical, you know, kind of on the
floor writhing. So I became very calm, very sort of
trying to help everybody. And I always carry as Brandon
Danex to my briefcase, and I just remember saying hey,
to this particular woman who was completely hysterical. Can I
(09:42):
give you something to help you? I broken and gave
it to her, and she took half. We could have
been going to jail for that, but it didn't matter.
I just remember that.
Speaker 1 (09:51):
Vividly paramedics that are out, along with more police and
swatcare in the media.
Speaker 6 (10:06):
I got to the window to look out, and of
course it was massive chaos, and I saw an ambulance
in the stretcher take somebody out.
Speaker 1 (10:14):
So put up that it was changed and people fitted weeping.
The local ABC News affiliated supporting lives filling in details
as they get them.
Speaker 12 (10:28):
Here is some of the latest information that we have
just gotten and we understand right now that Brooklyn Councilman
James Davis. Brooklyn Councilman James Davis is among one of
the two victims. He has apparently been shot twice in
the chest now. This is according to a police officer
at the scene.
Speaker 1 (10:50):
Brooklyn council Member Yvette Clark was just outside the chambers
when the shooting started. She ran out of the city
Hall building dur offices across the street. She's watching the
live coverage on local news. That's how she learns about
her good friend and colleague, James Davis.
Speaker 12 (11:06):
We have some very sad news to report. We have
just had a confirm from two sources that James Davis
has died. Brooklyn Councilman James Davis has passed away. Certainly,
this is very sad news, very devastating to family, friends,
and to all New Yorkers.
Speaker 1 (11:27):
I just cried and cried and cried, and I just,
I mean, I couldn't get it.
Speaker 13 (11:33):
Together because James and I were so very close, and
every time I hear about gun violence, I think about
James E.
Speaker 1 (11:42):
Davis.
Speaker 13 (11:43):
The type of gun violence that we've experienced in urban
settings like New York, Chicago, Detroit, all of that is
what James stood against. That's what the irony about his
death was.
Speaker 1 (12:00):
For Evet Clerk. This connection between James E. Davis and
gun violence. It isn't just because of the way he died.
Event and James are born in the same hospital around
the same time. Their parents were friends. Now they were
both part of the black political scene in central Brooklyn
and it served together on the city Council for the
(12:21):
past year and a half. Yvette knew what mattered to
James E. Davis that gun violence was his single most
important issue as a politician. That same day, James had
been planning to introduce a bill at the Stated Meeting
about violence in the workplace, but violence had found him instead.
Speaker 3 (12:55):
I was told that it was James that had been shocked.
Speaker 1 (12:58):
I don't know who told me.
Speaker 3 (13:00):
That really hurt me a.
Speaker 1 (13:01):
Lot, councilmen hiring montsrat.
Speaker 14 (13:04):
Still was wrestling with myself because literally right before he
got shot, I was talking to him. Minutes before I'm
talking to James. Inside City Hall. There's police officers, there's
metal detectors, there's.
Speaker 3 (13:19):
Undercover intel cops.
Speaker 14 (13:21):
The mayor is there, the public advocate is there, fifty
one members of the city Council. You're not gonna find
a safer place in New York City.
Speaker 1 (13:30):
Amazing.
Speaker 14 (13:37):
So I went to the hospital. I was the only
council member that I know when no one else.
Speaker 1 (13:42):
Went puns like James Davis had been a cop before
he became a council member.
Speaker 14 (13:48):
It so happens that one of the captains that was
there on the scene was a friend of mine, Captain
Freddie Maldonado. And I go up there and I said, Freddie,
what's up?
Speaker 1 (13:59):
He just shook his head.
Speaker 14 (14:01):
He says, he's gone, Iram, He's gone. I cried, and
then I asked to see James, and the captain spoke
to the doctor and they let me see him. And
there I remember the eerie sound of the unzipping of
(14:23):
the body bag, and then I saw the holes in
James's body. I think to some degree, I was still
in disbelief until I saw him.
Speaker 3 (14:35):
And then I saw him and he was gone.
Speaker 1 (14:44):
I think his mother was on the way there. I'm
not sure if his brother had even gotten there yet.
Speaker 5 (14:53):
My brother and I was doing something called Family Day
Fashion upon where we put on a fashion show in
the park.
