A couple of pages behind the
heartbreaking story in today's Daily News of 22-year NYPD veteran Peter Figoski's execution at 25 Pine Street in Cypress Hills were two stories that deserve a closer look in light of what played out at around 2 AM yesterday morning.
NYPD Officer Peter Figoski Executed.
Two men come pounding on a drug dealer's door at 25 Pine Street and he apparently lets them in. In a move to take his drug stash, they jump the guy and pistol whip him. A neighbor gets involved in the melee. The gunmen run to the back of the place, stashing a gun in the microwave, then run back to the front, passing the victim and the neighbor.
Hearing the cops coming, the gunmen duck into a room by the front door. Two cops enter the apartment and go to the victim, who is down in the front hallway. That's when the gunmen bust out the front door, running straight into Officers Peter Figoski and Glenn Estrada. One shoots Figoski in the face. Leaving the other guy there, Estrada runs down the shooter and collars him four blocks away.
The shooter is taken away in Figoski's cuffs.
25 Pine Street.
The two-family house at 25 Pine Street where Peter Figoski died is
an illegal conversion and reputed drug house owned by Amanda Sanclemente. There are about 15 people, in addition to Sanclemente and her family, living there, which probably explains why the gunmen couldn't find a back way out of the apartment -- there probably was none.
The city has been on notice, since at least March, 2007, that Sanclemente, who paid $570,000 in cash for the building in 2006, had illegally converted it. City housing inspectors, responding to complaints that the building was an illegal SRO, have been there 16 times since then, issuing four citations and imposing $27,000 in (still unpaid) fines against Sanclemente.
Emergency repairs to the building meantime have cost the taxpayers $6,500.
But shut down an operation that everybody knew would one day become a crime scene? Nope.
Lamont Pride.
Lamont Pride, the gunman who shot Officer Figoski in the face, is yet another product of bureaucratic indifference.
In August,
Lamont Pride shot a man in the foot in Greensboro, North Carolina, apparently for no reason. Greensboro PD issued a felony warrant for Pride's arrest. Pride, who had just done a year in jail for a North Carolina robbery and didn't want to go back, split for Brooklyn in September.
He was soon arrested in Brooklyn for possessing a weapon -- a knife. When the NYPD ran him, they found the outstanding felony warrant in North Carolina and called Greensboro PD, to be told that the warrant had no extradition orders attached. They couldn't send him back.
Within 24 hours, Pride was again on the street in New York City.
On November 3, cops busted him for crack and weed at the Marlboro Houses in Gravesend. Again, the NYPD ran him and found the warrant. Again, they called Greensboro PD, trying to get them to change the warrant so they could extradite Pride. Greensboro refused.
On November 4, Pride was arraigned on the drug charges and
released by Brooklyn Criminal Court Judge Evelyn LaPorte -- on personal recognizance.
His rap sheet had to have been there in the courtroom. He'd done hard time for a robbery in North Carolina. There was a felony warrant out for him in North Carolina for an armed assault. He'd been arrested twice in Brooklyn in as many months: carrying a knife, drug possession. Personal
recognizance?
By the time North Carolina decided to extradite Pride several days later, he had disappeared into Brooklyn.
At his arraignment yesterday, Pride was finally held without bail -- after he'd killed a cop.
