Albert Seedman

By 1962, Seedman had become a captain.[1] That year brought him his first media exposure, to the brief detriment of his career. Two officers who had responded to a robbery in progress at the Borough Park Tobacco Company in Brooklyn, where Seedman worked at the time, were killed. It was the first time a pair of NYPD officers had been killed on duty in 30 years. When one of the suspects, Tony Dellernia, was extradited to New York after surrendering in Chicago, Seedman, as was customary, had him perp-walked in front of reporters outside the precinct house.[5]

Seedman holding up Dellernia's face, for which he was reprimanded

Some photographers who arrived late complained to Seedmen. He brought Dellernia back out, but the defendant had his head low. Seedman forced Dellernia's head up and held him by the chin so his face would be visible.[5] The ensuing image of Dellernia's contorted face, "[stretched] ... as if it were pizza dough", as The New York Times put it in 1999,[5] while Seedman posed for the camera himself, sparked widespread public outcry. The American Civil Liberties Union demanded he be disciplined, and he was duly reprimanded after Commissioner Michael J. Murphy publicly expressed regret for the incident. A promotion to deputy inspector Seedman had been expecting was delayed. Dellernia was ultimately acquitted.[1][lower-alpha 1] Seedman nevertheless displayed the photo on his office wall in his Long Island home.[4]

Two years later, Seedman came back into the public eye when he led the investigation into the murder of Kitty Genovese in the Queens neighborhood of Kew Gardens. The case had gained national attention when a story in the Times alleged that 38 neighbors had witnessed the crime in progress but did nothing about it, even as Genovese screamed for help repeatedly (an account that has since been disputed).[7] Seedman's detectives arrested the killer, Winston Moseley, six days later. The death sentence he originally received was commuted when New York abolished the death penalty for most murders, and Moseley served the remaining 52 years of his life in prison.[8]

In mid-1967, Seedman, then chief detective for southern Brooklyn, made his reputation as an investigator who could solve baffling cases. While driving on the Belt Parkway one summer morning near Plum Beach, a young woman named Nancy McEwen suddenly drifted off the road onto the median strip. A police lieutenant in the car behind her pulled over to see what the problem was. He found her moaning, with her head slumped forward, and called for an ambulance. She died a short time later at Coney Island Hospital, where doctors found a small hole on the side of her head that turned out to have been caused by a bullet.[4][9] Since only one window in McEwen's car was open, and none of them had been shattered, Seedman believed the shot had to have been fired from Sheepshead Bay or the nearby area, and that due to the distance and the car's speed, it was probably not intentional. He ordered detectives and uniformed officers to search the dunes and marshes for a possible shell casing.[9] After 2,400 people were interviewed and several other leads came to nothing, he pointed at a spot on the map and told his detectives to look for people who owned boats.[4] That led to the shooter—a local gas station owner who had been on his boat that morning taking target practice at a floating beer can. One of his bullets had ricocheted off the water's surface and killed McEwen. A grand jury ruled it an accident,[1] and no homicide charges were brought, although the shooter was fined $100 for violating firearms laws with the rifle.[9]

On April 6, 1970, a townhouse on West 11th Street in Greenwich Village exploded in the early afternoon, damaging not only itself but several adjacent buildings, including the home of actor Dustin Hoffman and his wife. Responding firefighters at first believed it to be a gas explosion resulting from a leak and accidental ignition, but the senior responding detective was suspicious and called Seedman to the scene, where he set up a command post along with senior fire department officials and the FBI. Seedman's suspicions were deepened by reports that known survivors of the blast had left the scene and not returned.[10]

Seedman contacted radio executive James Wilkerson, the owner of the property. He learned that Wilkerson was planning to return from a vacation in the Caribbean that day; in the meantime his daughter Cathy had been staying there, recuperating from a bout with the flu. Cathy was known to the FBI to be a member of the Weathermen, a radical left-wing activist group, and had been arrested at several demonstrations over the last two years. Seedman concluded that the explosion had been perhaps deliberately set, but did not know what the motive might have been other than Cathy Wilkerson's relationship with her father, from whom she was estranged.[10]

It took the fire department until after sunset to extinguish most of the fire. In the rubble police found two dismembered bodies, weapons, and enough dynamite to level the entire block if it had gone off; after the block was evacuated yet more was found, along with an antitank weapon. Seedman told the media it was the largest explosive device ever found in Manhattan. He asked James Wilkerson and his wife, now returned, to appear on television and appeal to Cathy to at least let the police know whether they had found all the explosives and bodies. Cathy never did. She and other Weathermen remained at large for most of the 1970s before surrendering to authorities; she was the only one to serve prison time. The Greenwich Village explosion had been an accident that killed three, resulting from the inexperienced leadership of the New York Weather cell attempting to build a bomb they intended to set off at an Army non-commissioned officers' dance at Fort Dix that night, an attack intended to bring the Vietnam War to the American home front.[10]

In 1971, Seedman became chief of detectives for the department. He was the first, and as of 2020 only, Jewish officer to hold that position,[lower-alpha 2] which had usually, like many of the NYPD's other high-ranking positions, gone to the Irish Americans who made up the bulk of the ranks. "The Jewish cop was an alien in an Irish universe," crime novelist Jerome Charyn recalled in 2004.