Speaker 1 (15:01):
James Davis's brother, Jeffrey Davis, is working with an after
school program in Brooklyn, which is housed at a local
middle school in summer, and he and his brother James
are organizing events for young people in the community.
Speaker 5 (15:14):
So I was going to pick up the flies, and
I had a colleague with me, and we drove downtown lunchtime,
and when we came back to the school, all my
colleagues are in tears and they're just looking at me.
What's wrong, what's the matter? No one said anything. Tears
are rolling down David Eyes. And then one of them
said your brother, And I said, what about my brother?
Speaker 3 (15:35):
Your brother? They said, get in the car and go
to city Hall.
Speaker 1 (15:39):
Jeffrey's colleague, a young woman who had driven him to
downtown Brooklyn, offer us to take him into Manhattan.
Speaker 5 (15:45):
En route to city Hall, she turned on the radio
and I heard on the news Councilman James D. Davis
has been fatally shut.
Speaker 1 (15:54):
They're both stunned. This news has a terrible finality to it.
Jeffrey in the passenger seat, is unable to move past
one single crucial word.
Speaker 5 (16:06):
A colleague's looking at me like this, and I'm saying,
what does fatal meet?
Speaker 3 (16:09):
I'm in a pattic. What does fatal meet? When they
say fatal, what's what does fatal need?
Speaker 5 (16:15):
She didn't want to respond, and I jumped out the car.
Speaker 1 (16:22):
They're in downtown Brooklyn on a busy street, approaching the bridge.
There's traffic all around them at a standstill.
Speaker 5 (16:29):
Helicopters were overhead and people are rushing and talking, and
I was asking, cause, what does fatal mean?
Speaker 3 (16:35):
What does fatal mean?
Speaker 5 (16:36):
And these are strangers now, and I've seen the police
officer in his car and I said, I'm Jeffrey Davis.
They say something happened to my brother in city Hall.
They said, fatally shut He radioed in and said all right,
soddle me and he put the sign renes on and everything.
Speaker 1 (16:53):
With the sirens blaring. The police clear traffic out of
the way, and they raced across the bridge. But the
police car doesn't lead in the city Hall. Instead there
I've at downtown Peakman Hospital.
Speaker 5 (17:10):
When I arrived there, there was pandemonium when news cameras.
Speaker 3 (17:15):
People are in tears and crying.
Speaker 5 (17:17):
Dozens and dozens and dozens of police officers were in
the front. The bridge was closed off, the streets were
closed off.
Speaker 1 (17:24):
Helicopters across from the hospital entrance, news cameras and reporters
have assembled.
Speaker 5 (17:31):
We need thirty cameras all across the street lined up.
I paid them no mind. I just went in the hospital.
Speaker 1 (17:38):
Police and hospital staff started to lead Jeffrey to a
small room up to one side.
Speaker 5 (17:44):
They're bringing me in now, They said, this is his brother,
and right there in the lobbya.
Speaker 1 (17:49):
Collapsed James Davis is one of four siblings, but he
was always closest with this younger brother, Jeffrey.
Speaker 5 (18:03):
My brother and I were seventeen months apart, so we
were raised like twins, bump beds, same souls. That's how
they raised us, because we were that close in age.
Speaker 1 (18:15):
Jeffrey took us to where he and James grew up,
a modest four story building on Brooklyn Avenue in Crown Heights,
which I'm.
Speaker 5 (18:22):
Sure too, that's right.
Speaker 3 (18:28):
My brother lied moved to the apartment.
Speaker 5 (18:31):
This is a four family. We're downstairs in the house
plot as children. As we got older, he had his
apartment and I had mine.
Speaker 1 (18:39):
The Davis family moved here in nineteen seventy one. They
lived on the ground floor. Later, James and Jeffrey each
took apartments upstairs. In two thousand and three, they both
lived on the third floor, across the hall from one another.
Speaker 5 (18:53):
At two or three o'clock in the morning, we used
to go in the hallway and when the days so
we can always meet the middle like this and cash
out how the day went, and strategist.
Speaker 3 (19:02):
And so forth.
Speaker 1 (19:03):
It's a little Jeffrey remembers their Crown Heights neighborhood is
almost idyllic.
Speaker 5 (19:10):
We've got to experience a lot of wonderful things from
Found Heights.
