February 19, 2025 • 31 mins
In this episode of Zone 7, Crime Scene Investigator, Sheryl McCollum, sits down with retired detective Ralph Friedman, a legendary figure in law enforcement with over 2,000 arrests and 15 shootouts to his name. Ralph shares his unexpected journey into the police force and his experiences in the infamous 41st precinct, known as "Fort Apache." Ralph describes the undercover operations using taxi cabs and milk trucks to a life-threatening shootout in a darkened apartment. He also shares the wisdom gained from life-or-death encounters, the lessons that changed police protocol forever.
Ralph Friedman is the most decorated detective in NYPD history, with 2,000 arrests and 219 medals to his name. He is the author of Street Warrior: The True Story of NYPD’s Most Decorated Detective and the Era That Created Him and was featured in the television series Street Justice: The Bronx.
Listeners can learn more about Ralph Friedman at his website, on IG @bronxstreetwarrior
Street Warrior: The True Story of NYPD’s Most Decorated Detective and the Era That Created Him
Show Notes:
- (0:00) Welcome back to Zone 7 with Crime Scene Investigator, Sheryl McCollum
- (0:10) Sheryl introduces guest, retired N.Y.P.D detective Ralph Freeman
- (2:00) How a spontaneous decision led to a legendary career
- (4:00) Ralph’s first encounter with a police officer shooting
- (6:00) A detective’s death changes police protocol forever
- (7:00) Using taxis, milk trucks, and even a Harley to catch criminals
- (12:30) The brotherhood of the NYPD
- (16:00) Saving a partner’s life
- (17:00) ”The other side of the coin is that, if you're taking a life, you're definitely saving at least one life.”
- (19:30) Near-death encounters
- (22:00) Unexpected career-ending incident
- (24:30) The most gangster thing detective Ralph ever did
- (25:45) A gun deal turns into a deadly rooftop shootout
- (31:00) “ The rush is worth the risk.” -R.Freeman’s back tattoo
- Thanks for listening to another episode! If you’re loving the show and want to help grow the show, please head over to Itunes and leave a rating and review!
---
Sheryl “Mac” McCollum is an Emmy Award winning CSI, a writer for CrimeOnLine, Forensic and Crime Scene Expert for Crime Stories with Nancy Grace, and a CSI for a metro Atlanta Police Department. She is the co-author of the textbook., Cold Case: Pathways to Justice. Sheryl is also the founder and director of the Cold Case Investigative Research Institute, a collaboration between universities and colleges that brings researchers, practitioners, students and the criminal justice community together to advance techniques in solving cold cases and assist families and law enforcement with solvability factors for unsolved homicides, missing persons, and kidnapping cases.
Social Links:
- Email: coldcase2004@gmail.com
- Twitter: @ColdCaseTips
- Facebook: @sheryl.mccollum
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:08):
We have with us the most decorated detective in the
history of the NYPD, retired Detective Ralph Freeman, has over
two thousand arrests, six thousand assists. One hundred of those
arrests were off duty. He's been involved in fifteen shootouts.
(00:30):
He has protected the lives of innocent people eight separate times, four.
Speaker 2 (00:36):
Of them fatally.
Speaker 1 (00:38):
He has been awarded two hundred and nineteen medals, y'all.
He's gained other awards and commendations and certificates.
Speaker 2 (00:51):
I don't even know how many.
Speaker 1 (00:52):
He was part of the Bronx for to one, for Apache, y'all.
Speaker 2 (00:57):
Welcome to Zone seven.
Speaker 3 (01:00):
Thank you, thank you for having me show.
Speaker 1 (01:02):
When I watched the series Street Justice, the Bronx, I mean,
this is your career. These are your cases, your area,
your zone, your people, and it is unbelievable, not just
for Depache, but when everybody says, hey, you know he
worked in the murder capital at the time, he worked
(01:23):
in a war zone, the toughest just area of New York,
a hellhole. Tell us just kind of a little bit
about how you got started and what your thoughts were
when you first rolled into the four to one.
Speaker 3 (01:40):
Well, I never thought of becoming a police officer. It
was just a fluke in those years. Back in the
late sixties, there was a walking test. You didn't have
to file first or anything like that. And I was
out with a few friends on a Friday night and
they said, oh, what are you doing tomorrow And they said, oh,
we're taking the test police department. I said, you kidding me.
(02:02):
I never thought of it, had any interaction, had no
family that were police officers. And I said, well, knock
on my door. If I wake up, i'll go, and
they did knock on my door. I took the test,
I did well in it, and they called me a
few months later, and I was too young to become
a cop, but I took the job as a civilian
(02:25):
police employee, working indoors for two years, and then I
graduated the police academy at the end of the two years.
It was a four month academy, and I got assigned
to the forty first Precinct, which had a really wild
reputation back then because, like as you said, it was
the murder capital of the world. It was the worst
(02:47):
precinct in the United States. And I had mixed feelings
because I was excited about coming on the job, and
I didn't want to go to a place where there
was action. Grew up in the Bronx, but not that
side of the Bronx, and it was when I got
on the streets to see the violence and the disregard
(03:09):
for human life, and the poverty and the drugs. It
was a rude awakening, you know, to say the least.
But I worked with the cops there are so seasoned
and so professional, and you learn so much on the street,
you know, other than what you learned in the academy.
And I just took a liking to it. I enjoyed
(03:32):
helping people and taking violent criminals off the street, and
it was just great. I enjoyed it, ate it up
and he gave me like an adrenaline rush that lasted
for fourteen years.
Speaker 1 (03:48):
Speaking of adrenaline, even when you're working the front desk,
gunfire erupts inside the police station.
Speaker 3 (03:57):
Yeah, that was a very sad story of a detective
lost his life there. I was doing station house security
as a rookie, and I was indoors in uniform that
night and I hear a gun shots. I race upstairs
and a suspect was being fingerprinted by a detective, and
(04:18):
somehow he managed to grab the detective's gun out of
his waist and shot the detective with it, and the
other detectives in the office responded by firing at the perpetrator,
killing him, but the detective lost his life. And I
knew the detective. He was very helpful and stuff. And
(04:39):
that was the first time I saw an officer shot
or killed, and it was terrible, and I did see
many more after that, but that was my indoctrination to it.
Speaker 2 (04:53):
And it was your friend.
Speaker 3 (04:55):
Yeah, I knew him. I knew he tried to help
me a lot. He helped me a lot of times
when I came in with a you know, he was
one of the detectives that were very helpful to the
rookies and you know, explain to us, you know, how
to proceed with an arrest procedure.
Speaker 1 (05:10):
And as a matter of fact, he was coming back
to you after you franker printed the perpetrator to help
you with some paperwork, right.
