“Might be a dry hole,” shrugs Robertson before Bonse wheels the vehicle across Broadway to O’Neil Street where a raid team has just pulled into the parking lot behind another well-known address for Kingston narcs, the Broadmor Apartments. Suspecting that the team hasn’t posted anybody out back, Robertson asks Bonse to pull the vehicle up a little bit, then leaps out and takes up a position behind a fence in a weedy strip behind the apartments where he cranes his neck looking for anybody clambering out a back window. The spot is just a few yards from the spot where a teenage gunman fired a shotgun blast into a group of youths last summer, injuring 10. A block away, a few months ago, another teen shot and wounded a man in the back during a fight. Robertson needn’t have worried. Barry Futrell goes along quietly as the cops lead him to waiting car. Meanwhile, a pajama-clad woman spots a Kingston Times reporter shooting pictures through a chain-link fence.
Operation Mop Up suspect Gene Brodhead is taken from his Bruyn Avenue home by a KPD Special Investigations Unit team led by KPD Detective Eric Van Allen. (Photo by Jesse J. Smith)
“Go ahead and take your picture,” she shouts. “But they ain’t got a warrant.”
By 7 a.m., the cops have 10 suspects in custody and one team, led by rookie SIU Detective Macy, has closed out their list, to the presumed chagrin of his more veteran peers. At 136 Bruhn Ave., a team led by KPD Detective Eric Van Allen is hauling off Gene Brodhead. Brodhead was picked up in Clean Sweep and ended up sentenced to probation. Now he’s being led off to another trip through the criminal justice system.
Five minutes later, Van Allen’s squad will repeat the scene at two blocks away at a pale green three-story apartment house where Dwaine C. Brannon is informed, while in handcuffs, that he’s looking at two felony counts of criminal sale of a controlled substance. A few minutes later, back on the other side of Broadway, the command vehicle pulls up as next-door neighbors Chris Lyons and Jerome Falcone are led away from an apartment house at 74 Cedar St.
Attracting attention
Back on Henry Street police are still posted around the red brick house, suspecting that their target may be hiding out inside. Meanwhile, word of the raid has begun to circulate. On the corner of Broadway, in a stretch of row houses — the scene of a 2009 shootout that ultimately led to the King murder — residents are standing on porches eyeing the cops and talking on cell phones. An elderly man wrapped in a blanket glares and pointedly spits as a police vehicle rolls by. The cops know that word is spreading fast. If they don’t get their targets soon, they may scatter. As kids toting backpacks begin to appear on the streets, the team has another worry — that the raid units, which have spent the morning racing from scene to scene, will be slowed down by school buses. Reports come in with leads on possible locations of suspects who weren’t home when cops showed up. One guy might be with a girlfriend, so Robertson starts looking up her information, hoping for a lead. Another target, Patrick “Pat Easy” Nelson Jr., 21, is still at liberty. Robertson is interested in Nelson, and not just because he’s a purported Bloods gang member with a robbery arrest and a reputation as a cop-fighter. Back in the mid-1990s, Robertson locked up Nelson’s father and namesake for the kidnapping and execution-style murder of Earl Parchment in a drug dispute. Nelson was later acquitted at trial but the appearance of the name on the target list is enough to remind Robertson that the past is never quite past.
“Now we’re locking up their kids,” Robertson says, shaking his head.
Word that Nelson has been taken into custody on Walnut Street reaches the command vehicle around 7:40 a.m., as Bonse and Robertson stand “overwatch” near small cluster of ramshackle houses abutting a swamp and the Thruway. With Nelson’s arrest, virtually the entire target list is in custody. One more suspect, Craig W. Smith, will stay on the run until Nov. 17 when he’s tracked down to a Hyde Park motel.
The entire operation took just over an hour. Back at police headquarters, another team of cops is busy booking the suspects. At the county jail, staff are trying to work out sleeping arrangements — on Wednesday night there were just eight open cells.