Speaker 3 (19:13):
We had Easter Park with it. We have there's benches,
people playing chess and checkers. We'd walked to Kingston.
Speaker 5 (19:18):
Avenues with his restaurants ice Cream, Pallas, and then the
same thing with no Strath Avenue.
Speaker 1 (19:22):
Their father was the corrections officer. Their mother was a
nurse and politically active, taking her boys to protests and
demonstrations from an early age the Union.
Speaker 5 (19:33):
So she used to go to Washington, d C. And
bring us along five, six, seven years old at these
enormous rallies, looking observing, seeing all the posters and the signs.
So we've been around that a whole life, indirectly training us.
Speaker 1 (19:46):
Jeffrey sees these early trips as the foundation of their
political education. Particularly for James.
Speaker 3 (19:52):
It's almost like a musician.
Speaker 5 (19:53):
If the parents see that you like music, they'll bring
home the guitar, they sing my brother. They've seen in
the direction that he was going, and they just kind
of fet them along with it.
Speaker 1 (20:03):
Like this, James clearly had ambition. While he was a
student at Pace University, he qualified for the New York
Daily News Golden Gloves boxing tournament in coverage of about
the announcers are amused but also maybe a little impressed
(20:24):
that this twenty five year old believes he's bound for
high office in New York City. In the.
Speaker 14 (20:31):
Games, David.
Speaker 1 (20:37):
And Andre a terminator of polls.
Speaker 8 (20:42):
So we've got a terminator going up against the mayor
because James Davis of the gold is the youngster is
a loss students Pace University who says Sunday he wants
to be mayor.
Speaker 1 (20:54):
As time went on, James's sense of the road ahead evolved.
He saw a series of steps rising to greater and
greater heights. Jeffrey believes it to this day.
Speaker 3 (21:04):
He was definitely on his way to the White House.
Speaker 5 (21:07):
Definitely, He's gonna do the maya Congress president, definitely.
Speaker 1 (21:13):
In the late nineteen eighties, not long after that Golden
Gloves fight against Andre, terminator, Coles James opened the church
and their building on Brooklyn Avenue.
Speaker 3 (21:23):
It was an abasement of this building.
Speaker 5 (21:25):
Small ten people and some days nobody comes, and then
you can hear them. Now they're preaching to the walls
as though there was a thousand people he was preaching to.
Speaker 1 (21:33):
But for all his ambition and faith, the world around
James could be a hard place on the streets of
Brooklyn and Queens and Howard Beach and Benson Hurst, and
in Manhattan. New York City simmers with racial tension. A
young black man is beaten to death by a bob.
A black teen is shot by the NYPD. Five high
(21:53):
school students are arrested and prosecuted for assaulting a white
woman in Central Park. They're innocent, but it only comes
out much later. James gets his own personal education. One
evening on the street in front of his house.
Speaker 5 (22:15):
My mom's car was right in front of the door,
and at that time my brother was in the ministry.
He went outside with a couple of parishioners to get
in the car, and about three or four patrol cars
pulled up on them very aggressively, and you know, freeze
and took the guns out.
Speaker 15 (22:33):
I was a victim of police brutality, and right in
front of the house.
Speaker 1 (22:36):
That's James Davis. He spoke about the experience the writer
Henry Goldschmid in nineteen ninety seven.
Speaker 15 (22:41):
You know, two white cops assumed that I was still
in my mother's car. They'd seen it was a Jewish neighborhood,
and they seen me as a black man, and they
put guns at my head and slammed my head on
the back of the police car.
Speaker 1 (22:51):
The family seeds was happening and rushes outside.
Speaker 3 (22:55):
I came running out, my mother, my father became running.
Speaker 5 (22:57):
Out to the door to tell cops that this is
cluck and we were trying to tell him, and they
wrestled meat down and get back freeze.
Speaker 1 (23:05):
James is arrested.
Speaker 5 (23:08):
They drove him down to the seventy first precinct there
in Crown Heights on Empire Boulevard. Ultimately they did the
had check and everything and seeing that it was my
mother's car, and they let him go.
Speaker 3 (23:16):
But it was humiliating and embarrassing for a young minister.
Speaker 5 (23:22):
He was very upset, very angry, and terrified all at
the same time.
Speaker 3 (23:27):
We come from a good family.