Speaker 3 (05:16):
Yeah, he was going to help me later. Also to note,
after that incident, it became a very strict rule that
no officer or a detective whatever process a prisoner with
a gun on you had a secure your weapon before processing.
But that was the incident that instituted that rule in
(05:39):
the police department, and I think it's in many other
police apartments also.
Speaker 2 (05:44):
It's that way in my department right now today.
Speaker 3 (05:47):
Yeah, you see, I think it's spread across the whole country.
You know, when you're handling a prisoner, because you when
your fingerprinting or doing paperwork or on the phone, it
leaves you too vulnerable and this way the perpetrator has
no way of getting to your weapon.
Speaker 1 (06:04):
Now, you did something brilliant when you moved into anti
crime working plane clothes.
Speaker 2 (06:11):
You drove a cab.
Speaker 3 (06:12):
We drove a lot of vehicles, but we were driving
a cab. We drove milk trucks, we used corn d trucks,
We took very unsuspecting vehicles out of the impound. We
had a large array of vehicles we could use, plus
our own vehicles were authorized.
Speaker 1 (06:30):
Well, I was getting to that because the thing about
the cab that I thought was just so genius. You
want to talk about blending in. I mean, nobody would
look at you twice, not even a tourist, not a
local nobody.
Speaker 3 (06:43):
Well, that's why we use those kind of vehicles because
the unmarked apartment cause assigned to each precinct. After a while,
they get to be known, you know. So we had
we were lucky in those years to have access to
a lot of vehicles, and we really used vehicles that
were definitely blended in. I even at one point and
(07:05):
when I was a detective later on, I even used
my Holiy Davison motorcycle a couple of times. You know
it just you know, we just really want to blend
in and become part of the scenery so you could
see a crime in progress. That was our purpose, so
for obvious reasons. First we could interrupt the crime and
(07:25):
we have better witnesses and a victim, and we could
have a better chance of testifying better and putting a
perpetrator away for a longer time.
Speaker 1 (07:35):
And you're right about the undercover cars being known on
the street pretty quick. My agency, we dropped a Bate
car once we thought it looked great. We thought they
were going to come and try to steal the car
and we're going to be able to catch them. They
took pictures of it and put it on social media.
Speaker 3 (07:52):
Well they couldn't do that to us. His phones weren't
invented yet, right, I mean, well the technology that would
be a problem.
Speaker 2 (08:01):
Oh yeah, word got out quick.
Speaker 3 (08:03):
But we didn't even have cell phones yet or beepers,
computer is we had nothing back then. You only had
your gun, your nightstick, and your wits and.
Speaker 2 (08:13):
Your wits right on. Now you talked about sometimes when
all the fool cars were taken, y'all might have to
use your own vehicle.
Speaker 3 (08:23):
Yeah, we always had our own vehicles registered for use
with the police department. They would authorize it if you
submitted the right paperwork, and that was another way of blending.
Speaker 1 (08:33):
And also, well there was one night your partner y'all
took his VW bug and y'all were just patrolling. But
y'all got to call out and you were closer than
anybody else.
Speaker 3 (08:45):
What happened there, Well, I was in court that day
and this other office of cal Unga he was in
court that day, and we got back early and we
were in the same unit, but we weren't direct partners.
But since we were both back at approximately the same time,
the boss at the time, the supervisor, put us together
(09:06):
and said, you work as a unit. So we went
out and we got this call as you said it
was a burglary in progress call, and we got there first.
We answered as we were going to back up the
uniform offices, and we got there first, and as we
were getting there, the call change from a burglary to
(09:30):
a girl calling for help. So now this is more
like a home invasion type of thing, or a burglary.
That a person is home makes it a little more serious.
So we get up there. It was a walk up.
We get up to the top floor and we saw
the door broken into and we hear a girl screaming inside.
(09:51):
So it was two o'clock in the afternoon, and we
proceeded into the apartment and it was pitch black. They
had curtains and call board and blankets covering windows and everything.
Couldn't see anything, even though it was two o'clock in
the afternoon and sunny out. So we proceed into the
apartment and we couldn't see our way, but we heard
the girl screaming from the rear, so we started proceeding
(10:15):
that way, and right when we got near the doorway,
it was like a living room, then a hallway and
a bedroom off to the right, which we later learned
a perpetrator male perpetrator jumped out of the back room,
was approximately three feet away from us and open fire
in this hallway, directly at us. My partner got hit
(10:39):
right away, and we were turning fire, and I see
my partner going down, and I see all the motor
flashes in front of me. We were shoulder and shoulder,
but the grace of God, I didn't get hit, and
I returned fire, and then the perpetrator ran into me,
and I still had one round left, and out of
(11:00):
the sixth round we had revolvers then and I fired
my last round. My gun pressed against him, killing him
right there, and then I ran to my pondners a
He was bleeding very bad, and by then the apartment
was being flooded my officers who were responding from their
first job. And I picked up the radio because my
pondner had it, and I called in an officer shot
(11:23):
ten thirteen, which means we have a problem, we need
help immediately, and I added that my pond was shot.
So the response was tremendous and we couldn't even wait
for an ambulance. We lifted and up, carried him down
the stairs, got him into a radio car, and they
erased him to the hospital. There was so many radio
(11:44):
cars on the scene in the Sall Street that when
they got him into the car, we couldn't get out.
I wasn't in the car. I had to stay on
the scene because bosses were responding and I had explained
to you know, supervisor, is what occurred, and they had
a jump into cars to push him out of their way. Meanwhile,
they were notifying highway patrol units to block every intersection
(12:07):
so the radio car could race through and get him
to the hospital, which saved his life because you know
me and moments he was losing so much blood. And
during the surgery he he was hit six times. Seven times.
Two were ricochets, one in his arm and one in
his back that were pulled out easy with tweezers because
(12:29):
of the ricochetes in this hallway. But he took five
direct hits and one was in the sack that holds
fluid under the heart. And he took seventy two pints
of blood in three hours, which was a medical record
at the time.
Speaker 2 (12:44):
Right, And where did all that blood come from?
Speaker 3 (12:47):
It was donated by the hospital. Had some blood on hand.
But when any time a police officer gets shot, some
hundreds and hundreds of officers respond to the hospital, and
they were all willing to eate blood immediately. Absolutely in
these in these cases back in the seventies and eighties,
even doctors and nurses would give blood, but officers would
(13:11):
line up. They couldn't even get a little blood. That
officers are.
Speaker 1 (13:14):
Willing to give, And that, to me is such a
powerful part of the story because not only did all
of y'all show up, you just started rolling up your
sleeves whatever he needed.
