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NOPD Dep. Supt. Louis Singo
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Courtesy of New Orleans Police Department
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New Orleans Deputy Police Superintendent Louis
J. Sirgo may have been ahead of his time, but he never lived long enough to find
out. Thirty years ago this Tuesday, Jan. 7, Sirgo became the highest ranking of
five NOPD officers killed by sniper fire during a one-week ordeal that ended with
a dramatic police siege at the Downtown Howard Johnson's hotel across Loyola Avenue
from City Hall.
Authorities say Sirgo was one of nine people killed and 10
seriously wounded by self-styled black extremist Mark Essex, who held hundreds
of cops at bay for 10 hours, paralyzing the Central Business District. Essex,
23, was killed during a rooftop gun battle with police sharpshooters who fired
from a marine assault helicopter. An additional nine NOPD officers were injured
by friendly fire. This week, police and city officials invite the public to
gather at NOPD headquarters' Louis J. Sirgo Memorial Plaza (named in his honor
in 1975) to remember the five officers killed during the ordeal. The memorial
service begins at 10 a.m. Tuesday, Jan. 7.
Sirgo's dramatic death has overshadowed the intriguing life
of a New Orleans native with a unique police career path and an unconventional
worldview. In a speech that has been all but forgotten since his death, Sirgo
suggested ousting political extremists by eliminating the social conditions
in which they thrived. "As citizens of the United States, we are guilty of malfeasance
in office," Sirgo said in a lengthy address to civic leaders titled, "Working
Against the Odds," printed in its entirety by The Washington Post one
week after his death.
Sirgo warned that a "thin blue line of police officers, working
against the odds, is able to partially contain the violence and prevent complete
criminal anarchy." But not for long. "Police forces were not designed for, nor
are they capable of coping with the kind of [social ills] which exist in most
of our urban areas, conditions which are becoming worse by the day."
A white, 17-year veteran of the NOPD, Sirgo deplored public
indifference to poverty, a "vindictive system" of crime and punishment, and
"the greatest sin of American society -- the status of the American Negro."
He decried "slum" housing as well as educational and social inequities, which
he said increased the power of anarchists and the appeal of breakfast programs
in the Desire housing project sponsored by the militant Black Panther Party.
"If there were no 'Desires,' there would be
no Panthers," Sirgo said, imploring his audience to assume responsibility for
reversing widespread poverty that fueled urban crime. "What I am saying is that
we have to get our heads out of the sand, for after all, it is an unsafe position.
An ostrich buries his brains, and that part of his anatomy [that] remains visible
makes a very good target for a sniper."
Appointed deputy chief Sept. 8, 1970, by then-Police
Chief Clarence Giarrusso, Sirgo took command in time for three police confrontations
with the Panthers. Historian Adam Fairclough noted a 1970 survey of community
leaders conducted before the Panthers' arrival "placed police harassment and
overreaction above all other grievances." Although the Panthers' often violent,
separatist rhetoric agitated the predominantly white NOPD and city administration,
the group's breakfast program and defiance of NOPD was cheered by many Desire
residents.
Sirgo's direct role in addressing police-community
relations is not clear, but his ascent to the upper ranks of NOPD was somewhat
unorthodox. An Army dental lab technician in the Pacific during World War II,
Sirgo joined the NOPD in 1946 and was personally praised by then-Mayor Chep
Morrison for helping collect city refuse during a sanitation workers' strike.
Sirgo worked as a homicide detective and, as a police captain in the late '50s,
developed an award-winning system of statistical reporting of crimes and police
calls for service that replaced NOPD's practice of assigning police personnel
to districts "based on memory and assumption," Police Chief Provosty Dayries
said.
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Officer Philip Coleman
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Courtesy of New Orleans Police Department
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Sirgo retired in 1964 and worked as clerk
at Traffic Court. But six years later, he was re-appointed as the No. 2 command
at NOPD and led the police department's pitched battles with militant groups
like the Black Panther Party -- and the sniper who killed him.
On Sept. 14, 1970, police and Panthers clashed;
after a 32-minute shootout -- in which no one was killed -- 14 Panthers surrendered.
"We lived on Downman Road then; you could hear the gunfire from our house,"
recalls Joyce Sirgo, the deputy chief's widow. "He was right in the middle of
it all."
Riddled with police informants, the Panthers
were quickly routed from the city after relatively little violence, when compared
to confrontations in some other American cities. But the conflicts illustrated
the racial tensions in New Orleans that preceded the bloodiest chapter in NOPD
history and the death of Louis Sirgo.
He was killed by sniper fire from a .44 caliber
magnum rifle during a one-week ordeal that began with the New Year's Eve 1972
shooting death of police cadet Alfred Harrell Jr. Later that night, K-9 officer
Edwin Hosli Sr. was investigating a warehouse burglary when he was ambushed
and fatally shot in the back by the same .44 caliber rifle. Hosli suffered for
three months in a hospital before dying; his oldest son, Edwin Hosli Jr., then
12, is now a police captain and commands the Second Police District. The NOPD
K-9 compound at City Park is named for his father's memory.
