After 40 Years, Still at Home in the Trenches
Chang W. Lee/The New York Times
Detective John C. Roe is currently 10th on the New York Police Department’s longevity list.
Published: April 3, 2011
¶ There are dead giveaways, some right out there in the open. Like that pistol on his hip, a Smith & Wesson Model 10: four-inch barrel, wood grip, nothing automatic, semi- or otherwise, about it. A more compact five-shot revolver is less visible, strapped to his ankle. It seems borrowed from the New York City Police Museum.
Chang W. Lee/The New York Times
Detective John C. Roe with his colleagues in the 26th Precinct, in Upper Manhattan. Some of them lovingly call him “grandpa.”
Chang W. Lee/The New York Times
Detective John C. Roe carries a five-shot revolver strapped to his ankle.
A pre-employment photo of Detective John C. Roe.
Detective John C. Roe’s father, William Roe, retired from the department, as did a brother and a nephew.
Detective John C. Roe’s uncle, Robert Kenny, also retired from the department.
¶ That gold ring on his finger, from 1957, which his mother’s brother wore. The stories he tells about working a far bloodier set of streets, or his memories of the night the lights went out in the city during the Summer of Sam.
¶ Then there is that photo, upstairs in the detectives bureau at his station house in Harlem. It was taken back in his training days: a black-and-white snapshot of himself that he keeps tucked away in a drawer.
¶ There is no disguising the fact that John C. Roe, first-grade detective in the 26th Precinct — the highest investigative rank — has been around the block many a time. As a 40-year veteran, Detective Roe is the most senior among those still assigned to day-to-day, street-level police work.
¶ Some of his colleagues lovingly call him “grandpa.” Some have taken to calling him “Fish,” after the old detective played by Abe Vigoda on “Barney Miller.” In fact, Detective Roe, 61, joined the city’s police force nearly a decade before that television series was shown.
¶ He was a police trainee in 1968, a sworn officer two years later on foot patrol in the South Bronx. There was no counterterrorism division. There were no overseas postings, no female officers on patrol. The job’s iconic shoulder patch was nonexistent. The patrol cars were green and white. A rookie earned $9,500 a year.
¶ “Times change,” Detective Roe said as he steered his unmarked Chevrolet Impala up Convent Avenue.
¶ He is currently 10th on the Police Department’s longevity list; by the time he reaches the mandatory retirement age of 63 on Halloween 2012, he will be first. Historically, about 80 percent of police officers leave after 20 years, when they become eligible for a pension, though that amount has decreased to about 60 percent in recent years, a police spokesman said.
¶ Detective Roe has been on the force for double that time. He dreads the thought of leaving. Like the last living soldier of a war long ago, his personal history is one of the last of a department transformed. His is a family history, too; his father, uncle, brother and nephew all retired from the Police Department.
¶ “John is still viewing the job from the trenches,” said Robert E. Mladinich, a retired detective who arrested drug dealers in northern Manhattan with Detective Roe in the crack-cocaine scourge of the 1980s. Mr. Mladinich said that upon Detective Roe’s retirement, the department would lose the street experience and institutional knowledge he had brought to his position.
¶ To those who know him, Detective Roe, who specializes in domestic-violence cases, is calm in a crisis. He almost functions like a priest to criminals and colleagues, caring for them and carrying the kind of demeanor that makes people unload their secrets — and the truth — to him. He has been down nearly every investigatory road at least once. He knows how to talk suspects into surrendering, but can wield discretion without arresting.
¶ “His interview skills, his experience, and all the contacts he has,” said Sergeant Peter A. Lavin, a six-year supervisor in the 26th Precinct detective squad, where Detective Roe has been for the last two decades.
¶ “All around,” Sergeant Lavin continued, “the whole gamut.”
¶ The sergeant said it was a comfort to glance around at a crime scene and find the unsmiling countenance of Detective Roe, who stands 6-foot-3, behind him.
¶ Counting Detective Roe’s arrests is impossible, because the department began tracking such things only in 1983. Since then, he has logged more than 600. It would be about 1,000 if you could count back to 1970, and more than 2,000 if you considered the ones he helped in. His latest arrest was the other day: of a man who violated an order of protection issued to a
Columbia University student he had assaulted.
¶ His more sensational capers fill yesterday’s newspapers.
“The Drag Queen Had a Mummy in Her Closet” was how New York magazine titled its cover story about an inquiry Detective Roe led in 1993. A man’s mummified body, with a bullet wound to the head, was found wrapped in imitation leather and stuffed in a trunk in the apartment of Dorian Corey, a famous drag queen, after he died. Detective Roe worked to identify the remains.
¶ In 1992, he tracked whoever sent candies laced with thallium to students at Columbia University’s International House, making four ill. The clues led to Belgium, where a suspect was captured. But smaller cases jump out, too: the knife fights, sex assaults, drug deals and double homicides.
¶ As Detective Roe steered his unmarked sedan on Morningside Drive one recent day, he pulled over off of West 119th Street. A cabby was stabbed here, he said, pointing. The victim’s car rolled down an incline as his killer walked away, gliding across some steps, into a park, past some basketball courts, then gone. Five years later, Detective Roe caught him.