Speaker 3 (13:30):
Absolutely that still occurs today. You know, the camaraderie is tremendous.
And I can't really speak for other departments, but I'm
sure it's like that there too. I only worked in
the NYPD, but it's always been like that. You know,
every every month and year, all the time, you know,
(13:52):
go forbid any officer or a detective get shot. There's
hundreds and literally hundreds, because you know, the New York
City Police Apartment, there's thousands of guys working at one time,
and it's like a thirty five thousand member force, So
you'll get hundreds of officers ready to donate at any time.
That's one of the things I love about the police
(14:14):
department and the whole. You know, police community is the
camaraderie that there is in good times and bad times.
Speaker 2 (14:21):
Agreed.
Speaker 1 (14:22):
You know, I have a sister that's a Level one
trauma nurse at our largest hospital in Atlanta. But you
know that's something she always comments own if an officer
is shot the line of duty or injured, how many
police officers just converge on the hospital.
Speaker 3 (14:36):
Yeah, not only police officers, but we get you know,
other departments and agencies also, if there's any FEDS working
there or well now Homeland Security and Corrections and housing
and transit and every agency, they all respond.
Speaker 1 (14:56):
In this incident, I tell you something that kind of
was wonderful, and it also kind of bothered me just
a little bit that here you're Russian. To save your
friend's life, y'all, don't even wait for an ambulance.
Speaker 2 (15:09):
You have to stay on the scene. But as soon
as your cut loose, you head straight to the hospital.
That's right.
Speaker 1 (15:16):
But somebody stops you because they want you to talk
to the media.
Speaker 2 (15:21):
Who stopped you?
Speaker 3 (15:22):
Well, I was in the hospital already, but then the
bosses said that the mayor in New York wanted to
speak to me because they've going to hold a press
conference in the hospital at the time. It was May
and Lindsay and they flew him by police helicopter and
they landed on the street outside the hospital and he
came up and spoke to me. Wanted to see how
(15:45):
I was and how my partner was, and he was
very sincere and asked if he could help and anything.
I just wanted to know how my partner was, and
he sent somebody to find out and he was very concerned.
Speaker 2 (15:59):
How did you do I mean, was that your first
press conference? I know you gave.
Speaker 3 (16:04):
First conference, but it was the second time I was
involved in a shooting. I that was the first time
I had to kill a perpetrator in the line of duty.
I went on to kill three more, but I shot
the guy before that, and I shot several guys after that.
You know, I was involved in fifteen shootings, thirteen of
(16:28):
them with perpetrators. Two I had to shoot attack dogs
at the time. But I wound up shooting eight people,
killing four of them in the line of duty. It's
not something you plan on. These are things that happened
in the flash of a second. And also the other
side of that coin, if I wasn't justified in doing that,
(16:49):
I'd be arrested. They investigated very thoroughly. And the other
side of the coin is that you're if you're taking
a life, you're definitely saving at least one life, you know,
either your own or your partners or civilians. But sometimes
these are actions that you have to take. These are
actions you're trained for and you're supposed to be ready
for while you're working, and you never know when it's
(17:12):
going to occur. And most of the time it's always
the perpetrator decides this, not the officer. It's their reaction.
It's their their actions that cause our reactions. You know,
if the guys, if I tell someone they're under arrest
and they go peacefully, they get coughed and processed. But
if they decide to fight me, I have to fight back.
(17:32):
If they try to stab me or shoot me, I
have to use deadly physical force to save myself or
my partner. It's really there. They make the decisions, we
only react.
Speaker 2 (17:43):
Do you still carry the six shot?
Speaker 3 (17:45):
Cold? Don't carry revolvers? Always a cult six shot, you know,
because the Yes and the Smith and Wessons are a
five shot. You know, it's the same frame, but you
got an extra shot. I never understood why somebody always
got the smith the Wessons, so I always went with
the colts that have the extra round.
Speaker 1 (18:03):
Well, you know, I think of you every time I
hear somebody talk about it, you know, an ankle holster,
because you know the old saying you're never off duty.
Well you proved that with all the arrest that you
made off duty. But I'm gonna tell you you're never retired.
Tell everybody you stop to stab in twenty years.
Speaker 3 (18:22):
Ago, Yes, I did on the street. I was in
Manhattan and I saw a commotion across the street. I
go over and the guy was stabbing a guy, and
I pulled my weapon and stop them from killing the guy.
Speaker 2 (18:36):
I mean, that's unbelievable.
Speaker 3 (18:38):
Well, I would still take action to help somebody, not
like kind of a minor thing, but if it was
someone's life, I would definitely step in. You know, I
guess you know just built that way, or a train
that way, or the mindset that way that you know,
I couldn't let somebody, an innocent victim, get hurt if
I could prevent it or stop it from getting worse.
Speaker 1 (19:01):
And you know, when you talk about legends, you give
some tricks of the trade, and you talk about when
you're taking cover behind a car, what should you always
make sure?
Speaker 3 (19:13):
Well, if you can, the best thing to do is
go behind the wheel, because we had incidents in the
New York City Police Department where perpetrators fired under the car.
It with ricochet and hit offices in the ankles. You
know the BLA, which was the Black Black Liberation Army
back in the seventies. A couple of times they sprayed
machine gun fire on the cause. So we learned from
(19:37):
these experiences to try to get behind the wheel when
you go behind the car, because the wheel protect your
ankles and your feed. YEP.
Speaker 2 (19:47):
I just want rookies to hear it. I want it
out there so they're aware.
Speaker 3 (19:52):
Another thing I learned. I learned that when you see
on TV and in the movies all the time, offices
go into a a darkened area with a flashlight and
they hold it out in front of their gun. You know.
I never really understood that because I had an incident
where I went into a dark building by myself once
(20:12):
because I was with two other partners and we saw
three guys on the street and they looked suspicious and
everything and my partners. We got out of the car
and all three took off in different directions. So each
of my partners went after one guy. I went after another.
And my guy ran into a building right and I
(20:33):
was going in the building, and I had my flashlight
out to my left, but I had my arm extended,
not like you see in the movies, under the gun
in front of you. The guy fired at the flashlight,
and I heard the bullet whizz by me, but he
was aiming at the light. I saw the muzzle flash.
I fired at the muzzle flash and hit him, you know,
(20:56):
but he got away. Believe it or not, but be came.
The emergency service units responded. They lit up the place
like it was two o'clock on the sunny August day.
And when I shot him, there was a trail of
blood leading out, and we found the gun. He had
spent round and the gun was on the floor. But
(21:18):
he got away. Somehow. We never caught that guy. But
that was another trick, you know, with the gun extended out,
not under your gun in front of you. But I
think that saved my life.