One week after Hosli and Harrell were shot,
police chased Mark Essex in a stolen car to the Howard Johnson's. The sniper
set diversionary fires throughout the 300-room hotel and shot at hundreds of
cops surrounding the burning building. Sirgo was fatally shot as he led a police
rescue effort up a hotel stairwell. "He was less than 2 feet in front of me
when he got shot," says Jules Killelea, now a retired NOPD captain. Killelea
fired three shotgun blasts at the sniper, who retreated. Killelea and other
officers then carried their dying commander down more than a dozen flights of
stairs. "I remember Louie every day in my prayers," Killelea now says.
Ret. Det. Anthony Radosti recalls he was manning
a counter-sniper position in a building across from the hotel when he heard
Sirgo had been shot. "When I got shot he stayed at the hospital most of the
day with me," Radosti said recently of a 1971 incident in which the young patrolman
had been shot in the face. "Chief Sirgo was there when the priest was there
and he (Sirgo) held my hand through the Last Sacraments," Radosti recalls. "I
still have a picture of him standing over me. He was literally holding my hand.
You have a bond with somebody who was there with you for something like that."
Attorney Harry Tervalon was a rookie policeman
stationed at Charity Hospital when the dying deputy chief was rushed into the
emergency room. Moments earlier, sniper fire hit the hospital wall. "Chief Sirgo
was brought in right after that," Tervalon says. "I knew fear that day."
Earlier that Sunday, Officer Paul Persigo
was killed by a sniper near the hotel moments after he spoke to a police chaplain.
Persigo had planned to celebrate his wife's birthday that night; retired officer
Clarence Hernandez recalls Persigo was a "compassionate" veteran officer who
was "well-versed in criminal law" and always available to help a rookie. "As
a young patrolman, you look for someone who can show you the ropes -- Persigo
helped me," Hernandez says.
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Cadet Alfred Harrell Jr.
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Courtesy of New Orleans Police Department
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At nearby Duncan Plaza, Officer Philip Coleman
was cut down shortly after he and Officer Leo Newman arrived to assist wounded
policeman Ken Solis. "When Kenny got shot I put him up against a tree," recalls
Dave McCaan, a young patrolman and Solis' police partner. "I kept telling Coleman
not to get out the car. ... He did and he got shot. And to this day, I still
feel bad about it. I was a medic in Vietnam. I knew he was dead. There is nothing
like being there to help somebody and there is nothing you can do."
As the gun battle raged, McCaan turned back
to Solis. Officer Larry Williams left his own cover near the Supreme Court building
and crawled over to help. "Larry Williams gave me his T-shirt and I put a pressure
bandage on Solis to stop the bleeding," McCaan says. Solis survived and is now
a U.S. Marshal.
A national television audience saw urban warfare
unfold as it happened, and chaos increased as civilian vigilantes and gun clubs
showed up to volunteer their help. One of the older NOPD detectives armed himself
with his personal Thompson submachine gun. A few small clusters of young African-American
spectators cheered the sniper and waved clenched fists as police ducked for
cover. A bitter cold front moved in; shivering police manned the rooftops in
buildings nearby. Hotel guests were virtually held hostage by the melee. Also
killed by sniper fire that day were Dr. Robert and Elizabeth Steagall, a couple
honeymooning from Virginia, and two hotel employees: Sherwood Collins and Frank
Schneider.
The 36-hour police siege climaxed with a rooftop
gun battle between a lone suspect and police sharpshooters who fired from a
Marine assault helicopter that hovered overhead. When it was over, 23-year-old
Mark James Robert Essex of Emporia, Kan., lay dead on the roof. The next day
on Canal Street, the D.H. Holmes Department Store signaled an end to the crisis
when the store's Christmas bells played "God Bless America."
For the next three days, police responded
to anxious but unfounded calls of other snipers. Common criminals knew better
than to venture out after a police killing. Crime dipped. Louisiana Attorney
General William J. Guste Jr. called for a federal investigation and announced:
"I am convinced that there is an underground, national suicidal group bent on
creating terror in America." Members of Congress proposed legislation to make
assault on a police officer or firefighter a federal offense.
Then-Police Chief Clarence Giarrusso later
testified about the shoot-out before a congressional panel. Since the incident,
he had collected master keys, aerial photos and blueprints of local high-rises,
"simple preparations which he said would have eliminated much of the delay and
confusion at the Howard Johnson's," wrote Peter Hernon, author of A Terrible
Thunder: The Story of the New Orleans Sniper (Garrett County Press, 2001).
