The Daily News ran a piece yesterday about the Cold Case Squad and I need to vent. The headline was “Cold case officers placed on hot seat,” and the spin was that the detectives were not performing and Deputy Chief Joe Reznick was cracking down.

“Senior executives of the NYPD are expected to manage and lead,” the Deputy Police Commissioner was quoted as saying in defense of Reznick, and that is a legitimate point.

If there are detectives in the Cold Case Squad who are not performing, and I’m sure that this is the case with some of them — like any department in any corporation or organization, you have guys who are slacking off — then get rid of them. And inspire and support the people who are doing a good job.

But this is not what is happening. It is my understanding that Reznick asked everyone in the Bronx unit of the Cold Case Squad (and two in Brooklyn) to put in transfers, including people with stellar arrest records. Nevermind that precincts in the Bronx have the highest number of unsolved murders in New York, and that he would be leaving that entire borough completely without a cold case squad, he asked detectives who are doing a good job to leave. Drop your cases and go. This is effective management?

Clearly cooler heads prevailed and now the demand for transfers has been toned down to the threat of transfers.

Speaking of which — why did Reznick try to completely eliminate the Bronx unit, of all units? When I handed in my book there were 2,936 unsolved murders in the Bronx. That’s roughly 1/3 of all the unsolved murders in all the boroughs put together.

This is not the first time Reznick has responded to a problem this way. He handled an overtime issue using the same blanket, punish-everyone approach. Instead of disciplining detectives who were abusing overtime, he went after every detective in the squad. Saving the city money is a great thing, no one is questioning going after detectives who are abusing overtime. Go for it, and good job. But don’t treat detectives who are legitimately using those hours to lead to arrests like they’re criminals. This is not going to get more murderers off the streets.

Which leads to my second point. Reznick doesn’t seem to be concerned with arresting murderers, he’s more concerned with numbers. Note that Reznick complains that they are not making State arrests. He doesn’t care about the work the detectives do that lead to federal arrests because the NYPD ultimately won’t get credit. Nevermind that those arrests are getting murderers are off the street. [Update 8/2: I have since been corrected about this part. These arrests will show up in the NYPD numbers. So, now I don’t know why he has a problem with State arrests!]

One detective in the article defends Reznick by saying those cases are easy. If they were such a slam dunk, why weren’t they solved already? And is the detective suggesting that the cold case detectives should not pursue these cases and let the murderers go because the cases are not hard enough?? The source also says the feds have already done a lot of the legwork. What’s wrong about getting help from the feds if it’s getting murderers off the streets?

(Reznick’s information was also not correct. At least some of the detectives on the list had made State arrests in the period mentioned.)

Reznick may feel that the homicide detectives in the precincts should be working the unsolved murder cases, but given that clearance rates are going down, and the number of unsolved murders are going up, that would indicate they need the support. This is NOT at all a criticism of the detectives in the precinct.

When a special need arose — terrorism — the NYPD beefed up their counter-terrorism bureau. They didn’t disband it. They didn’t add to the already heavy workloads of everyone in the precincts and ask them to address the problem single handed.

Unsolved murders are going up and Reznick is downsizing. He is not beefing the squad up, or replacing detectives who are not performing with ones that will.

Great leadership is not just discipline, punishment, and worse, bullying. A leader must also inspire, and give his people what they need to do better. There is so much Reznick could be doing to show his people that he is behind them and wants to help them do a better job. How about providing the Cold Case Squad with training to understand the evolving forensic tools that are available? An innovative DNA program that was started just before Reznick got there, and that has since been copied effectively to solve previously unsolved burglary cases was basically shut down by Reznick.

Similarly, the tools for finding information are also rapidly changing — how about bringing in an expert to give a demonstration of what’s out there now?

The reason why none of Reznick’s actions or the given explanations for them don’t add up is because Reznick has another agenda — to eliminate the Cold Case Squad. Viewed in this light it all makes sense. I don’t know why he has it in for them. When I asked him in an interview for my book, he said it was because of the quality of the detectives in the squad when it was formed. And when I asked him to elaborate he said, “They were transit guys.” The New York City Transit Police used to be a separate police department until Giuliani merged them with the NYPD in 1995 (the Housing Police were also included in this merger). A lot of people in the police department thought they were better than the Transit guys. To this day, there are members of the police department who look down on the Transit guys. The reality is, the former Transit guys have some of the best arrest records within the Cold Case Squad, and the guy with the highest arrest record came from Housing (considered by some to be even lower than Transit).