Speaker 1 (21:28):
You know, your book shows a side of you that
is not expected. With all the arrest and shootouts and
rapes and robberies and death that you have witnessed. Detective,
you are compassionate, You're Karen, you value life, and you're funny.
Speaker 3 (21:50):
That's pretty fun.
Speaker 2 (21:51):
But okay, yeah it's true. And I just want everybody
to know.
Speaker 3 (21:55):
I just try my best, just like any other officer
of offices out there, trying to do the right thing.
And I think they believe in the same way I do.
Speaker 2 (22:07):
Agreed.
Speaker 1 (22:08):
But the name of the book for everybody is Street Warrior,
the true story of NYPD's most decorated detective and the
era that created him. And in that book, when you're
talking about situational awareness, and you know, you give lots
of great examples, you tell lots of stories, but you
(22:29):
did not get out of this thing without injury yourself.
You have been stabbed, you have broken your hand twice,
You've had a fractured skull, you got smashed over the
head with a tire iron.
Speaker 3 (22:44):
Yeah, that's these things come with the territory. You know,
if you're going to be active, you're going to you know,
run into all course old types of things over the
course of the years. And the ironic thing about my
injuries last one, I broke twenty three bones. I shatted
my right hip, and I broke my pelvic left, right,
(23:06):
and upper and lower not counting things. I caught in
the hospital, wound up in the hospital for three months.
And the ironic thing about that was it was an accident,
but it was caused by the police department. I got hit.
I was in an unmarked car and I got hit
by a police car going to the same emergency. Oh gosh,
(23:28):
that was a real twist that ended my career. At
the time, I just got back from a motorcycle trip.
Because I used to do most of the driving in
the police car in the unmarked cars too, and because
I enjoyed driving. But I just got back from a
motorcycle trip in Virginia Beach. From Virginia Beach, and I
(23:49):
was still like vibrating and stuff. So I told my
partner to drive, not that it was his fault, but
this is what happened, and we got a t bone
that I was in the passenger seat, and that ended
my career. You know, all the perpetrators that I faced
and fought and shot it out with, I wound up
getting hurt. You know, police crashed my police.
Speaker 1 (24:12):
I want to talk about the most gangster thing you did.
And if you want me to cut this part, I'll
cut it. But it's the truth, y'all.
Speaker 2 (24:21):
Listen to me.
Speaker 1 (24:23):
At one time, the good detective here was dating eight
women at a time.
Speaker 3 (24:29):
And it was seven.
Speaker 2 (24:32):
Okay, it was seven.
Speaker 1 (24:35):
And he gets hurt and he gets he's unconscious when
he comes to, all seven women are surrounding his bed
and tell him what you did.
Speaker 3 (24:49):
I just made like I passed out again. I just
made like I passed out from the drums I was on.
Speaker 1 (25:00):
I love that.
Speaker 2 (25:01):
I love that. It makes me laugh.
Speaker 1 (25:04):
Oh my gosh every time I think about it. Just
the scene and you're again, even though you were on
some painkiller.
Speaker 2 (25:11):
The quick thinking. Oh I'm passed out again. That was
quick thinking. Now. Is there any story.
Speaker 1 (25:20):
That you want to tell that I have not talked
about or even new to ashk you.
Speaker 3 (25:25):
Maybe I'll tell you. One time I was out on
patrol with my partner and we ran into what they
call a purse snatch, where a guy snatches a girl's
bag or a woman's bag runs away.
Speaker 2 (25:37):
Uh.
Speaker 3 (25:38):
It's on the border sometimes of a robbery or a
grand loss. It depending if she struggled and he fought
with her, but anyway we saw it, we chased the guy.
We caught the guy and locked him up, and I
was going to process the arrest and my partner went
home because it ran into the overtime. So it was
my arrest. So while I'm processing this, a CI of
(26:02):
mine comes in, a confidential informer, right, and he tells
me about there's a guy, bad guy in the neighborhood
and he's selling guns, and he told him he wanted
to sell him a gun. So I got this prisoner
and I leave him in the cell and I tell
my supervisor the story. I said, I got a good
CI here, which is a confidential informer, you know, and
(26:24):
he says he's got a gun deal going down. So
we want to make this arrest. So the boss says,
I'll work with you, so I said, okay. So we
set up a whole thing with this guy, and he's
supposed to meet the guy on at a building on
a roof. So we tell him, you know, we give
him buy money, and we tell him we're going to
(26:46):
go up down the block because all these roofs are connected.
So we tell him we'll go up on a roof
down the block, and we'll keep you under observation, and
you get the guy. You go up there and you
buy the and when it's in your hands, because even
though he's a CI, we trust him more than the perpetrator.
(27:07):
So once the gun's in his hands, so it's safe,
and now we'll move in and make the arrest. So
we get into position. He goes and meets the guy.
He goes up on the roof right to meet the guy,
and now the scenario changes. The first thing we notice
is that there's not one perpetrator but two. Right, he
(27:28):
meets two guys up there. The next thing we notice
that it's not going to be a handgun. It was
a hunting rifle, a thirty yard six, a long, long, right,
So we still think we're going to stick to the plan. Right,
we'll see the gun change hands, and when the CI
gets it, we'll come running out. We'll jump across these roofs.
(27:51):
They're all connected. You just got to jump over something
that's about two maybe three feet high that you know,
divides the roofs. Right. So then all of a sudden,
the whole scenario changes. The guy perpetrator, who wants to
sell him the gun, decides He wants to show him
(28:13):
that the gun is operable, so he leans over the
roof and starts sniping at the public.
Speaker 2 (28:20):
Oh god, so now all.
Speaker 3 (28:22):
The plans are out the window, and me and my partner,
the supervisor, we both jump up, right, we jump up.
We start got the guns out. We start running towards
the guy screaming police freeze right, and the guy turns,
puts the gun on us and fires, so that we
start firing, and we hit the guy. I hit the
(28:43):
guy twice and he goes down. He drops the gun
that SI hits the ground. But the other guy, the
second perpetrator, he runs behind like a chimney, like a
poarapit on the roof. Calls a kiosk or something. It
looks like a chimny me and he hides behind there.
We can't see him. So we've both grown up. The
(29:06):
guy shot on the floor. The sea Eye's laying on
the floor, and I start to I just I ran
out of bullets on that sick shot. Pull out another gun, right,
and I start going around this chimney to look for
this perpetrator. And right when I get around the chimney,
the guy has a knife raised to stab me like
he has it in a downward motion above his head
(29:28):
to come down and stab me. I feel my finger
tightening on the trigger, and before I can pull the trigger,
and this is a fraction of a second, I hear
a shot, but I know I didn't pull the trigger.