Subsequent investigations by both FBI and
the NOPD concluded that Essex acted alone in the attacks. "Our investigation
had not identified Essex as being affiliated with a particular black extremist
organization, although there is ample evidence of his antiwhite feeling and
predilection toward terrorism," stated the FBI report. Widespread police sightings
of a "second man" at the Howard Johnson were not substantiated by investigations,
but the issue continues to divide active and former NOPD officers.
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Sgt. Edwin Holsi Sr.
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Courtesy of New Orleans Police Department
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City and NOPD officials drew criticism for
their handling of the crisis, especially establishing the command center on
the ground floor of the hotel during the siege, which pre-dated police SWAT
teams and lightweight police communications. "The department learned we were
terribly underprepared for this situation and one man could shut down the business
district of the city of New Orleans," says Anthony Radosti. "It became a study
of how not to respond. To get to the command center you had to expose yourself
to fire."
"We never heard of SWAT teams back then and
hostage situations were very rare," says Officer William Trepagnier, a 38-year
NOPD veteran who provided covering fire for police partner Jack Uhle as they
climbed up a fire truck ladder outside the burning hotel to rescue a wounded
firefighter.
Four days later, the local NAACP held a citywide
memorial service for everyone killed since the New Year's Eve shooting of Cadet
Harrell -- including the sniper, which infuriated some officers at the time.
"They were all human beings," a NAACP official told The Louisiana Weekly,
a black-owned newspaper whose editorial pages echoed Giarrusso's condemnations
of the initial attacks on police.
On May 19, 1975, after the investigations
of the attacks had concluded, the NOPD honored its dead and wounded officers
in a general awards ceremony. But the city's handling of the aftermath of Howard
Johnson's left some officers bitter. Antoine Saacks, an NOPD sergeant who fired
at Essex from the helicopter, says proper recognition of the five slain officers
by the city is long overdue.
"They are kind of forgotten heroes," Saacks
says. "I think the time is long since past when the city should have recognized
their valiant efforts." Saacks believes that racial overtones from the police
encounters with Essex, the Panthers and other black militants spurred city officials
to quickly put Howard Johnson's in the past. "They gave their lives for the
city and it seemed like [the city] couldn't get them in the ground quick enough,"
Saacks says of the fallen officers.
Within the ranks of NOPD, the attacks galvanized
police despite their own racial divisions. Larry Williams, an African-American
officer who two months after the attacks became the lead plaintiff in a far-reaching
lawsuit filed by black cops alleging racial bias within the department, left
safety to help Officer Coleman, who was white.
"I wasn't thinking about race that day," Williams
says. "Normally, I would have been. But that day it didn't matter. Even though
I had my views about the makeup of the police department and how that did not
work well with a majority black city, I never once thought of police as not
being a fraternity. When attacked from outside, we stuck together. ... That
day united us in a way in which we had never been united."
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Officer Paul Persigo
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Courtesy of New Orleans Police Department
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"There were tremendous racial problems on
the department at the time, but on the street we all backed each other up,"
says Harry Tervalon, who is African-American. "Especially that day. Everybody
was blue. Alfred Harrell was blue. That is the good part about the department
and the brotherhood."
Alfred Harrell Jr., 19, one of the few black
cadets on the force, was the first to die. The nephew of renowned Chef Austin
Leslie, Harrell had worked part time in the family restaurant. As a youth growing
up in Uptown during the 1960s, he looked up to black NOPD Sgt. Lloyd Verrett,
who lived next door. Verrett served as a role model for the neighborhood until
he himself was killed in the line of duty in 1967.
"When I was Sirgo's aide, Alfred worked in
my operations office," recalls Ret. Capt. Killilea. "He was an ambitious young
man who probably would have gone far on the job."
When the sniper made a New Year's Eve assault
on Central Lock-Up, Harrell was shot as he ran toward a fellow unarmed cadet
who had come under fire. Lt. Horace Perez was shot in the ankle. Lt. Kenneth
Dupaquier rushed to Harrell's aid. In A Terrible Thunder, author Hernon
describes what happened next: "Dupaquier knelt down and picked up Harrell's
left hand to check for a pulse. The cadet's wedding ring came off and fell into
the dark pool oozing out from under him. 'Al, can you hear me?' Dupaquier asked,
anxiously. Harrell, who lay with his head bent back, eyes wide open, didn't
answer. Dupaquier picked up the wedding ring and gently slid it back on Harrell's
finger."
Later that night, Hernon wrote, Chief Giarrusso
wondered aloud what life would be like for Harrell's now fatherless son. Several
years later, Harrell's widow committed suicide, says NOPD Officer Stephen Harrell,
the slain officer's younger brother. Alfred Harrell's twin brother, Hasim Abdul
Salaam, adopted the boy, and the whole family and their church helped to raise
"Little Alfred." Now 30, Alfred Harrell III graduated from Southern University
with a degree in business administration and will graduate in May as a minister
from a Baptist seminary in Virginia; he is currently employed by the Boy Scouts
of America. "He works with youth around the country and he's just like his dad
-- he's ambitious, eager, and he wants everything right now," Stephen Harrell
says.
