The Sisyphus Comments

Cop Fled as Partner is Shot:

BY ALISON GENDAR
DAILY NEWS POLICE BUREAU CHIEF

A Brooklyn cop was caught on videotape running away while his hero partner was wounded in a barrage of bullets on a Brownsville street last week, high-ranking police sources told the Daily News yesterday.

The damning video prompted Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly to strip Police Officer Gilberto Marrero of his gun – and order the 12-year veteran to stay off duty until the shootout can be fully reviewed, a police official said.

The official and other police sources familiar with the surveillance tape said Marrero ran after a teen gunman fired the first shot at his 73rd Precinct partner, decorated Officer Patrick Caprice. Marrero left Caprice to fend for himself as the gunman fired four more times, sources said.

Caprice was wounded in his arm and stomach – but his bulletproof vest stopped a potentially deadly slug to his chest. Still, Caprice managed to get off 14 shots, wounding the gunman.

“The tape is damning,” said a Brooklyn law enforcement source.

“This guy’s partner is getting drilled full of bullets and he’s seen running the other direction,” the cop added. “He doesn’t fire a shot. He leaves his partner bloody in the street. It’s not what a cop is supposed to do.”

Reached by phone last night at his Brookdale Hospital bed, Caprice, a 42-year-old father of four, declined to comment about why his partner of more than a year did not return fire. But the 14-year NYPD veteran’s father, Charles Caprice, was blunt in his anger at Marrero.

“He did not help my son, he ran. My son was on the ground and he ran,” he said.

“He should get another job. He is not police,” the father said.

The gunfire erupted June 1 shortly after Caprice and Marrero had stopped gunman David Redden, 18, on a seemingly routine drug arrest. But as the two officers approached Redden’s car – Caprice on the driver’s side and Marrero on the passenger’s side – Redden fired a single shot at Caprice through the car window.

Once Redden got off his first shots, the tape – taken from a surveillance camera on Dumont Ave. – shows Marrero turning and running from the gunfire, to take cover behind a car farther down the block, sources said.

Redden got out of his car, at first turning to run, only to pivot and fire more shots at Caprice, striking him in his stomach and arm. Caprice’s bulletproof vest blocked a shot to his heart. He fell to one knee but still managed to pump off 14 rounds and wound Redden and hit his fleeing car. The gunman later fatally shot himself.

Marrero never returned to help his fallen partner, the video indicates and witnesses told cops, sources said.

Caprice was found in the middle of Dumont Ave. and taken to the hospital in a van by another cop from his Bedford-Stuyvesant precinct, sources said.

Marrero, who has been out sick since the shooting, was not reachable for comment.

Originally published on June 7, 2005