Winds up. My partner went around the other side and
shot the guy in the back when he saw he
was going to stab me. Right So the guy falls
(29:48):
down and the boss says, get the gun, and get
the gun. So I start to cross the path of
the guy that my partner just shot, and the guy
starts to leap back up the knife and I turned
and shoot him in the stomach, killing him right there.
And then I run past them and retrieve the gun.
(30:09):
And that was a pretty wild story. Yeah, we didn't
expect two perpetrays. We didn't expect to shootout. I shot
one guy, killed another.
Speaker 2 (30:19):
Oh my gosh. Literally, I'm sitting there stunned, and this is.
Speaker 3 (30:24):
All after my I'm in there with a you know,
with an arrest in the precinct story.
Speaker 2 (30:31):
Oh my goodness, detective, I tell you what.
Speaker 1 (30:35):
Thank you for your service, thank you for just who
you are, thank you for your willingness to come and
join us tonight and let everybody hear your stories.
Speaker 3 (30:45):
My pleasure. Thank you for having me.
Speaker 1 (30:47):
Oh, it is our pleasure and honor. Absolutely. It just
means the world to me and I appreciate you y'all.
I'm going to end Zone seven that I always do
with a quote, the rush is worth a risk retired
Detective Ralph Freeman's back tattoo.
Speaker 2 (31:06):
I'm Cheryl McCollum and this is Zone seven.
We have with us the most decorated detective in the
history of the NYPD, retired Detective Ralph Freeman, has over
two thousand arrests, six thousand assists. One hundred of those
arrests were off duty. He's been involved in fifteen shootouts.
(00:30):
He has protected the lives of innocent people eight separate times, four.
Speaker 2 (00:36):
Of them fatally.
Speaker 1 (00:38):
He has been awarded two hundred and nineteen medals, y'all.
He's gained other awards and commendations and certificates.
Speaker 2 (00:51):
I don't even know how many.
Speaker 1 (00:52):
He was part of the Bronx for to one, for Apache, y'all.
Speaker 2 (00:57):
Welcome to Zone seven.
Speaker 3 (01:00):
Thank you, thank you for having me show.
Speaker 1 (01:02):
When I watched the series Street Justice, the Bronx, I mean,
this is your career. These are your cases, your area,
your zone, your people, and it is unbelievable, not just
for Depache, but when everybody says, hey, you know he
worked in the murder capital at the time, he worked
(01:23):
in a war zone, the toughest just area of New York,
a hellhole. Tell us just kind of a little bit
about how you got started and what your thoughts were
when you first rolled into the four to one.
Speaker 3 (01:40):
Well, I never thought of becoming a police officer. It
was just a fluke in those years. Back in the
late sixties, there was a walking test. You didn't have
to file first or anything like that. And I was
out with a few friends on a Friday night and
they said, oh, what are you doing tomorrow And they said, oh,
we're taking the test police department. I said, you kidding me.
(02:02):
I never thought of it, had any interaction, had no
family that were police officers. And I said, well, knock
on my door. If I wake up, i'll go, and
they did knock on my door. I took the test,
I did well in it, and they called me a
few months later, and I was too young to become
a cop, but I took the job as a civilian
(02:25):
police employee, working indoors for two years, and then I
graduated the police academy at the end of the two years.
It was a four month academy, and I got assigned
to the forty first Precinct, which had a really wild
reputation back then because, like as you said, it was
the murder capital of the world. It was the worst
(02:47):
precinct in the United States. And I had mixed feelings
because I was excited about coming on the job, and
I didn't want to go to a place where there
was action. Grew up in the Bronx, but not that
side of the Bronx, and it was when I got
on the streets to see the violence and the disregard
(03:09):
for human life, and the poverty and the drugs. It
was a rude awakening, you know, to say the least.
But I worked with the cops there are so seasoned
and so professional, and you learn so much on the street,
you know, other than what you learned in the academy.
And I just took a liking to it. I enjoyed
(03:32):
helping people and taking violent criminals off the street, and
it was just great. I enjoyed it, ate it up
and he gave me like an adrenaline rush that lasted
for fourteen years.
Speaker 1 (03:48):
Speaking of adrenaline, even when you're working the front desk,
gunfire erupts inside the police station.
Speaker 3 (03:57):
Yeah, that was a very sad story of a detective
lost his life there. I was doing station house security
as a rookie, and I was indoors in uniform that
night and I hear a gun shots. I race upstairs
and a suspect was being fingerprinted by a detective, and
(04:18):
somehow he managed to grab the detective's gun out of
his waist and shot the detective with it, and the
other detectives in the office responded by firing at the perpetrator,
killing him, but the detective lost his life. And I
knew the detective. He was very helpful and stuff. And
(04:39):
that was the first time I saw an officer shot
or killed, and it was terrible, and I did see
many more after that, but that was my indoctrination to it.
Speaker 2 (04:53):
And it was your friend.
Speaker 3 (04:55):
Yeah, I knew him. I knew he tried to help
me a lot. He helped me a lot of times
when I came in with a you know, he was
one of the detectives that were very helpful to the
rookies and you know, explain to us, you know, how
to proceed with an arrest procedure.
Speaker 1 (05:10):
And as a matter of fact, he was coming back
to you after you franker printed the perpetrator to help
you with some paperwork, right.
Speaker 3 (05:16):
Yeah, he was going to help me later. Also to note,
after that incident, it became a very strict rule that
no officer or a detective whatever process a prisoner with
a gun on you had a secure your weapon before processing.
But that was the incident that instituted that rule in
(05:39):
the police department, and I think it's in many other
police apartments also.
Speaker 2 (05:44):
It's that way in my department right now today.
Speaker 3 (05:47):
Yeah, you see, I think it's spread across the whole country.
You know, when you're handling a prisoner, because you when
your fingerprinting or doing paperwork or on the phone, it
leaves you too vulnerable and this way the perpetrator has
no way of getting to your weapon.
Speaker 1 (06:04):
Now, you did something brilliant when you moved into anti
crime working plane clothes.
Speaker 2 (06:11):
You drove a cab.
Speaker 3 (06:12):
We drove a lot of vehicles, but we were driving
a cab. We drove milk trucks, we used corn d trucks,
We took very unsuspecting vehicles out of the impound. We
had a large array of vehicles we could use, plus
our own vehicles were authorized.
Speaker 1 (06:30):
Well, I was getting to that because the thing about
the cab that I thought was just so genius. You
want to talk about blending in. I mean, nobody would
look at you twice, not even a tourist, not a
local nobody.