Speaker 5 (23:29):
Remember this as a middle class community, so the neighbors
are looking and it was a complete embarrassment.
Speaker 1 (23:40):
But James found a way to reframe this incident for himself.
Speaker 15 (23:44):
I took him negative and turned it into a positive.
I became a police officer and became a police academy
instructor and trained those cops kids that did that incident.
Speaker 1 (23:52):
To me, He's told Draftgar that he would find a
way into power in the city and do something good
with it.
Speaker 5 (24:00):
He said, I want to become a police officer to
make change within the police department.
Speaker 16 (24:08):
I met him April thirtieth, nineteen ninety one.
Speaker 1 (24:12):
Lloyd Pipersburg is James Davis's the former partner on the
force and a friend. He came up to me, extended
his hand and I was.
Speaker 16 (24:22):
Kind of taken aback, but he had a bright smile
and he goes, I am James E.
Speaker 1 (24:27):
Davis. And if you know James, you know he always
put the stress on the e. James had been a
corrections officer Mirkers Island, New York City's largest jail, but
it didn't feel like the right place for him. He
wanted to reach table before they ended up behind bars.
He wanted to be out in the streets. He met
(24:47):
Lloyd when they were both students at the Police Academy.
After graduation, the Police Department gave them their first posts
was showing off. We were signed to the same place.
Transit District thirty two.
Speaker 16 (25:00):
District thirty two is located on Franklin Avenue in Eastern Parkway.
Speaker 1 (25:06):
This is James's own neighborhood, Crown Heights. You've never lived
dash far outside the patrol area half a block.
Speaker 17 (25:14):
Yeah, there were sounds on patrol.
Speaker 1 (25:16):
You go check on his mother. As a transit cop,
he was assigned to a subway line that he and
his new partner, Lloyd Pipersburg, who James nickname Pipes, would
ride all night.
Speaker 16 (25:27):
This is eight pm to four am. So you got
some serious news riding the trains. James's fears you'd approach them.
You guys, what saw man, It's just the way he
came at them. You let him know I can't speak
your language.
Speaker 1 (25:43):
Often.
Speaker 16 (25:43):
I'm gonna admit I was a little bit uncomfortable with say,
but I watched the worker's magic so often that I
just came to realize, dude, this is his gift.
Speaker 1 (25:53):
They also patrol the streets that run under the elevated
tracks of their train line.
Speaker 16 (25:59):
One day, we're in the we're here over the radio.
They had been a stabbing and James looks at the
angoes Pipes, let's go, And I'm like, but James, we
were assigned to here.
Speaker 1 (26:08):
You know, we have to stay under the two in
the three line. James convinced his Pipes to leave their
post and try to find the assailant with the knife.
They drive slowly around the neighborhood, further and further from
their assigned route, and the description of the guy comes
over radio. James says, BOYD, look that's him.
Speaker 16 (26:28):
So we jumped out showing us we find a knife
in his pocket. James was like, we got a colu man,
we got a collar, and I was like, we're off post.
Speaker 1 (26:40):
So we put it over the air and some units arrived.
I was like, you guys, you can take it to
the guy.
Speaker 3 (26:47):
This is the knife.
Speaker 1 (26:47):
There's no reason for transit coup to have been out there.
If James had wanted the glory, if making this first
big arrest, his partner was not going to bend the
rules to get it.
Speaker 16 (26:58):
We get back into the car and James did not
speak to me for probably four days.
Speaker 1 (27:05):
He was infurious with me.
Speaker 17 (27:09):
And when we started talking again, it says to me,
your pipes the job will have explained us being there.
I've come to know after thirty four years of service.
He was absolutely right. You do something heroic like that
and the details is irrelevant at that point.
Speaker 6 (27:29):
You know.
Speaker 1 (27:46):
When Llurid Pipersberg hears about the shooting over the police radio,
he rushes over the city Hall. He flashes his badge
and starts talking to a cop outside the gates, and.
Speaker 18 (27:58):
The cops just started talking and it's like a faucet
and he's saying, yeah, there was a shooting and the
chambers and a lot of kids worked there. I think
the two or three people got hip and the councilman
was one of them.
Speaker 16 (28:12):
Mike just started to feel tight because I didn't hear
what I wanted to hear, which was there was a
shooting and James E. Davis took the die out. He
then told me that they were still looking for the shooter.
