← All Of It with Alison Stewart
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A
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B
This is all of it on wnyc. I'm Alison Stewart. Just days before Christmas, on the afternoon of December 22, 1984, Bernard Goetz boarded a Downtown 2 train. Anybody listening to the station knows or thinks they know what happened next. In between 14th street and Chambers street, five shots were fired by Goetz and four teenagers lay injured on the ground. So began a controversial case that would cause simmering tension in the city about crime committed government, trust and racism. Getz was white, the teens black. The combination was fresh meat for the plat tabloids. New York was divided on what happened when Bernie Getz. Was Getz a gun wielding bigot who attacked four black teens under the guise of self defense or a hero who took fighting crime into his own hands because the city was failing to protect its citizens? It could be all of the above. According to the book Five Bullets, the story of Bernie Getz, New York's explosive 80s and the subway vigilant trial that divided the nation. Its author is lawyer Elliot Williams. He traces every step of the case, including an interview with Bernard Goetz he conducted in 2024. The book is out today. Elliot, thank you so much for joining us.
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C
So great to be here with you. Alison, thanks for having me.
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B
How old were you when you heard about Bernie Goetz?
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C
Eight years old. So I would have been eight on December 22, 1984, right when the shooting happened. And I was born in Brooklyn and grew up in New Jersey not far outside the city. That's why it's very nice to talk to you. Another daughter of 1980s New Jersey and New York and really experiencing the zeitgeist of that moment. It really was just captivating all over the nightly news for all of us.
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B
Do you remember your parents or relatives talking about it?
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C
Not with specificity. The moment I remember and I talk about this in the book Five Bullets. The one thing I remember is all on the nightly news one evening. This is when I know I was nine because it would have been 1985. I know from reporting the book that Bernard Goetz had was the subject of rap songs of hip hop music. And Bernie Goetz, literally the least hip hop figure in human history, was somehow now the muse for rap and songs and music And I didn't think anything of it at the time. Look, I'm nine years old. But my God, what a moment that was. And when we look back and realize that not just criminal justice and public safety implications of it, but just the cultural significance of this moment, that this man is inspiring hip hop songs. And a few years later, a line in Billy Joel's we didn't start the fire. Something about Bernie Getz and the shooting was bigger than just these five men. And so a lot of that sort of inspired my interest in and writing of the book Five Bullets.
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A
Listeners, especially of those who were living in the city during the shooting and the trial. We want to hear from you what you remember about the Bernie Getz case as it was unfolding. Call or text us now at 212-433-9692. Were you someone who was supportive of get what Gets did, considering the crime rate of the 80s, or do you think he was wrong? Our number is 2124-3396-9221-2433, WNYC. Or maybe you have a question about the legal issues surround. It's a big part of the book. Elliot is a lawyer, I should say. He could answer him, possibly. Our number is 2124-3396-9221-2433, WNYC. I'm going straight to the end of the book. You interviewed Bernie Getz.
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C
Woohoo child. I did.
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A
Was it easy or difficult to get.
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B
A hold of him?
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C
Surprisingly easy. We had been emailing and I knew, I told him I was writing. I got a hold of his email, just sent him a note, and we were emailing back and forth. I'd be calling. At one point I picked up the phone and called him and he just answered. And the next thing I know, I'm interviewing or speaking to Bernard Getz. And what a 45 minute period of my life that was. Oh my goodness, Allison, it was bonkers.
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A
What was the most pressing question you had? Whether it was answered or not. But what was the most pressing? He did okay.
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C
Oh, he did. I mean, the question I really asked him because he was generally inveterate and unrepentant when I talked to him. And I just, and I asked him, just reading between the lines of what he said, do you think you committed a public service with the thing you did in that, in your shooting? And he said, yeah, those guys needed shooting. That's not why I shot them, but they needed shooting. And it struck me, I was floored by it because it was almost a eugenics argument. And believe it or not, it comes up in his comments. It comes up in a civil trial. He was sued by one of the victims of the shooting who ended up paralyzed in brain damage as a result of it. And at trial he, he almost was taking this point that some people simply don't deserve to live in society. And it really struck me. There was really no moment of analysis or awareness or self reflection at all. And if anything, over the years, he's calcified and gotten even harder in his views that he did the right thing.