Reznick was just in the Daily News on July 21, in an article about the unsolved 1991 murder in the Bronx of a unidentified child the detectives lovingly named Baby Hope. Reznick is usually in the papers every year about this case. I am not questioning his genuine concern for this child, but what about the other 136 children under 18 who were murdered in the Bronx since 1985, and whose murders were never solved?

Reznick was about to leave them and their families without a single detective to try to find their murderers.

The Times recently had an article about someone who was found innocent of a rape and let free after 21 years in jail. The article talked about the difficulty of finding the evidence in his case. This was something I researched heavily. The following is an edited version of what appears in my book. It’s useful for learning how to find evidence.

The best advice I can give though, for people who are looking for evidence: be persistent and be creative. Many times I was told something was lost, and it was later found by simply looking everywhere. An example of creativity in the following text. It’s a little choppy because I took out whole sections here and there.

The NYPD Property Clerk Division

DNA or blood barrels at the Property Clerk Warehouse.

Two years after 14-year-old Christine was murdered, [one of the cases I wrote about], a 49 was sent to the Property Clerk Division, asking them not to destroy any evidence connected with the Christine Diefenbach case. The “49” comes from a now defunct form called a UF49, and it simply refers to inter-departmental memos on police letterhead. Evidence stored at the Property Clerk is destroyed after two years, except for evidence marked “homicide” on the fourth line down on the property clerk voucher. That’s what’s supposed to happen. The commanding officer at the 102 knew how things really worked, so he sent the 49 to make sure everything was saved. It didn’t help. In spite of his request, some of the evidence was destroyed. “They’re dicks and they needed the room,” one detective explained. A 1963 report found that the police personnel in the Property Clerk were not particularly qualified, untrained and didn’t consistently follow the few written procedures that existed. The cops that were there were there because they were on restricted or modified duty. Restricted means they’re sick or have been injured, modified means they’re disciplinary problems and they’re being punished. No guns, no shields, no patrol or enforcement. The rubber gun squad, they’re called. A former Property Clerk employee from the 70’s called it a “no show job.” People were on the payroll but they didn’t show up. “Those guys don’t care,” another detective said. “They couldn’t care less.”

[Read more →]

From The Insurance Journal, June 26th, 2006.

The following chart shows where New York City ranked in the Total Crime Index for the nation’s largest cities.

Rank Year End 2005 City Rate/100,000

1 Dallas
2 Detroit
3 Phoenix
4 San Antonio
5 Houston
6 Las Vegas
7 Philadelphia
8 San Diego
9 Los Angeles
10 New York

WeeGee, Joy of Living, April 17, 1942.

Dear Stacy:

I just wanted to say “Thank You” for your very kind words concerning my retirement in your June 20th posting. I would also like to take this occasion to thank the people of the City of New York for giving me the opportunity to serve them for the past 32 years. It was an honor and certainly a privilege that I will never be able to repay.

And you are certainly correct when you speak about the Christine Diefenbach case. It was always my firm intention not to retire without bringing some form of closure to the Diefenbach family, hopefully in the way of arrest of the individual(s) responsible for Christine’s death. Each and every time I spoke with John Diefenbach I could see and feel the heartwrenching pain of a father who felt the loss of a loved helpless child and was unable to prevent what occurred.

People in this city may not realize that each and every Detective assigned to the New York City Cold Case Squad is responsible for and may carry up to and beyond 20-30 cold case homicide investigations. It is certainly not like TV. For many years we detectives assigned to Cold Cases realized that we were up against all the odds as far as resources, uniform details taking us away from our investigations, and the undermanned units. But we always felt that we were doing “God’s work”, and that if we hung in there long enough, the reward would come in the end in the form of an arrest.

Recently, the straw that broke the camel’s back was a supervisor who just could not understand that these cases do not get solved overnight, that he needed to trust his detectives who are in fact working for him and doing the right thing each and every day. A detective in NYC can put up with a lot of BS, but not when his direct supervisor doesn’t trust him or the unit in general. This is not the first time he has taken the same wrong train to the wrong station, and gotten off at the wrong stop. Who loses? People like Christine’s father, John Diefenbach. [Murder has gone up this year and so will the number of cold cases.]

I take pride in the cases which I solved in the past ten years in Cold Case, and in those that I could not solve but always gave 100% effort in trying to do so. I pray each day for the success of the Unit, and hope that it is able to withstand the onslaught of one vicious individual. Lastly, thank you for your friendship, and for bringing some of the cases that we work on into the public eye. You gave a small glimpse of a very large and difficult picture to the people of this city. You may print this in your blog if you wish. Hope to speak with you soon. Although I will be retired on June 26, 2006, I will always consider myself Det. Thomas J. Wray, NYPD.