And he looked at me and he goes, you're gonna
ring thevests, are you? The thing that stuck in my
mind was did he just say the shooters on the loose.
Speaker 12 (28:33):
Possible shooter going into the train station I'm assuming as
the train station, the hole on the City Hall st.
Speaker 10 (28:40):
On Broadway or possibly on the chamber of street.
Speaker 1 (28:43):
Shot by the day and Lloyd is now a plain
clothes pop working for the police Commissioner. He hardly ever
wears the bullet professed he was trying to suggest you
maybe need to get stop. But at this point I
was angry and my thoughts in my mind was I
don't need to be careful for him. He needs to
be careful for me.
Speaker 3 (29:03):
You know, maybe surely he.
Speaker 1 (29:04):
Isn't over yet.
Speaker 16 (29:07):
I asked when we Senior James this condition, and he
said he didn't. But they did take him out of
here in the ambulance and he didn't look too good
to him.
Speaker 1 (29:16):
Lloyd rogester Beakman Hospital. On his way there, the lieutenant calls.
Speaker 16 (29:22):
He says to me, very compassionately, I pre sure if
you don't go in until I get there.
Speaker 1 (29:29):
The lieutenant's call confirms that Lloyd is already feeling it's bad.
Outside the hospital, cameras and police are everywhere. The lieutenant
arrives and they head in together. I'm escorted into the er.
Speaker 16 (29:48):
Lieutenant says to me, we're going to pass your friend's body.
Do not look at him, and I said, okay. So
this day I regret that I listened. I wish I
would have looked, but I think they didn't want me
to be traumatized because this is just a shooting victim.
This is my friend. But in my partial vision I
could see him there. So we passed him and people
(30:11):
are crying and everything else councilman Larry C. Brook is
also at Beacon Hospital. He was in the chamber when
the shots went off. He's with another council member, Maria Bias,
was hyperventilating.
Speaker 19 (30:24):
Maria Bias, she just couldn't take it. So afterwards he
asked me to go with it to the hospital.
Speaker 1 (30:31):
There he sees James Davis's.
Speaker 20 (30:34):
Mother, Elma Elma Davis, when she came running into the hospital,
and she looked at me because she knew me, and
I just had to kind of like.
Speaker 19 (30:49):
Turn away because I didn't want to be the one
to tell her because she said it went and I
just I was I couldn't do it.
Speaker 16 (31:05):
People asking with's Jeffrey is Jeffrey on the way that
type of thing, and the office sudden he was there
in the greeting room and he has his hands almost
like he's wringing his answers that he's about to lay
down on anoleum or something. And he goes, all right,
so what do we got here? And he's wringing his
(31:26):
hands and the answer.
Speaker 21 (31:28):
Was obvious, but no one could actually say anything the
way he asks the question. At that moment, I had
realized just how much like his brother he was in
terms of his presence. He's not a huge man, but
he commands a room.
Speaker 16 (31:45):
So when no one answered him, he got a little
perturbed and he goes, so what do we got here?
Speaker 1 (31:52):
I'm looking right at him at this point, watching the
change come over him.
Speaker 16 (31:57):
It was like the storm clouds gathering, and he goes,
what the fuck is going on here?
Speaker 3 (32:02):
Huh?
Speaker 16 (32:03):
And then he starts to really loosen, So what the
fuck is going on? And his arms are in the
air and several people rush to kind of restrain him.
Speaker 5 (32:14):
I said, I want to see him, and they said no,
and I said I want to see him. So now
my boy said by and I'm yelling I want to
see him like this, wail my brother.
Speaker 1 (32:22):
He is furious, Why appen to my brother? Why appen
to my brother? He gets so out of control.
Speaker 3 (32:27):
The Moncena Vermano has to.
Speaker 16 (32:29):
Grab him from the back, which is arm reached around
his chest to restrain him because it oklay Jefferson, So
I hit any people?
Speaker 1 (32:36):
Monsignor Robert Vermano is a chaplain for the New York
City Police Department. He's a big man, a barrel, chesty,
priesty guy. Looked like he could have been a boxer
or football player. He just held Jeffrey. He saved him
from behind on a bear hug.
Speaker 16 (32:52):
And there was this police officer in uniform standing behind
the chaplain.