Stephen Harrell, 39, an NOPD school resource
officer and church choir director, says he was personally recruited by Chief
Eddie Compass but did a lot of soul-searching before leaving the Army for NOPD
in 1988. Harrell says he was motivated to join the force by his brother's example.
"You've got to learn to forgive and I have no hatred toward [Essex]," he says.
"I took the psychological tests and thought about would the department turn
me down thinking I was coming for revenge. But I went about my job like I thought
my brother would. When I put on my uniform, it's a tribute to him." As fate
would have it, Harrell once worked in the Mounted Division under the command
of Capt. Hosli Jr.; the two talked briefly about the tragic deaths of their
loved ones, Harrell recalls.
Stephen Harrell was 9 years old the night
of his brother's murder. "Our mother was away at a New Year's Eve party and
a squad car showed up at the house," he recalls. "At the time, I had three brothers
and one twin sister. There was a lot of commotion at the door. We thought something
had happened with our mother."
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Police chased Mark Essex to the Howard Johnson's, where the sniper set diversionary fires and shot at hundreds of cops surrounding the burning building.
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Photo by Ret. NOPD Capt. Paul Titus
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The police took Harrell's mother to the hospital,
where the last rites were being administered to her son. "Chief Giarrusso came
over and consoled my mother and family," Harrell says. "I remember back then
feeling [NOPD] was a close-knit group of people."
That is a feeling he says he has known again
and again: as a cop responding to the murder last year of Officer Christopher
Russell, when looking at his brother's name on the glass monument to fallen
NOPD officers at Sirgo Plaza or when passing Alfred Harrell playground in Carrollton,
named in honor of the slain cadet.
Seated in the immaculately clean kitchen of
her modest suburban home, Joyce Sirgo smiles as she fidgets with an empty Christmas
candy bowl. "If there is any consolation, it's that people care," she says.
After her husband's death, she received condolences from around the world. "They
planted a tree in his honor in Israel," she says, still apparently overwhelmed
by the gesture. A Lakeview garden club planted two trees in his memory. A classroom
of school children sent letters to comfort Mrs. Sirgo and the couple's two daughters.
Immediately following her husband's death,
the Police Department screened the "hate mail" that cheered the sniper, though
one letter did get through to her, she says, calmly.
The only lingering hint of anger over the
Howard Johnson's attacks that Sirgo shows during a two-hour interview is directed
at a television reporter of the period. As the drama unfolded, she says, both
she and her youngest daughter learned her husband had been shot when the reporter
broadcast the news -- before the family had been personally notified by police.
"I was in the other room and all of a sudden I heard my daughter, who was then
15, cry out, 'My Daddy! My Daddy!'" Sirgo recalls. "I know there is no gentle
way to tell someone about something like that, but that is not the way."
At the time, she says, she wanted to go to
court to file an injunction against the television media during their live coverage
of the siege. "[Reporters] also were jeopardizing all police officers by broadcasting
where the man was going and what the police were doing," she said, noting there
were televisions in the hotel.
Afterwards, she coped the best she could.
"I have a deep faith," she says. "I know you are not supposed to question God's
will, but it is hard to console yourself.
"If it had to happen it is [fortunate] that
he was killed outright and did not lose his life like Officer Hosli," she says,
remembering that Louis Sirgo visited the wounded officer every day at the hospital
until Sirgo himself was slain. She recalls the nightmarish night of New Year's
Eve of 1972, when she and her husband abandoned their social plans after the
separate sniper shootings sent Harrell and Hosli to Charity Hospital. She dropped
her husband off at the hospital and drove home in his unmarked police car. Sirgo
went to join a team of detectives who began searching the warehouse that Hosli
had approached when he was shot in the back.
"I was one of the guys that went in," recalls
retired Capt. Paul Titus, then a detective in the intelligence division. "I
remember the warehouse with 30-foot ceilings and pallets of merchandise stacked
up. I turned around -- I had a shotgun with me -- and there was Sirgo in a suit.
"I said, 'Chief, what do you want us to do?' He said, 'Keep doing what you are
doing. You are doing fine.' I cannot tell you how good it felt to have him there.
... There are men that can command, then there are commanders that can lead.
Sirgo was a commander and a leader. He was the kind of guy, if something was
going down, he would be right there with you. And that was the cause of his
demise."
When Sirgo returned home that night from the
warehouse, his widow recalls, she told her husband: "I hope this is not an indication
of how the rest of the New Year is going to go." He said it wasn't.
The telephone rang later that Sunday morning,
calling her husband to duty. The Howard Johnson's incident was beginning.