Speaker 3 (06:43):
Well, that's why we use those kind of vehicles because
the unmarked apartment cause assigned to each precinct. After a while,
they get to be known, you know. So we had
we were lucky in those years to have access to
a lot of vehicles, and we really used vehicles that
were definitely blended in. I even at one point and
(07:05):
when I was a detective later on, I even used
my Holiy Davison motorcycle a couple of times. You know
it just you know, we just really want to blend
in and become part of the scenery so you could
see a crime in progress. That was our purpose, so
for obvious reasons. First we could interrupt the crime and
(07:25):
we have better witnesses and a victim, and we could
have a better chance of testifying better and putting a
perpetrator away for a longer time.
Speaker 1 (07:35):
And you're right about the undercover cars being known on
the street pretty quick. My agency, we dropped a Bate
car once we thought it looked great. We thought they
were going to come and try to steal the car
and we're going to be able to catch them. They
took pictures of it and put it on social media.
Speaker 3 (07:52):
Well they couldn't do that to us. His phones weren't
invented yet, right, I mean, well the technology that would
be a problem.
Speaker 2 (08:01):
Oh yeah, word got out quick.
Speaker 3 (08:03):
But we didn't even have cell phones yet or beepers,
computer is we had nothing back then. You only had
your gun, your nightstick, and your wits and.
Speaker 2 (08:13):
Your wits right on. Now you talked about sometimes when
all the fool cars were taken, y'all might have to
use your own vehicle.
Speaker 3 (08:23):
Yeah, we always had our own vehicles registered for use
with the police department. They would authorize it if you
submitted the right paperwork, and that was another way of blending.
Speaker 1 (08:33):
And also, well there was one night your partner y'all
took his VW bug and y'all were just patrolling. But
y'all got to call out and you were closer than
anybody else.
Speaker 3 (08:45):
What happened there, Well, I was in court that day
and this other office of cal Unga he was in
court that day, and we got back early and we
were in the same unit, but we weren't direct partners.
But since we were both back at approximately the same time,
the boss at the time, the supervisor, put us together
(09:06):
and said, you work as a unit. So we went
out and we got this call as you said it
was a burglary in progress call, and we got there first.
We answered as we were going to back up the
uniform offices, and we got there first, and as we
were getting there, the call change from a burglary to
(09:30):
a girl calling for help. So now this is more
like a home invasion type of thing, or a burglary.
That a person is home makes it a little more serious.
So we get up there. It was a walk up.
We get up to the top floor and we saw
the door broken into and we hear a girl screaming inside.
(09:51):
So it was two o'clock in the afternoon, and we
proceeded into the apartment and it was pitch black. They
had curtains and call board and blankets covering windows and everything.
Couldn't see anything, even though it was two o'clock in
the afternoon and sunny out. So we proceed into the
apartment and we couldn't see our way, but we heard
the girl screaming from the rear, so we started proceeding
(10:15):
that way, and right when we got near the doorway,
it was like a living room, then a hallway and
a bedroom off to the right, which we later learned
a perpetrator male perpetrator jumped out of the back room,
was approximately three feet away from us and open fire
in this hallway, directly at us. My partner got hit
(10:39):
right away, and we were turning fire, and I see
my partner going down, and I see all the motor
flashes in front of me. We were shoulder and shoulder,
but the grace of God, I didn't get hit, and
I returned fire, and then the perpetrator ran into me,
and I still had one round left, and out of
(11:00):
the sixth round we had revolvers then and I fired
my last round. My gun pressed against him, killing him
right there, and then I ran to my pondners a
He was bleeding very bad, and by then the apartment
was being flooded my officers who were responding from their
first job. And I picked up the radio because my
pondner had it, and I called in an officer shot
(11:23):
ten thirteen, which means we have a problem, we need
help immediately, and I added that my pond was shot.
So the response was tremendous and we couldn't even wait
for an ambulance. We lifted and up, carried him down
the stairs, got him into a radio car, and they
erased him to the hospital. There was so many radio
(11:44):
cars on the scene in the Sall Street that when
they got him into the car, we couldn't get out.
I wasn't in the car. I had to stay on
the scene because bosses were responding and I had explained
to you know, supervisor, is what occurred, and they had
a jump into cars to push him out of their way. Meanwhile,
they were notifying highway patrol units to block every intersection
(12:07):
so the radio car could race through and get him
to the hospital, which saved his life because you know
me and moments he was losing so much blood. And
during the surgery he he was hit six times. Seven times.
Two were ricochets, one in his arm and one in
his back that were pulled out easy with tweezers because
(12:29):
of the ricochetes in this hallway. But he took five
direct hits and one was in the sack that holds
fluid under the heart. And he took seventy two pints
of blood in three hours, which was a medical record
at the time.
Speaker 2 (12:44):
Right, And where did all that blood come from?
Speaker 3 (12:47):
It was donated by the hospital. Had some blood on hand.
But when any time a police officer gets shot, some
hundreds and hundreds of officers respond to the hospital, and
they were all willing to eate blood immediately. Absolutely in
these in these cases back in the seventies and eighties,
even doctors and nurses would give blood, but officers would
(13:11):
line up. They couldn't even get a little blood. That
officers are.
Speaker 1 (13:14):
Willing to give, And that, to me is such a
powerful part of the story because not only did all
of y'all show up, you just started rolling up your
sleeves whatever he needed.
Speaker 3 (13:30):
Absolutely that still occurs today. You know, the camaraderie is tremendous.
And I can't really speak for other departments, but I'm
sure it's like that there too. I only worked in
the NYPD, but it's always been like that. You know,
every every month and year, all the time, you know,
(13:52):
go forbid any officer or a detective get shot. There's
hundreds and literally hundreds, because you know, the New York
City Police Apartment, there's thousands of guys working at one time,
and it's like a thirty five thousand member force, So
you'll get hundreds of officers ready to donate at any time.
That's one of the things I love about the police
(14:14):
department and the whole. You know, police community is the
camaraderie that there is in good times and bad times.
Speaker 2 (14:21):
Agreed.
Speaker 1 (14:22):
You know, I have a sister that's a Level one
trauma nurse at our largest hospital in Atlanta. But you
know that's something she always comments own if an officer
is shot the line of duty or injured, how many
police officers just converge on the hospital.
Speaker 3 (14:36):
Yeah, not only police officers, but we get you know,
other departments and agencies also, if there's any FEDS working
there or well now Homeland Security and Corrections and housing
and transit and every agency, they all respond.
Speaker 1 (14:56):
In this incident, I tell you something that kind of
was wonderful, and it also kind of bothered me just
a little bit that here you're Russian. To save your
friend's life, y'all, don't even wait for an ambulance.
Speaker 2 (15:09):
You have to stay on the scene. But as soon
as your cut loose, you head straight to the hospital.