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B
Did you learn any new information from this conversation?
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C
From the conversation, not so much. I mean, other than he's very bright, he's very sharp, but all over the place where it's, you know, at one minute he's talking about squirrels and rescuing them and another minute Mario Cuomo and all the bad things he did, another minute vulgar. A vulgar question to me about a personal private practice that adults engage in. Then at another minute, I mean, literally just bouncing around, you follow him and you realize this is a sharp human being, but sort of an addled brain and also a bigot. The kinds of things he was willing to say to me as a black man were striking. I mean, no ethnic slurs like he used in the past and it's documented in my book Five Bullets. But he said a couple things to me that I just thought, wow, you have no filter. Yeah, none. And no awareness. And my goodness, who are you?
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B
You know, people often in the book use the word odd to describe him. Did you find him odd?
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C
Absolutely. I mean, I just, and far be it from me, I'm not the arbiter of what normal behavior is, but it was odd. It was quirky behavior and a lot of it. You know, I didn't experience him in person personally. Like his neighbor would say things like he would be kind and warm and garrulous and back slapping and friendly to children and so on at one moment and then all of a sudden just clam up and stop and. Or just want to yell about public safety. And I just found his chuckling and all over the, all over the place behavior and talking, just quirky at best. But odd. I mean, and that's not an unfair journalistic assessment. He was an odd man.
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A
My guest is Elliot Williams. He's a CNN legal analyst and author.
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B
Of the new book Five Bullets, which tells the story of Bernie Goetz's trial.
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A
In 1980s New York.
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B
It is out today. We are hearing from you. What do you remember the most about.
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A
The Bernie Goetz it mean for New York in the 1980s.
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B
Our number is 212-433-WNYC 212-433-9692. Before we get into some more detail, you were not able to talk to.
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A
Any of the four young men who were shot?
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C
Yes, I was not two are deceased. I, I dozens of attempts to contact the others. I got as close as getting on the phone with two of his surviving sisters and, and after much back and forth they, they politely, it was, they were kind to me but politely declined any opportunity to comment for the book.
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A
How did you then keep this book from being one sided?
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C
I did everything I could and quite frankly, and that's an excellent question, Allison. In the preface to the book I say I did not, you know, I spoke to Al Sharpton, I spoke to Curtis Sliwa, I spoke to the prosecutor defense and Bernie Goetz himself unfold. Fortunately, I didn't speak to the young men and unfortunately a lot of the public records about them revolve around their criminal histories because they all had copious records. I did everything I could through existing articles and news clippings and whatever else I could find to reconstruct what their family lives were like, who they were, what their interests were. There's some detail in color about how each of them grew up in their houses and just what life was like. But without the ability to speak to them directly, it's certainly not one sided. By no means could anyone read the book Five Bullets and call it a one sided account, but I would have. As a journalist, the thing I was craving more than literally anything else, even perhaps more, the opportunity to talk to Bernard Goetz himself was the opportunity to get one of one of the two surviving victims on the phone.
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A
This is a text. It says I remember how angry subway riders were about what Bernie did. Accusing white people for carrying guns, but also white folks for saying enough is enough and how unsafe the subway is. That's one point of view. Let's talk to James from Brooklyn who has a different point of view. Hi James, thank you so much for calling, all of it.
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D
Hi, thanks for having me on, but go ahead. Your question.
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A
No, what's your question? What do you want? What is your response?
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D
No, I think Bernie did the right thing. New York City was very dangerous at the time. Even as an African American male, it four males were in that subway car with me. They probably would have attempted to mug me. And that was very common during those days. Keep in mind that during those days our grandparents could not even go out because they were so dangerous. And when he did the right thing, those boys were harassing him. Had they not been bothering him, they would have never been shot. He would have stayed to himself.