Speaker 1 (32:55):
So Jeffrey is wriggling out.
Speaker 22 (32:58):
He gets his hand free and he jabs his finger
into the CoP's chests, right beside his shield, and he goes,
how the hell could this happen with you right there,
you mother suckers?
Speaker 3 (33:09):
Well how.
Speaker 1 (33:13):
In this crowded room full of chaos and grief, Jeffrey
spots his brother's old partner.
Speaker 16 (33:19):
Jeffrey looks at me and he goes, oh, Pipes is here. Okay,
all right, Pipes is here, and he founds right down.
It was the weirdest thing. It was like he thought
that someone on his side was there.
Speaker 1 (33:35):
The hospital staff lead Jeffrey into a small room off
the lobby.
Speaker 5 (33:40):
My mother was there ready, but I just looked into
the eyes and I said, where is he? And they
said you can't see him, the police officers and then
doctors and so far.
Speaker 3 (33:48):
I said, I want to see him.
Speaker 1 (33:49):
Jeffrey is told to wait with his mother. A few
minutes pass, and then a hospital staffer returns and takes
him back to the er to see his brother, James E.
Davis is laid out on a gurney.
Speaker 5 (34:05):
He had the what's the name in his mouth, the
thing that you do oxygen with, and he just got
to hear cuts.
Speaker 3 (34:10):
He was clean, and I went and I talked to him.
Speaker 5 (34:12):
I rubbed us here yet good, here waves and I said,
you and I spoke about these days, the possibility of
this happening, and for me to continue with the message
and to continue to.
Speaker 11 (34:26):
Go off.
Speaker 1 (34:28):
Even now, more than twenty years after this day. Jeffrey
breaks down as he remembers it.
Speaker 3 (34:35):
And that's what happened.
Speaker 1 (34:39):
Jeffrey gathers himself, feeling like everything is different now that
his life has changed forever.
Speaker 5 (34:46):
I took a deep breath and I said, I'm going outside.
I'm going home. I went out at the hospital. The
police have followed me, saying no, we're going to drive
you home. Don't get on the train. And then that's
when the media got wind of who I was.
Speaker 3 (34:59):
And they come down.
Speaker 1 (35:02):
Reporters and camera crews raced from across the street.
Speaker 5 (35:04):
Fifteen twenty cameras surrounded me to the point where I
couldn't breathe, and he started asking questions, how do you
think this happened?
Speaker 3 (35:12):
Why do you think this happened? How can this happen
in city hall?
Speaker 1 (35:16):
Return to wash here and tell us that's what I'm
concerned about.
Speaker 3 (35:18):
How could this that happened in cityo?
Speaker 8 (35:20):
I'm not afraid?
Speaker 3 (35:21):
How could this have happened in city hall? Somebody tell
me that Jeffrey? Was it a coincidence? Jeffrey?
Speaker 8 (35:26):
Who did it?
Speaker 1 (35:27):
I don't know who did it.
Speaker 3 (35:28):
The system didn't.
Speaker 5 (35:30):
Must have been five or six rows of media with
the microphones and cameras talking to me, and I was
very upset, but I wanted to express myself about racism
and the system, saying the system killed him.
Speaker 3 (35:43):
Hate and this kind of hate led to his death.
Speaker 1 (35:47):
But James E. Davis was not killed by an idea.
He was shot multiple times at close range in the
balcony of the council Chamber by a man named Neil
ask You, who, for reasons unknown, very much wanted him dead.
That's next time on Rorshak Murder at City Hall. Rorshak
(36:18):
Murder at City Hall is a production of iHeart Podcasts
in partnership with Best Case Studios. It's based on Death
in the Chamber by Brent Katz. It's written and executive
produced by Brent Katz and Adam Pinkis produced by Charlotte
Morley and co produced by me Jamal Jordan, Edited and
mixed by Max Michael Miller. For this episode, Dean White
(36:38):
did additional sound sign Original music was composed by Tunday
Adavimpe and Walder Zobie. Our Chaiable producer Isabelle d'Orval, consulting
producer Amir Loomis. Development production assistance from David Michael Archiabal
content provided by Spectrum News New York One. Additional material
by ABC, CBS and Henry Goldschmidt. Our iHeart Team is
(36:59):
Ali Perry, Carl Cadel and Anna Stumph follow and Rate
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