That's right.
Speaker 1 (15:16):
But somebody stops you because they want you to talk
to the media.
Speaker 2 (15:21):
Who stopped you?
Speaker 3 (15:22):
Well, I was in the hospital already, but then the
bosses said that the mayor in New York wanted to
speak to me because they've going to hold a press
conference in the hospital at the time. It was May
and Lindsay and they flew him by police helicopter and
they landed on the street outside the hospital and he
came up and spoke to me. Wanted to see how
(15:45):
I was and how my partner was, and he was
very sincere and asked if he could help and anything.
I just wanted to know how my partner was, and
he sent somebody to find out and he was very concerned.
Speaker 2 (15:59):
How did you do I mean, was that your first
press conference? I know you gave.
Speaker 3 (16:04):
First conference, but it was the second time I was
involved in a shooting. I that was the first time
I had to kill a perpetrator in the line of duty.
I went on to kill three more, but I shot
the guy before that, and I shot several guys after that.
You know, I was involved in fifteen shootings, thirteen of
(16:28):
them with perpetrators. Two I had to shoot attack dogs
at the time. But I wound up shooting eight people,
killing four of them in the line of duty. It's
not something you plan on. These are things that happened
in the flash of a second. And also the other
side of that coin, if I wasn't justified in doing that,
(16:49):
I'd be arrested. They investigated very thoroughly. And the other
side of the coin is that you're if you're taking
a life, you're definitely saving at least one life, you know,
either your own or your partners or civilians. But sometimes
these are actions that you have to take. These are
actions you're trained for and you're supposed to be ready
for while you're working, and you never know when it's
(17:12):
going to occur. And most of the time it's always
the perpetrator decides this, not the officer. It's their reaction.
It's their their actions that cause our reactions. You know,
if the guys, if I tell someone they're under arrest
and they go peacefully, they get coughed and processed. But
if they decide to fight me, I have to fight back.
(17:32):
If they try to stab me or shoot me, I
have to use deadly physical force to save myself or
my partner. It's really there. They make the decisions, we
only react.
Speaker 2 (17:43):
Do you still carry the six shot?
Speaker 3 (17:45):
Cold? Don't carry revolvers? Always a cult six shot, you know,
because the Yes and the Smith and Wessons are a
five shot. You know, it's the same frame, but you
got an extra shot. I never understood why somebody always
got the smith the Wessons, so I always went with
the colts that have the extra round.
Speaker 1 (18:03):
Well, you know, I think of you every time I
hear somebody talk about it, you know, an ankle holster,
because you know the old saying you're never off duty.
Well you proved that with all the arrest that you
made off duty. But I'm gonna tell you you're never retired.
Tell everybody you stop to stab in twenty years.
Speaker 3 (18:22):
Ago, Yes, I did on the street. I was in
Manhattan and I saw a commotion across the street. I
go over and the guy was stabbing a guy, and
I pulled my weapon and stop them from killing the guy.
Speaker 2 (18:36):
I mean, that's unbelievable.
Speaker 3 (18:38):
Well, I would still take action to help somebody, not
like kind of a minor thing, but if it was
someone's life, I would definitely step in. You know, I
guess you know just built that way, or a train
that way, or the mindset that way that you know,
I couldn't let somebody, an innocent victim, get hurt if
I could prevent it or stop it from getting worse.
Speaker 1 (19:01):
And you know, when you talk about legends, you give
some tricks of the trade, and you talk about when
you're taking cover behind a car, what should you always
make sure?
Speaker 3 (19:13):
Well, if you can, the best thing to do is
go behind the wheel, because we had incidents in the
New York City Police Department where perpetrators fired under the car.
It with ricochet and hit offices in the ankles. You
know the BLA, which was the Black Black Liberation Army
back in the seventies. A couple of times they sprayed
machine gun fire on the cause. So we learned from
(19:37):
these experiences to try to get behind the wheel when
you go behind the car, because the wheel protect your
ankles and your feed. YEP.
Speaker 2 (19:47):
I just want rookies to hear it. I want it
out there so they're aware.
Speaker 3 (19:52):
Another thing I learned. I learned that when you see
on TV and in the movies all the time, offices
go into a a darkened area with a flashlight and
they hold it out in front of their gun. You know.
I never really understood that because I had an incident
where I went into a dark building by myself once
(20:12):
because I was with two other partners and we saw
three guys on the street and they looked suspicious and
everything and my partners. We got out of the car
and all three took off in different directions. So each
of my partners went after one guy. I went after another.
And my guy ran into a building right and I
(20:33):
was going in the building, and I had my flashlight
out to my left, but I had my arm extended,
not like you see in the movies, under the gun
in front of you. The guy fired at the flashlight,
and I heard the bullet whizz by me, but he
was aiming at the light. I saw the muzzle flash.
I fired at the muzzle flash and hit him, you know,
(20:56):
but he got away. Believe it or not, but be came.
The emergency service units responded. They lit up the place
like it was two o'clock on the sunny August day.
And when I shot him, there was a trail of
blood leading out, and we found the gun. He had
spent round and the gun was on the floor. But
(21:18):
he got away. Somehow. We never caught that guy. But
that was another trick, you know, with the gun extended out,
not under your gun in front of you. But I
think that saved my life.
Speaker 1 (21:28):
You know, your book shows a side of you that
is not expected. With all the arrest and shootouts and
rapes and robberies and death that you have witnessed. Detective,
you are compassionate, You're Karen, you value life, and you're funny.
Speaker 3 (21:50):
That's pretty fun.
Speaker 2 (21:51):
But okay, yeah it's true. And I just want everybody
to know.
Speaker 3 (21:55):
I just try my best, just like any other officer
of offices out there, trying to do the right thing.
And I think they believe in the same way I do.
Speaker 2 (22:07):
Agreed.
Speaker 1 (22:08):
But the name of the book for everybody is Street Warrior,
the true story of NYPD's most decorated detective and the
era that created him. And in that book, when you're
talking about situational awareness, and you know, you give lots
of great examples, you tell lots of stories, but you
(22:29):
did not get out of this thing without injury yourself.
You have been stabbed, you have broken your hand twice,
You've had a fractured skull, you got smashed over the
head with a tire iron.
Speaker 3 (22:44):
Yeah, that's these things come with the territory. You know,
if you're going to be active, you're going to you know,
run into all course old types of things over the
course of the years. And the ironic thing about my
injuries last one, I broke twenty three bones. I shatted
my right hip, and I broke my pelvic left, right,
(23:06):
and upper and lower not counting things. I caught in
the hospital, wound up in the hospital for three months.
And the ironic thing about that was it was an accident,
but it was caused by the police department. I got hit.