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A
Thank you for calling. Let's talk to Deborah on line five from Nanuquette, New York. Hi, Deborah. Thank you so much for taking the time to call. All of it.
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E
Yes, hi, I hear. I just want to make sure you can hear me. I'm in my car. I lived in Brooklyn at the time. I was in my late 20s, traveling every day to St. Vincent's Hospital, and I'm a nurse. And I remember vividly when that happened. And I. I just don't think it's as simple as, like, the author. I think I agree with maybe what the author said at your introduction. That racist guy with a gun versus the black guy on the train. Was Bernie right? Were they wrong? I just remember the fear of riding the subways every day. It was very scary time. And if someone came to you, regardless, it did feel like harassment. You were afraid people were snatching chains off people's necks. And I also do remember clearly thinking Bernie was wrong for carrying a gun because it was illegal. So, however, he did have a gun, and now he has people harassing him. And the fear and whatever went through his mind triggered him to do something. So the guys who were harassing him were wrong. You know, unfortunately, they were young men. One of them ended up, I won't give names, being a patient in the hospital where I worked. So I was also listening to people who were taking care of him. And I said, you know, it's not that simple. I know you feel sorry for him, but I ride the subway. I would have been afraid. No matter who it was, no matter what color, they were a man, anybody.
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B
Thank you so much, Deborah. I'm gonna dive in there. Right. I wanna thank you so much for calling the teenagers he shot that day Barry Allen, Darrell Cabey, Troy Canty, and James Ramseur. What's important to know about these four men?
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C
So, yeah, they were four teenagers, 18 and 19 years old, from the Bronx. They were heading downtown to break open video game machines. There was a big thing that young kids did. Teenagers at the time. This is the boom of video game culture in the United States. And bars and bodegas all had video game machines. And they would go down, pick them open, and take a couple hundred dollars of coins out so they were on the way to commit a crime. Now, Bernard Goetz has sort of used that and their criminal histories as some basis for justifying his shooting of them. And in his he texts me or emails me a bunch now still, he's looked at my book and says, well, you need to say more about their criminal histories. And I say, well, look, the book Five Bullets references the drug abuse or criminal histories of these young men 41 times, I believe. I'm not shy about that. That fact alone does not justify their being shot, only on the basis of the fact that Berenguetz didn't know that information at the time he shot them. You know, one thing quickly, Allison, responding to both James and Deborah, and I want to validate the point they made, they both made about fear and the pervasiveness of fear on the New York subway at the time. It was just unsafe in a way that nothing in New York is today. And people up and down transcending race. I am glad that James identified his race here, saying that, look, black folks were scared, too. And we can't treat this as this binary in which either it was okay or it wasn't because in truth, the environment was very frightening for many people. Now, I say as a former prosecutor that merely fear does not necessarily always entitle deadly force. And that was the core issue at the heart of this case and really something I explore both morally and culturally and legally in my book Five Bullets.
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A
And we'll talk about that next after a quick break.
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You're listening to all of it on wnyc. I'm Alison Stewart. My guest is Elliot Williams. He's a CNN legal analyst. And he is now the author of a new book called Five Bullets, which tells the story of Bernie Goetz's trial in 1980s New York. The book is out today. One of the things I really want to talk to you about because you are a lawyer, is sort of the legality in the courtroom. It was really interesting in your book. One of the central legal arguments in this case was whether or not the defense could prove reasonableness of the fear that Bernie Getz felt when he shot for people.
