Deaths of two 10-year-old boys shot while running from cops were wake-up call for NYPD flaws
BYDAVID J. KRAJICEK
NEW YORK DAILY NEWS
Saturday, March 11, 2017, 8:00 PM
Fourth-grader Clifford Glover was killed by a cop in Queens on April 28, 1973.
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Three blocks along, the Pontiac’s driver failed to negotiate a 30-degree left turn at Henderson and Cassidy Place. The car stalled, and three occupants bailed out and beat it as the police chase car arrived with a screech.
Ricky Bodden, 10, of Staten Island was shot dead by an officer the previous year.
Officer Frank Ortolano stepped out and leveled his revolver on the runners. By his account, one “suddenly wheeled in a crouching position,” as though he were about to shoot — a defense straight out of the police-shooting playbook.
Ortolano’s gun bucked three times. The alleged croucher, the unarmed William Graham, 14, was wounded in the shoulder. Two bystanders sitting on a stoop half a block away were hit in the legs. And Ricky Bodden, who Ortolano said had dashed into his line of fire, was hit in the back.
Bodden was scooped up and taken to St. Vincent’s Hospital, where he was dead on arrival — 19 days shy of his 11th birthday.
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The boy’s life and death became a front-page morality check for New York. Mayor John Lindsay said he was “deeply shocked.” The Daily News mourned the child’s “frightening, empty existence.”
Daily News cover for April 29, 1973, with Officer Thomas Shea charged with murder.
His life was cursed by multiple systemic failures — of parenting, schooling, juvenile justice, social welfare and policing.
His wretched juvenile record, dating to a larceny collar at age 7, was leaked by police trying to justify a dubious shooting. He had been confined repeatedly at Spofford, the Bronx delinquency finishing school, but the handcuffs kept on coming — for trespassing, criminal mischief, shoplifting and other thefts, burglary, robbery, assault and sexual abuse.
Ricky had emigrated from Belize in 1965 with his mother, Eva. They found a spot at the brand-new Jersey St. projects, but Mrs. Bodden, a domestic, lost track of her son. He became a chronic truant viewed as incorrigible by local cops, despite his pint-sized frame.
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“He was completely different in the house than he was with his friends on the street,” Eva Bodden told the Staten Island Advance. “All I had to do was talk kind to him and take him in my arms. … He’d tell me, ‘Mommy, I won’t do that again.’”
Crowds attend the funeral for slain Clifford Glover.
(NICK SORRENTINO/NEW YORK DAILY NEWS)
But he did.
Hundreds of mourners, most of them strangers, packed the boy’s funeral, where his remains lay in a gleaming white casket.
“In a ghetto,” the Rev. William Epps sneered in his eulogy, “when the police come, they come with drawn guns.”
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Epps said he was “appalled” that no top police official had bothered to attend.
The casket is carried at 10-year-old Ricky Bodden's funeral.
New Brighton suffered two nights of moderate rioting, but a junior police executive named Ben Ward helped induce calm by trooping through the projects, reassuring residents. (Twelve years later, Mayor Ed Koch made Ward the city’s first black police commissioner.)
The shooting prompted then-Commissioner Patrick Murphy to enact common-sense policies to restrict the use of firearms. For the first time, officers were forbidden from firing at or from a moving vehicle, and they were ordered not to shoot when bystanders were endangered. Officials formed a special panel to review each instance of police gunfire.
Mayor Lindsay promised a thorough probe to determine whether Officer Ortolano should be charged. Several witnesses disputed the cop’s account, saying he had pinged shots indiscriminately at the fleeing youths.
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But Prosecutor Ralph Dilorio made a flaccid presentation to a 23-member grand jury — 22 of them white, one black. They declined to indict.
Patrolman Thomas Shea, who shot 10-year-old Clifford Glover, is escorted from jail after being released on bail.
(JACK CLARITY)
A year later, Ortolano was found guilty in a police administrative trial of recklessly discharging his gun, but he kept his job.
By then, Bodden’s killing had been overshadowed by the distressing fatal shooting of another 10-year-old black boy.
It happened in Queens on April 28, 1973, when Officer Thomas Shea, working a plainclothes detail in a decoy car, rolled up on fourth-grader Clifford Glover and his uncle as they walked to work. Glover and the adult ran, fearing Shea was a mugger. The cop shot the boy in the back, claiming Glover made a “reaching motion.”
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The NYPD doubled down on gunshot restrictions aimed to save innocents from quick-draw cops like Shea, who had fired five times in six years. (He was acquitted of murder but was fired.)
Cops griped the new policies would put them at risk. But when officers tempered their blunderbuss shooting style, so did the bad guys. Gunplay began to decline sharply.
NYPD officers killed 93 people and wounded 221 with guns in 1971. Twelve officers were killed and 47 injured that year. In 2015, cops killed eight and wounded 15. Two officers were killed and three wounded that year.
The wisdom of choosing not to shoot was a hard lesson — learned on the backs of two 10-year-old kids.