Enter Albert Seedman, the first, last and only Jewish chief of detectives. It's the 1970s and Chief Seedman is all over the place, tough, flamboyant and foul-mouthed, chomping on a cigar, appearing at the scene of important crimes. He seemed more Irish than the Irish, as if he had co-opted their territory, their language, their domain.[3]

Seedman's personal, trademark style made him stand out. He complemented his cigar with white-on-white patterned shirts with "Al" monogrammed on the sleeves, elaborate rings on both hands including an onyx pinky ring, and a pearl-handled revolver as his weapon.[1] "[He is] what a Jewish gangster is supposed to look like," one fellow detective told The New York Times.[4] "I didn't do any of this stuff consciously, but it was my style," Seedman explained late in his life. "I've been referred to as the last of the old-time Broadway-style detectives."[4] "He's got style; he's the way cops like to see themselves," another officer said to the Times in 1972.[4]^: 6

Reporters liked him because he was always willing to talk to them on the record, even if he could not say much.[1] He was the department's preferred spokesperson for what it called "front-page crimes."[3] Of the department's senior commanders, the same detective who praised Seedman's style in the Times said, "[he's t]he only one who comes across on the tube—and in a media age you must have a guy like that."[4]

As chief, he began to modernize the detective bureau, which at nearly 3,000 officers was larger than all but 12 American police departments.[4] During his career, detectives had traditionally worked whatever cases developed from crimes reported during their shifts at the precinct house. Under Seedman, following a practice already adopted by the Chicago and Los Angeles police departments, they were instead assigned to specialize in a particular category of crime, such as homicide or robbery. Patrol officers were also permitted to investigate some lesser crimes on their own, such as assaults or car thefts; by 1972 they were already handling 70 percent of the reported burglary cases.[4] Commissioner Patrick V. Murphy called it "the first major change in the force in half a century."[1]

The department's internal affairs were receiving attention from outside as well. After a 1970 New York Times story, prompted by the revelations of Frank Serpico, alleged that widespread corruption in the department was tolerated or ignored by commanders and the mayor's office, Mayor John V. Lindsay appointed what became known as the Knapp Commission, after Judge Whitman Knapp, who headed it, to investigate.[12]

The commission found evidence that in 1970, Seedman had accepted a free dinner worth $84.30 ($640 in current dollars[13]) from the New York Hilton Midtown, for himself, his wife and two guests. Since this was relatively minor compared to many of the allegations the commission was investigating, it notified Murphy's office before it began hearings that it would not be raising the check. Murphy, distrustful of the commission and fearing that it had an ulterior motive, sent out a press release announcing that Seedman had been relieved of his position as chief of detectives. After this made headlines on all the city's newspapers, the commissioner reinstated him five days later.[14]

It was a challenging era for the department and its detectives. The city's homicides had almost quadrupled since the late 1950s, with a 30 percent increase in 1970 alone.[4] There were many major crimes to investigate during his tenure. Two high-ranking figures in the city's Mafia were shot. Joseph Colombo Sr. was paralyzed from wounds inflicted by an assassin, himself killed seconds later, at an Italian Unity Day festival he had organized; although the department's investigation concluded the murder was not mob-related, Seedman continued to believe strongly that it had been, even though he admitted it would be difficult to prove.[4] Ten months later, Joe Gallo, another member of the Colombo crime family, believed to have ordered the hit on his boss, was himself killed by gunmen at a Little Italy seafood restaurant. A prominent hotel's safe deposit boxes were robbed by gunmen dressed as guests. Seedman oversaw the investigations, and was the department's face in the media.[1]

The greatest challenge to the department and its detectives during Seedman's tenure as chief of the bureau was another violent left-wing group, the Black Liberation Army (BLA). An offshoot of the Black Panthers that espoused a more militant and radical philosophy, the BLA staged deadly ambushes on police officers in cities across the country. In New York, their three attacks left four officers dead and two seriously wounded. After one attack, the "Attica Brigade" of the BLA claimed responsibility, a reference to the Attica prison riots the previous year, in which 19 prisoners had died when New York State Police stormed the prison.[15]