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C
Yeah. And it all makes it all the way up to the highest court in New York State, the New York State Court of Appeals. And I, in as colorful, as colorfully as I could, explain the complexity of just defining that one word, reasonableness. And what does society define as reasonable, both as we live and go through our lives, but also in the eyes of the law, and ultimately it came down to, and this is what the court ends up deciding that reasonableness is complicated. It's number one, how does someone feel in his heart? Does he legitimately feel reasonably scared before he engages in deadly force. And does he act in a manner that comports with how we, we would expect other members of society to act? Right. Did he also behave, I guess, normally or reasonably? It's, it's both subjective and objective in many ways. And hearing James, a moment ago, our caller say, you know, many people would have done the same thing. That's part of the legal analysis. What would other people in the community have done? But that's, you know, three years of litigation. I sum up in, I don't know, two pages of the book. But it was very interesting. Hugely important in the arc of New York law. Yeah.
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A
Goetz claimed he acted in self defense and fear. Yet Barry Allen was found with a bullet wound in his back, which was meant that his back was turned. How did that play into the trial?
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C
Yeah, well, it's a little bit inconclusive only because the train is lurching and swaying. Both Allen and James Ramsay have bullet holes, if not in their back, in their sides, suggesting that they weren't hit head on. And that's an open question. Now, Getz in his confession says, those guys were trying to get away from me. And so he even acknowledges it. And I think that did not. It wasn't flattering for Getz. The jury sort of dismissed it. One along those lines. You know, this idea. Both Deborah and James, the two callers a moment ago, use the word harassing, which is interesting. Number one, it's a legally operative term. But it's factually disputed and never fully resolved at trial whether the men actually harassed Getz. It's established that Troy Canty either says, give me $5 or can I have $5? One of them being sort of panhandling. One being, yeah. A threat that preceded an inevitable mugging. But that's never established. Now, many New Yorkers felt, and Getz said this himself, I know a mugging when it's going down, but again, it was up in the air.
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B
Let's take a call. Alan from North Bergen wants to run something by you. Hi, Alan, thank you for calling, all of it. Tell us your. Tell me what you think.
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D
Hi. Thank you for taking my call. You know, I was 28 years old when it happened, so I remember it quite distinctly, distinctly. And North Bergen is right across the Hudson river, so we used to come into the city all the time. But I remember it. Maybe I'm misremembering it, but I remember that they were wielding a screwdriver and threatened him with a screwdriver. Yeah, that Harassment. You know, a screwdriver in that instance can be used as a dangerous weapon.
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C
Absolutely. It absolutely can be used as a dangerous weapon. But it was not here. And I get into this quite a bit in the book. There's the Daily News, pardon me, it was the New York Post I first ran with the notion that screwdrivers were brandished as weapons. That actually ended up being disproven and wasn't true. Now back to the point Alan, that I'd raised a little bit earlier in the interview that the guys were going downtown to pick open video game machines. That's why they had screwdrivers on them. Somehow some newspaper said that they brandished them as weapons. Forgets that was never proven at trial. It was never stated at trial. All of the four men were clear. No, they were hidden. They were in our back pockets or whatever they were for picking things open. It was a narrative that widely has been disproven. But even today when people ask me about the book, didn't they brandish and threaten him with screwdrivers? Literally Nobody says that even gets today would acknowledge no one pulled out a screwdriver on him. But somehow after that first I think it was New York Post piece came out, it just turbocharged this notion that everybody picking up on it without actually checking whether the fact was true. And I don't say, and I want to be clear, I do not say any of this as a defense of these four young men or of their behavior or anything they did or did not. This is just what the factual record at trial and throughout four plus decades of journalism as has proven or established.
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B
You've also established the tabloids role in this. And would you explain to our listeners what was going on at the New York Post when this happened?