BYDAVID J. KRAJICEK
NEW YORK DAILY NEWS
Saturday, March 11, 2017, 8:00 PM
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Fourth-grader Clifford Glover was killed by a cop in Queens on April 28, 1973.
NYPD cop axed for plowing into 2 people with van in the Bronx
Three blocks along, the Pontiac’s driver failed to negotiate a 30-degree left turn at Henderson and Cassidy Place. The car stalled, and three occupants bailed out and beat it as the police chase car arrived with a screech.
Ricky Bodden, 10, of Staten Island was shot dead by an officer the previous year.
Officer Frank Ortolano stepped out and leveled his revolver on the runners. By his account, one “suddenly wheeled in a crouching position,” as though he were about to shoot — a defense straight out of the police-shooting playbook.
Ortolano’s gun bucked three times. The alleged croucher, the unarmed William Graham, 14, was wounded in the shoulder. Two bystanders sitting on a stoop half a block away were hit in the legs. And Ricky Bodden, who Ortolano said had dashed into his line of fire, was hit in the back.
Bodden was scooped up and taken to St. Vincent’s Hospital, where he was dead on arrival — 19 days shy of his 11th birthday.
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The boy’s life and death became a front-page morality check for New York. Mayor John Lindsay said he was “deeply shocked.” The Daily News mourned the child’s “frightening, empty existence.”
Daily News cover for April 29, 1973, with Officer Thomas Shea charged with murder.
His life was cursed by multiple systemic failures — of parenting, schooling, juvenile justice, social welfare and policing.
His wretched juvenile record, dating to a larceny collar at age 7, was leaked by police trying to justify a dubious shooting. He had been confined repeatedly at Spofford, the Bronx delinquency finishing school, but the handcuffs kept on coming — for trespassing, criminal mischief, shoplifting and other thefts, burglary, robbery, assault and sexual abuse.
Ricky had emigrated from Belize in 1965 with his mother, Eva. They found a spot at the brand-new Jersey St. projects, but Mrs. Bodden, a domestic, lost track of her son. He became a chronic truant viewed as incorrigible by local cops, despite his pint-sized frame.
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“He was completely different in the house than he was with his friends on the street,” Eva Bodden told the Staten Island Advance. “All I had to do was talk kind to him and take him in my arms. … He’d tell me, ‘Mommy, I won’t do that again.’”
Crowds attend the funeral for slain Clifford Glover.
(NICK SORRENTINO/NEW YORK DAILY NEWS)
But he did.
Hundreds of mourners, most of them strangers, packed the boy’s funeral, where his remains lay in a gleaming white casket.
“In a ghetto,” the Rev. William Epps sneered in his eulogy, “when the police come, they come with drawn guns.”
Priest who threw body in Hudson is only chaplain executed in U.S.
Epps said he was “appalled” that no top police official had bothered to attend.
The casket is carried at 10-year-old Ricky Bodden's funeral.
New Brighton suffered two nights of moderate rioting, but a junior police executive named Ben Ward helped induce calm by trooping through the projects, reassuring residents. (Twelve years later, Mayor Ed Koch made Ward the city’s first black police commissioner.)
The shooting prompted then-Commissioner Patrick Murphy to enact common-sense policies to restrict the use of firearms. For the first time, officers were forbidden from firing at or from a moving vehicle, and they were ordered not to shoot when bystanders were endangered. Officials formed a special panel to review each instance of police gunfire.
Mayor Lindsay promised a thorough probe to determine whether Officer Ortolano should be charged. Several witnesses disputed the cop’s account, saying he had pinged shots indiscriminately at the fleeing youths.
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But Prosecutor Ralph Dilorio made a flaccid presentation to a 23-member grand jury — 22 of them white, one black. They declined to indict.
Patrolman Thomas Shea, who shot 10-year-old Clifford Glover, is escorted from jail after being released on bail.
(JACK CLARITY)
A year later, Ortolano was found guilty in a police administrative trial of recklessly discharging his gun, but he kept his job.
By then, Bodden’s killing had been overshadowed by the distressing fatal shooting of another 10-year-old black boy.
It happened in Queens on April 28, 1973, when Officer Thomas Shea, working a plainclothes detail in a decoy car, rolled up on fourth-grader Clifford Glover and his uncle as they walked to work. Glover and the adult ran, fearing Shea was a mugger. The cop shot the boy in the back, claiming Glover made a “reaching motion.”
Gunslinger’s slow 1903 execution led to end of hi-tech gallows
The NYPD doubled down on gunshot restrictions aimed to save innocents from quick-draw cops like Shea, who had fired five times in six years. (He was acquitted of murder but was fired.)
Cops griped the new policies would put them at risk. But when officers tempered their blunderbuss shooting style, so did the bad guys. Gunplay began to decline sharply.
NYPD officers killed 93 people and wounded 221 with guns in 1971. Twelve officers were killed and 47 injured that year. In 2015, cops killed eight and wounded 15. Two officers were killed and three wounded that year.
The wisdom of choosing not to shoot was a hard lesson — learned on the backs of two 10-year-old kids.