#2. The Police Immediately Took Credit
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The day it happened, Mayor Bloomberg and Police Commissioner Kelly held a press conference about the incident. To hear them tell it, Gelman had been apprehended entirely due to the efforts of those heroic cops in the train with me. The truth didn't come out until the next day, when a writer from the New York Post came to visit me.
I told her the same story I just told all of you, and she asked, "Wait, you're the one who stopped him?"
"Yeah."
"Well, that's not what the police were saying."
I kept waiting for the police to give more details on what had happened, maybe even tell a little bit of the truth. But they said nothing. There was no mention of my fight with Gelman, no mention of Alfred Douglas saving me -- nothing but, "Look at how awesome our cops are!"
I didn't want to be called a hero or deal with a media circus, and I was exhausted for days after the attack. So at first I told only my family. But the more I told the story, the more people kept asking, "What the hell were those cops doing?" So I testified at the grand jury hearing, and no one questioned it, because it was the truth. I gave some interviews to news stations telling the whole story, and I figured that'd be it.
But a few weeks later, after I'd gone back to work, I noticed a guy following me down the street. I didn't know what was up, but I wasn't exactly in the "being followed" mood after that whole vicious stabbing deal. I slowed my pace, turned around and asked, "Can I help you?"
He said: "I'm not looking for trouble. You're the guy from the subway, right? We have to talk. I was on the grand jury you testified before. You're giving too much credit to the police."
Now, my sister's a cop, I don't have any problem with the police, so I disagreed with this guy. But he said: "Forget about how much you like police in general. You're giving too much credit to these two cops."
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He wasn't alone in that.
I asked him to prove he was on the grand jury, and he described pictures of my injuries that were released only during the hearing. That was enough for me. He went on to explain: "When you left, they interviewed the male officer. He testified that he'd watched the whole thing, and he was about to come out. 'I started to come out, I opened the door, but I thought Gelman had a gun, so I closed the door and stayed inside.'"
That pissed me off. Not only were these "hero" cops getting credit for not helping me, they were being lauded after failing to apprehend a madman on a crowded subway train. A train that was headed for 42nd street. Times Square, just chock full of (relatively) innocent potential victims. If Gelman had gotten off there with a huge fucking knife in the middle of the morning ... I don't like thinking about it.
I decided to sue the NYPD. And I learned the worst lesson of all ...
#1. That Whole "Protect and Serve" Thing Is Just Pillow Talk, Baby
es
Cracked is going to take over for Mr. Lozito for this one. It's a pretty crazy story and, as trustworthy as he sounds over the phone, we couldn't level these kinds of accusations at a major police department without digging into them a little further. So we tracked down the contact information for Alfred Douglas, the good Samaritan who saved Lozito's life on the train. We shall dub him the Napkin Man.
Napkin Man pointed out that he'd seen Officer Terrance Howell open the door to the engineer's booth right before Gelman drew his knife, and he watched the officer slam that door shut in terror as soon as the knife came out. Officer Howell didn't leave the safety of that compartment until Joe tackled Gelman. His partner continued to hide in the box while Howell tried to cuff the madman, so Douglas helped hold Gelman down.
But the most damning evidence came up after Lozito sued the NYPD. First, two different lawyers tried to bring suits against the city on his behalf, and both of those suits were dropped. So he decided to take the law into his own hands (again) and act as his own lawyer.
Turns out it is much easier knife-fighting a maniac on a train than it is law-fighting the police in court. Thanks to the 2005 Supreme Court ruling that the police have no constitutional duty to protect people from harm, Lozito's case was dropped again. We just want to stress this: they won on the grounds that the NYPD are under no obligation to protect a man being stabbed to death right in front of them. But the judge who dismissed Lozito's case was sympathetic. She said his version of the events "ring true" and appear "highly credible." And she also at least partially backed up the claims of the random Grand Jury witness who convinced Lozito to sue in the first place:
"Officer Howell's recollection of the events described how he observed something made of metal in Gelman's hands when Gelman approached the motorman's booth. Officer Howell yelled 'gun' and took cover in the motorman's booth."
Now, we're not pretending that we'd have leapt up to charge a man we thought had a gun. The bravest thing we'd do in that scenario is soil ourselves in the hopes that we'd become unappealing to predators. But then again, we aren't armed and armored police officers, staking out a subway car for that exact crazy person.
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