I was in an unmarked car and I got hit
by a police car going to the same emergency. Oh gosh,
(23:28):
that was a real twist that ended my career. At
the time, I just got back from a motorcycle trip.
Because I used to do most of the driving in
the police car in the unmarked cars too, and because
I enjoyed driving. But I just got back from a
motorcycle trip in Virginia Beach. From Virginia Beach, and I
(23:49):
was still like vibrating and stuff. So I told my
partner to drive, not that it was his fault, but
this is what happened, and we got a t bone
that I was in the passenger seat, and that ended
my career. You know, all the perpetrators that I faced
and fought and shot it out with, I wound up
getting hurt. You know, police crashed my police.
Speaker 1 (24:12):
I want to talk about the most gangster thing you did.
And if you want me to cut this part, I'll
cut it. But it's the truth, y'all.
Speaker 2 (24:21):
Listen to me.
Speaker 1 (24:23):
At one time, the good detective here was dating eight
women at a time.
Speaker 3 (24:29):
And it was seven.
Speaker 2 (24:32):
Okay, it was seven.
Speaker 1 (24:35):
And he gets hurt and he gets he's unconscious when
he comes to, all seven women are surrounding his bed
and tell him what you did.
Speaker 3 (24:49):
I just made like I passed out again. I just
made like I passed out from the drums I was on.
Speaker 1 (25:00):
I love that.
Speaker 2 (25:01):
I love that. It makes me laugh.
Speaker 1 (25:04):
Oh my gosh every time I think about it. Just
the scene and you're again, even though you were on
some painkiller.
Speaker 2 (25:11):
The quick thinking. Oh I'm passed out again. That was
quick thinking. Now. Is there any story.
Speaker 1 (25:20):
That you want to tell that I have not talked
about or even new to ashk you.
Speaker 3 (25:25):
Maybe I'll tell you. One time I was out on
patrol with my partner and we ran into what they
call a purse snatch, where a guy snatches a girl's
bag or a woman's bag runs away.
Speaker 2 (25:37):
Uh.
Speaker 3 (25:38):
It's on the border sometimes of a robbery or a
grand loss. It depending if she struggled and he fought
with her, but anyway we saw it, we chased the guy.
We caught the guy and locked him up, and I
was going to process the arrest and my partner went
home because it ran into the overtime. So it was
my arrest. So while I'm processing this, a CI of
(26:02):
mine comes in, a confidential informer, right, and he tells
me about there's a guy, bad guy in the neighborhood
and he's selling guns, and he told him he wanted
to sell him a gun. So I got this prisoner
and I leave him in the cell and I tell
my supervisor the story. I said, I got a good
CI here, which is a confidential informer, you know, and
(26:24):
he says he's got a gun deal going down. So
we want to make this arrest. So the boss says,
I'll work with you, so I said, okay. So we
set up a whole thing with this guy, and he's
supposed to meet the guy on at a building on
a roof. So we tell him, you know, we give
him buy money, and we tell him we're going to
(26:46):
go up down the block because all these roofs are connected.
So we tell him we'll go up on a roof
down the block, and we'll keep you under observation, and
you get the guy. You go up there and you
buy the and when it's in your hands, because even
though he's a CI, we trust him more than the perpetrator.
(27:07):
So once the gun's in his hands, so it's safe,
and now we'll move in and make the arrest. So
we get into position. He goes and meets the guy.
He goes up on the roof right to meet the guy,
and now the scenario changes. The first thing we notice
is that there's not one perpetrator but two. Right, he
(27:28):
meets two guys up there. The next thing we notice
that it's not going to be a handgun. It was
a hunting rifle, a thirty yard six, a long, long, right,
So we still think we're going to stick to the plan. Right,
we'll see the gun change hands, and when the CI
gets it, we'll come running out. We'll jump across these roofs.
(27:51):
They're all connected. You just got to jump over something
that's about two maybe three feet high that you know,
divides the roofs. Right. So then all of a sudden,
the whole scenario changes. The guy perpetrator, who wants to
sell him the gun, decides He wants to show him
(28:13):
that the gun is operable, so he leans over the
roof and starts sniping at the public.
Speaker 2 (28:20):
Oh god, so now all.
Speaker 3 (28:22):
The plans are out the window, and me and my partner,
the supervisor, we both jump up, right, we jump up.
We start got the guns out. We start running towards
the guy screaming police freeze right, and the guy turns,
puts the gun on us and fires, so that we
start firing, and we hit the guy. I hit the
(28:43):
guy twice and he goes down. He drops the gun
that SI hits the ground. But the other guy, the
second perpetrator, he runs behind like a chimney, like a
poarapit on the roof. Calls a kiosk or something. It
looks like a chimny me and he hides behind there.
We can't see him. So we've both grown up. The
(29:06):
guy shot on the floor. The sea Eye's laying on
the floor, and I start to I just I ran
out of bullets on that sick shot. Pull out another gun, right,
and I start going around this chimney to look for
this perpetrator. And right when I get around the chimney,
the guy has a knife raised to stab me like
he has it in a downward motion above his head
(29:28):
to come down and stab me. I feel my finger
tightening on the trigger, and before I can pull the trigger,
and this is a fraction of a second, I hear
a shot, but I know I didn't pull the trigger.
Winds up. My partner went around the other side and
shot the guy in the back when he saw he
was going to stab me. Right So the guy falls
(29:48):
down and the boss says, get the gun, and get
the gun. So I start to cross the path of
the guy that my partner just shot, and the guy
starts to leap back up the knife and I turned
and shoot him in the stomach, killing him right there.
And then I run past them and retrieve the gun.
(30:09):
And that was a pretty wild story. Yeah, we didn't
expect two perpetrays. We didn't expect to shootout. I shot
one guy, killed another.
Speaker 2 (30:19):
Oh my gosh. Literally, I'm sitting there stunned, and this is.
Speaker 3 (30:24):
All after my I'm in there with a you know,
with an arrest in the precinct story.
Speaker 2 (30:31):
Oh my goodness, detective, I tell you what.
Speaker 1 (30:35):
Thank you for your service, thank you for just who
you are, thank you for your willingness to come and
join us tonight and let everybody hear your stories.
Speaker 3 (30:45):
My pleasure. Thank you for having me.
Speaker 1 (30:47):
Oh, it is our pleasure and honor. Absolutely. It just
means the world to me and I appreciate you y'all.
I'm going to end Zone seven that I always do
with a quote, the rush is worth a risk retired
Detective Ralph Freeman's back tattoo.
Speaker 2 (31:06):
I'm Cheryl McCollum and this is Zone seven.
Host
Sheryl McCollum
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