¶ Each story leads into another.
¶ Seeing the basketball courts reminded him of a shooting there in which a man, fouled during a game, directed a cohort to open fire on the opponents with an automatic rifle. The gun came from under some clothes on a bench. A famous actor was there.
¶ Detective Roe dug deeper into his memory, as if on an archaeological dig. Turning a corner, he stopped again: This is where his partner of the last 18 years, Detective Gisele M. Moyano, took on a double homicide, on the first floor. A lot of blood, he recalled. The man they later arrested had unleashed his fury in a “cocaine rage,” Detective Roe said.
¶ The detective, standing in a finely tailored suit, squinted at the building, as if trying to see back to the past. But the streets are more sanitized now, and certainly safer. Yet he misses how busy it was.
¶ There were 1,117 homicides and 74,102 robberies in New York in 1970. Last year, there were 536 homicides and 19,484 robberies. In 1971, it was more dangerous for police officers and suspects alike, with 93 people fatally shot by the police that year, compared with eight last year, “the fewest in 40 years,” as Police Commissioner
Raymond W. Kelly has said. Twelve officers were shot and killed in 1971, and 47 were wounded by gunfire. Last year, for the second consecutive year, no officers were killed by suspects' bullets. And officers have shown more restraint: They fired their guns in 810 incidents in 1971, compared with 93 last year.
¶ In 1971, the job was all male and mostly white. This year, for the first time, minorities make up a majority of those in the rank of police officer, though whites still account for 52.8 percent of police personnel.
¶ In 1973, the same year that
Billie Jean King defeated Bobby Riggs on a tennis court inside the Astrodome in Houston, the Police Department got its first female officers. Women had had a presence in the department since before the turn of the century, but first joined their male counterparts on patrol that year. This year, women represent 19.7 percent of police officers, and 17.3 percent of all ranks.
¶ Detective Moyano remembered when she was assigned to the 26th Precinct detective squad in 1993, a rookie joining a unit of veterans. She said that everyone told her how fortunate she was to have Detective Roe as a partner, because he had a reputation for making arrests.
¶ “I am picturing this young guy,” she said. “I was like 30-something, maybe 31. I was expecting this stud coming in, and when he walked in, I said, ‘That’s John Roe? He’s old.’ ”
¶ She laughed a little, but then stressed how helpful he had been throughout their partnership. “The one thing I am grateful to,” she said, “is he always made it a point to introduce me: ‘Have you met my partner, Detective Gisele Moyano?’
¶ “He made me feel like I was part of the whole process of work,” she said. “He taught me a lot.”
¶ Detective Roe has never had to fire his weapon. (He is one of only 98 detectives who still carry a six-shot revolver.) He says he is far more likely to use his instincts and power of persuasion to solve crimes and shake loose confessions from suspects.
¶ He steered his sedan past a park on the precinct’s eastern boundary, named for St. Nicholas. It was a killing zone through the early 1990s, Detective Roe said, describing the bullets that flew and the bodies that fell. Then he saw a middle-age man loping up from West 129th Street. The detective yelled his nickname out the window. The man approached.
¶ On another corner, off Amsterdam Avenue, he saw another man.
¶ “My local informant,” Detective Roe said.
¶ That man, too, came straight to his window. They talked quietly, and the man departed.
¶ “O.K., babe,” the man said, moving away from Detective Roe. “Stay safe.”
¶ Gaining goodwill with street people is a core tool, Detective Roe said. He abhors any policy of unequivocally enforcing rules policing quality-of-life offenses, and repeatedly raises the suffering of the impoverished, recalling days when men playing dominoes on bridge tables and sipping beer from small cups would be cultivated, not handed a summons.
¶ “The job is great, but there are some things I disagree with, that I have to voice my opinion on,” Detective Roe said. “I don’t like change, how’s that?”
¶ Among his complaints: too much micromanaging on the job today, too many checklists. While he understands that computers help track crimes and catch suspects — and admits that he is “computer illiterate” — he predicts that technology will never supplant a good officer’s instincts. He recalls the times when neighbors pointed quietly in hallways toward the apartments of criminals.
¶ He says it disgusts him how much abuse today’s rookies take from civilians. Newly minted detectives can be too timid in bending the truth to bluff suspects into confessing in interrogation rooms. Criminals, on the other hand, are savvier, with repeat offenders seeming to benefit from a prison education. Not enough detectives show uniformed officers respect, he said.
¶ And sadly, there is less camaraderie and socializing among the ranks.
¶ He realizes that retirement means that he will travel more and see more of his daughters, Danielle and Jillian. But he will miss his pals and his partner; they each say they are like family to one another.
¶ “He is the last one on,” said his brother, William Kenny Roe, 72, who retired as a captain in 1998. “He is the last one of a long line of police officers, and it’s kind of sad. Most of us wish we were back on.”
¶ Detective Roe says he understands how his brother feels and dreads the approach of Halloween 2012, when he will have to hand in his badge, No. 1679.
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