Circle of Six Read Free

Meyers's rant to The Times , but subtly worded to get the reaction I wanted. It's a shame that the newspaper printed this watered-down version:

    Harlem-born and reared detective, Randy Jurgensen, is looking for the young leader of the Black Liberation Army, Twyman Meyers, and his daring accomplice Robert Vickers, who are both out to allegedly assassinate the cop according to underworld sources.

    Young leader of the BLA and his daring accomplice? They weren't movie stars; they were cop killers looking to make a name for themselves. And The Amsterdam News had become their go-between. This only tempered my resolve to catch my would-be assassin.
    In 1972 we (the NYPD) were at war with the likes of Twyman Meyers, a hostile media, and a public who, for the most part, did not trust or like what they saw as the manifestation of “the establishment.” This was a brewfor a hellacious and bloody year. The climate in New York was this: We cops were targeted for death. The us-versus-them mentality was a yoke on every cop's shoulder, worn like a heavy weight, carried daily with rounds and rounds of extra ammo to guard against everyone and anyone. In those mean 1972 streets, the only thing we could count on was one another—our brother cops and the superior officers we called boss. If only that held true on that particular April morning. What I and the rest of the country were about to witness would place an indelible black mark on the face of the NYPD, its uppermost echelon, the Nation of Islam, Police Commissioner Patrick V. Murphy, and Mayor John Lindsay—a dark hurtful blemish that remains to this day, one that I myself could never and will never forget. We, the rank and file, were sandbagged by our own—the hierarchy of the NYPD. One of our brother cops, Phil Cardillo, was murdered and subsequently bastardized, then hurried into the ground in a cloak of mystery and dishonor, all in an effort to cover up a purposeful negligence of duty so blatant it defies belief. In short, we were betrayed by our fathers, the police commissioner, and his deputies. It was the collusion of our own, Mayor John Lindsay, Commissioner Patrick V. Murphy, Deputy Commissioner Benjamin Ward, Chief of the Department Michael Codd, and Congressman Charles Rangel, with Minister Louis Farrakhan of the Nation of Islam—six in total—the Circle of Six .
    To understand the backstabbing fully, we have to go back in time, back to one of the most brutal periods in New York history. Back to a time when ten cops a year were systematically executed in cold and calculated hits, back to one of the most traumatic eras in the storied New York City Police Department's past. The place : Harlem, New York. The time : April 14, 1972.

“TEN-THIRTEEN!”
Friday, April 14th, 1972 – 11:39 A.M .
    We were set up just west of Amsterdam Avenue on 125th Street. I settled my binoculars on a clear and unobstructed view of the set. According to my information, Twyman Meyers was coming in from the north, so we felt fairly confident that our surveillance OPs (observation posts) were invulnerable to burn. I was assigned five plain-clothes cops, or anticrime cops as they were called, from the 2-8 (28th) Precinct. Two were with me in the car, while the other three were on the other side of Amsterdam Avenue. It was an unseasonably warm day, and the fact that I was wearing my army field jacket to hold ammo and conceal my shotgun made the shit-box Impala feel like a blast furnace. I was jittery and for good reason. Meyers had succeeded in doing what no other perp had done before: He'd gotten deep inside, made this a personal war. But I was a professional and didn't want emotions getting in the way of a good bust. As far as I was concerned, Twyman Meyers was about to lose his position as the head of the BLA. He had a destiny with one of two conclusions: an electric chair or a pine box. End of story.

    I swept the binos over the dingy terrain and couldn't help thinking how the streets had