After the second attack, in January 1972, senior NYPD officials were wary of publicly attributing the killings to the BLA, or even acknowledging the group's existence. Lindsay had changed his party affiliation from Republican to Democratic the previous year in order to seek the latter party's presidential nomination, and his aides told the police that publicly discussing the investigation of an African American terrorist group, one they considered largely an invention of disgruntled former Black Panthers, dedicated to killing police officers would conflict with the mayor's campaign themes; they also feared exacerbating racial tensions in the city. In his news conference the day after the killings, Seedman downplayed notions that they were the work of the BLA although the police had received mail from them, taking credit and promising more.[15]

But deputy commissioner Robert Daley, the department's press secretary, dissented. He held a news conference of his own, telling the assembled reporters that the two killings were the work of the BLA, and when it did not receive sufficient coverage kept having off the record discussions with individual reporters. In February 1972, Commissioner Murphy held a more detailed media event describing in detail the BLA's activities not just in New York but nationwide.[15]

It was in this context that the incident that ended Seedman's police career occurred.[1]

Mosque No. 7 today, known as Malcolm Shabazz Mosque.

On April 14, dispatchers received a 9-1-1 call from a "Detective Thomas", claiming to need assistance at the Nation of Islam's Mosque No. 7 on West 116th Street in Harlem. Five uniformed officers responded; accounts of events at the mosque differ. The police say they were overpowered and assaulted when they arrived;[16] Imam Louis Farrakhan and the other worshippers present say the police interrupted them with guns drawn during prayers and refused repeated requests to wait or at least leave behind their guns, which the Black Muslims' faith forbade from being carried into a place of worship. At a press conference the next day, Farrakhan would claim it was a premeditated attack and the 9-1-1 call just a ruse.[17]

In the ensuing altercation, one officer, Phillip Cardillo, was shot at close range with his own gun. Another officer's gun went missing; it has never been recovered. Police reinforcements arrived, as did the news media, and rumors spread throughout the neighborhood that the police had done something in the mosque they were trying to cover up. An angry and restless crowd had gathered as the police secured the inside of the mosque and tried to figure out what had happened. Two men were arrested and the other worshippers were in custody. Seedman planned to interrogate them when he arrived.[16]

Seedman never got the chance. Farrakhan and newly elected congressman Charles Rangel, who had come to the scene, warned them that the crowd outside, already throwing rocks, assaulting reporters present and attempting to damage police property, was beyond their control. Seedman claimed Rangel offered to have the mosque worshippers show up at the local precinct house if the police left the scene; Rangel has said that he could not, and did not, make such a promise on their behalf.[18]

Seedman reluctantly gave the order to leave the mosque and free the suspects. The police department ordered all white officers to withdraw to several blocks from the mosque. As Seedman walked back to his car, dodging bricks dropped from nearby roofs, he decided to retire,[19] ending his NYPD career two weeks later.[20] At the time, he claimed his retirement was unrelated to the mosque incident; rather, he was attracting too much publicity and the department wanted to focus more on the uniformed patrol officers who made up the bulk of the ranks.[19]

Six days later, Officer Cardillo died in the hospital; his death is the only unsolved killing of an officer in the NYPD's modern history.[21] Many of his colleagues believed the failure to fully investigate it resulted from senior police administrators' political cowardice; at his funeral, which uncharacteristically neither Commissioner Murphy nor Mayor Lindsay attended, Cardillo's commander angrily resigned from the department.[16] An agreement was reached between the department and the mosque that designated it a "sensitive area", where police could not enter without their supervisors; this prevented the collection of ballistic evidence for two years. In its absence, Louis 17X Dupree,[lower-alpha 3] who an informant had seen standing over Cardillo's body with a gun, was acquitted.[22]

Seedman's role in the police's exit from the mosque was not known until a secret report was released in 1983, as Deputy Commissioner Benjamin Ward, who many officers blamed for the order to withdraw, was on the verge of becoming the city's first African American police commissioner. The secret report, known as the "blue book", indicated that Seedman, not Ward, had given the order. Confronted with this by a Newsday reporter, who wanted to know why he had not ever corrected the record, Seedman said "What good would it have done?" With the truth now known, Ward became commissioner.[18]

Late in his life, Seedman finally revealed why he had given the order. In a new preface to the 2011 e-book release of his 1974 memoir Chief!, he explained what he had kept to himself for four decades. With the tensions outside escalating, he had called Chief Inspector Michael Codd from the mosque and asked for two busloads of police cadets armed with nightsticks to keep order on the street outside. Codd refused and hung up. When Seedman called back he was told that Codd was out to lunch. That failure to support officers in the field had been the real reason for his retirement. He had kept it to himself since "I loved the police department so much that I couldn't drag it through the dirt by saying what those bastards did."[19]