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C
Sure. So right. A few years before the Getz shooting, Rupert Murdoch Murdoch had purchased the New York Post and had really shifted the coverage of the paper to more sensational stories about crime. There's the three page, pardon me, the three inch headlines that would say City under siege or A night of terror. And people would consume this quite aggressively, get more scared and then buy more newspapers. And there was sort of a culture of fear pushed by the tabloids, started by the Post, but then the Daily News and Newsday started following suit. And as anyone who in the city was in the city in the early 1980s remembers, everybody read the tabloids. That's how you got your news. And they were the size they were. You know, they're those little handheld ones so you could read them in public on the newspaper and not have a full big, you know, multi page New York Times or Wall Street Journal or whatever else. And so it affected the way people saw the world because that was really the only game in town. This wasn't the era of CNN and Fox and msnbc. Everybody got their news from two or three sources. And those sources really were reinforcing the narrative that New York was really, really, really unsafe. Which I want to be clear, it was. But the newspaper was reminding everybody quite aggressively how bad it was.
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A
You're a legal analyst for cnn, and the trial of Bernie Goetz was obviously a heavily scrutinized legal case. From your perspective as an expert, what questions did you have about the actual legal arguments and procedures that happened during this trial?
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C
Yeah, it's for the most part. Justice Stephen Crane, whom I interviewed, he's Now, I think, 88 years old, was a wonderful two interviews I had with him. And I really do think everyone respected him. And both sides respected him, trusted his judgment, trusted his fairness. The one thing he really screwed up, just the big mistake he had allowed a staged reenactment of the shooting where Curtis Sliwa brought in these four big sort of thuggy looking black dudes to stand in as these models and reenact the shooting. Now, okay, fine, that may not sound like a big deal to a non legal audience, but there was really no legal basis for it. And it was supposed to be a ballistics demonstration. It was supposed to be literally explaining how fast bullets went and where they whizzed. Really what it ended up being was four big sort of dirty looking black guys beating up on a retired NYPD officer, which they all Sliwa acknowledged to me wasn't really for the ballistics. It was really just to frighten the jury and to sort of get in the jury's heads about how scary this moment was for Bernard Goetz to play off their racial biases. So it did not need to happen. And it was just, it was surprising that the judge allowed it.
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A
Let's talk to Steve in Brooklyn. Hey, Steve, thanks for calling, all of it.
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D
Thank you. Yeah, I lived in the same building that Bernie Getz lived in, maybe still does, I don't know. At the time of this incident, and I remember all the press hanging out in the lobby and I didn't follow the trial or the news that much other than that then it was happening. But I always thought it was a wrong thing to do for him, for Bernie to do what he did. Yeah, I lived in New York. I've lived in New York a long time, and I've never carried a weapon.
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C
Yeah, there's a.
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A
There's a whole generation who don't know who Bernie Goetz is. Truthfully, how much does this case still matter to New York today and what can be learned from it?
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C
Oh, I think a lot of the issues that characterize New York back then still live with us today. This whole question of how safe do we feel animates a lot of American politics today. Just open your newspaper. It's all about what is the reality of what people feel versus what the data says and does it line up and in people's hearts, do they feel safe? This question around the country of National Guardsmen in big cities often comes down to safety in cities and how safe are cities perceived to be? And you know, Alison, quite literally, the key point players in this book, Five Bullets, Rudy Giuliani, Al Sharpton, Rupert Murdoch, Curtis Sliwa, the New York Post are all driving the American conversation today. So quite literally, the figures that shape the case are shaping American policy and media today.
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B
The name of the book is Five Bullets. It's by Elliot Williams. It is out today. Elliot, thank you so much for taking the time.
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C
Thanks for having me, Allison. This. This is wonderful.
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B
And that is all of it for today. I'm Alison Stewart. I appreciate you listening and I appreciate you. I will meet you back here tomorrow or I'll see you tonight at Get Lit.
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F
This is Ira Flato, host of Science Friday. For over 30 years, the science Friday team has been reporting high quality science and technology news, making science fun for curious people by covering everything from the outer reaches of space to the rapidly changing world of AI to the tiniest microbes in our bodies. Audiences trust our show because they know we're driven by a mission to inform and serve listeners first and foremost with important news they won't get anywhere else. And our sponsors benefit from that halo effect. For more information on becoming a sponsor, visit sponsorship.wnyc.org.