Free The Coffey Files by Jerry; Joseph; Schmetterer Coffey

six blocks they grabbed the suspect, who continued struggling.
    â€œWe hit him in the head a few times but he wouldn’t go down. He really was a tough kid. Then a precinct patrol car pulled up with its lights flashing, and two uniformed cops, one a woman, came at us with their guns drawn.”
    At the sight of the two cops McElroy began screaming for help. “They’re robbin’ me, they’re robbin’ me,” he yelled.
    â€œThe two uniforms didn’t know what to do. I don’t think they thought three white men in business suits were mugging Jimmy McElroy. But finally, I got free of his swinging arms and was able to get my gold shield out. When I held it up the two cops backed off. Of course they didn’t jump in to help. They knew McElroy and they would have to return to the neighborhood the next day.”
    Finally sensing his situation was hopeless, McElroy calmed down enough for McDarby to handcuff him while Cahill ran for the car. As was his style, Joe Coffey kept his gun in its holster.
    Coffey eventually served more than twenty years as a uniformed cop and detective, pursuing many of the most violent criminals in the history of the NYPD, and fired his gun on only two occasions. The first time was when he was serving as a decoy cop, dressed like a woman, and a mugger attacked him. When the mugger managed to run away, Coffey fired a shot that missed by a mile but convinced the assailant to surrender. The next time he fired was in a wild shoot-out with the Black Liberation Army. Again he missed by a mile. He did use his pistol on two occasions to hit suspects over the head.
    They took McElroy to the local precinct house, and Coffey left him with McDarby and Cahill to be fingerprinted and photographed.
    â€œAll the while McElroy was demanding to know what we had on him. He was screaming we had no right to bring him in. Of course he was right. This was an act of ‘Coffey’s Martial Law.’”
    Coffey was headed out of the station house to get some coffee for his men and tea for himself when he heard a bloodcurdling scream.
    â€œI raced back to the detectives’ area. When I opened the door I saw McDarby holding McElroy by the neck about two feet off the ground. McElroy’s face was turning blood red. He was clearly choking to death. Cahill was at the desk calmly filling but some forms. I asked Frank what the problem was.”
    â€œHe wouldn’t give me his wallet, Joe,” McDarby answered as he lifted the wallet from McElroy’s hip pocket.
    After his picture was taken and he was fingerprinted, McElroy was allowed to return to the streets.
    The following day Coffey returned to the hunt for witnesses. Billy Walker was a member of the Theatrical Workers Union, the Teamsters who worked on movies being shot on the streets of New York. Coffey decided that his coworkers might be more willing to talk about how he was killed than residents of Westie territory.
    To a certain extent this hunch turned out to be correct. Coffey learned that on the night of the murder Walker and several other stagehands were partying around the Broadway and Times Square area and did stop for at least a while in the Hell’s Kitchen Bar.
    â€œThey admitted drinking heavily and using cocaine and getting pretty rowdy,” Coffey recalls. “But when it came to remembering when Walker disappeared from the group or what happened to him, they clammed up.
    â€œMany of the stagehands were either loosely aligned with the Westies gang themselves or were related somehow to gang members. So there was no way they were going to give up McElroy. A couple of the older guys, however, admitted they were more afraid of Castellano, who they knew was backing the Westies. I figured I would have to speak to Big Paulie about this.”
    Around lunchtime the next day he and Frank McDarby drove out to the Veterans and Friends Social Club in the Bay Ridge section of Brooklyn which was, as every