Concern for Police Witness in Louima Case
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A few minutes later, the phone rang with news that would shake his world: a
probationary police officer had come forward to describe seeing Officer Justin
A. Volpe wave a stick near the police station bathroom in which Mr. Louima had
been brutalized.
Captain Fried, of the Internal Affairs Bureau, realized that his job was to
get Officer Turetzky out of the building in one piece, before the officer
changed his mind or became too intimidated to speak. The captain decided that
this was too dangerous to do by himself, so he called for two trusted
lieutenants to meet him outside the station house.
''I believed at that time that I was going to remove the officer from the
precinct,'' said Mr. Fried, who now holds the rank of deputy inspector. ''I had
some concerns both for the officer's safety and, frankly, for my own, and I
brought these two lieutenants with me for that reason.''
This week, Inspector Fried and other police supervisors described for the
first time the tense scramble ignited by that phone call in the dead of night,
and the extraordinary steps to protect Officer Turetzky from violence inside his
own precinct. The revelations that even police supervisors feared for their
personal safety inside a New York station house threw a stark new shadow on a
case that had already exposed the reluctance of many officers to cooperate with
investigations of brutality.
The details emerged at a hearing yesterday and Wednesday in United States
District Court in Brooklyn. Former Officer Charles Schwarz is asking Judge
Eugene H. Nickerson to overturn his convictions in the case, which rested
heavily on testimony by Officer Turetzky, who has since been promoted to
sergeant. During a brief appearance yesterday, Sergeant Turetzky held to his
original account, again naming Officer Schwarz as the man who led a half-naked
Mr. Louima toward the toilets. [Page B4.]
The three investigators who first spoke to him also testified at the hearing,
and while each version varied in details, all remembered the moment as high and
tense drama.
By the time Officer Turetzky came forward, it was six days after the assault
on Mr. Louima, who was sodomized with a stick by Officer Volpe. No police
officer had revealed anything about the circumstances. A trustee of the
Patrolmen's Benevolent Association had gone to all the precinct's roll calls and
told the officers, ''Sit tight and don't talk about it.'' A P.B.A. lawyer
publicly suggested that his injuries had been inflicted at a ''gay men's night''
in the Club Rendez-Vous, where Mr. Louima had attended a concert.
During his meal break at 2 a.m. on Aug. 15, Officer Turetzky recalled, he
went to the commander's office and found three supervising officers who were
investigating the shooting of a dog. They recalled that Officer Turetzky
nervously began to describe the events surrounding Mr. Louima's arrest and who
had moved him around the station house.
As he was giving his account, there was a knock on the door, recalled a
captain who was in the office, James Peters. ''I get out of my seat to try to
make it to the door before it opens and he comes in prior to that,'' Captain
Peters testified, saying it was a P.B.A. delegate, Timothy Lee.
''So as he comes in, he looks at Officer Turetzky and says, 'What are you
doing? What's going on here?' ''
Officer Turetzky reacted strongly to the interruption. ''He was riveted on
the delegate this entire time,'' Captain Peters said. ''He was staring the
entire time.''
Captain Peters said he escorted the delegate out of the room, and then gave
instructions to the desk sergeant that no one was to come near the door. By
then, Officer Turetzky was ''pretty terrified, because everybody in the precinct
knew'' he was cooperating, Captain Peters said.
Captain Peters and two sergeants in the room, Patrick Walsh and Richard
Tully, decided to stop the interview, call the Internal Affairs Bureau and tell
Captain Fried what they had learned.
They located Captain Fried at home, and after he was convinced that they had
significant information, he tracked down two of his lieutenants who were still
in Brooklyn and told them to meet him outside the station house.
Inside the station house, Inspector Fried recalled, he spoke for a few
minutes to Officer Turetzky. ''I said, 'Are you willing to speak with me without
a lawyer and without a P.B.A. delegate present?' He said to me, 'I won't talk to
you with them present' -- words to that effect.''
A moment later, Captain Peters told Officer Turetzky that he should go
upstairs to his locker and quickly gather his belongings. ''I said to him, 'You
don't work here anymore,' '' Captain Peters testified. ''I knew he was not going
back to that building.'' He sent two of the lieutenants and one of the sergeants
with him.
Before he left, Officer Turetzky called his grandmother, to assure family
members who had urged him to come forward that he was O.K.
When he left the office, however, the officer remembered, he was again
confronted by Officer Lee, the P.B.A. delegate: ''Timmy came over to me and he
said to me, 'What are you doing in there?' I told Timmy, 'You know what I'm
doing in there.' And he said, 'Why?' ''
One of the investigators stepped between them. As Officer Turetzky climbed
the stairs to his locker, another policeman from the precinct tried to follow.
That officer was stopped by the investigators until they were assured by Officer
Turetzky that he was a friend. (In his trial testimony, Officer Turetzky said
that before coming forward, he had spoken about the situation with his partner
and several other officers.)
After he packed his belongings, the ground floor of the station house was
cleared as Officer Turetzky left for the last time. Under the protection of two
lieutenants, two captains and two sergeants, he was hustled out the front door.
With Officer Turetzky's vehicle between the cars of Captain Fried and one of his
lieutenants, they set off in a caravan for the Internal Affairs office. There,
Officer Turetzky gave a taped statement that became the pillar of the
prosecution's case in three trials.
At that very moment -- 3:30 in the morning of Aug. 15, 1997 -- the
cooperating witness, Officer Eric Turetzky, was holed up in an office with
investigators at the 70th Precinct station house, where the attack occurred.
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