The tales, unlike the cops spinning them, never get old.
Like the robbery attempt on a Bronx bar — where the crooks discovered too late they were inside a hangout for the officers of the 41st Precinct. The majority of patrons were armed and more dangerous than the bad guys.
“Two of them were dead before they hit the sidewalk,” recalled retired NYPD Lt. Bob DiMartini, the most decorated cop in department history.
The stories flowed like the cold beer at a reunion of the infamous Four-One, dubbed “Fort Apache” back in the early ’70s when the unforgiving slice of the South Bronx was home to a staggering 120 to 130 homicides per year.
The remote outpost became a national symbol of urban decay after Capt. Tom Walker wrote his police potboiler “Fort Apache, Bronx, NY.” And then the book became a 1981 movie, starring Paul Newman — despite his lack of resemblance to the rank and file.
“When I came to the Four-One, I had never seen such crime,” remembered Walker, 82, at the crowded get-together inside a better section of the Bronx overlooking the Long Island Sound. “It was like going to war — like our own Vietnam. It formed a bond that lasts to this day.
“It was something we lived through. It’s something I’m glad I survived.”
Not everyone — or everything — did. Two officers were killed during Walker’s South Bronx stay. And he once walked out of the precinct to find all four tires stolen off his car.
Friday’s reunion began with the Pledge of Allegiance and a moment of silence for their fallen NYPD colleagues. And then the cops, gone from NYPD blue to grey, got down to the business of reminiscing.
“We took over 6,000 guns off the street,” recalled DiMartini, now 73, who earned a stunning 476 decorations during his career. “I never counted awards. I just loved what I did.”
That sentiment was echoed by retired Detective Ralph Friedman, whose Fort Apache memoir “Street Warrior” arrives in stores July 25.
Friedman, the NYPD’s second most-decorated cop behind the cigar-chomping DiMartini, looks back fondly on his nights working the beleaguered precinct on a trash-strewn stretch of Simpson Ave.
“I want to go out tonight!” said the chiseled and tattooed ex-cop. “We dealt with a lot of violent criminals. We were just more violent. That’s how we came out on top.”
He continues without missing a beat: “I shot eight guys. I killed four.”
The precinct nickname stemmed from a particularly insane night where the phones were ringing off the hook. One of the cops answered a call, listened for a few seconds, and then cut the caller off.
“I don’t have time for that,” he announced. “This is Fort Apache.”
The cops embraced the nom de guerre, and created a new logo for the Four-One: A precinct house as a porcupine with an assortment of arrows poking out of its windows.
The South Bronx isn’t burning anymore and crime in the new millennium is down dramatically. There were just eight murders last year, along with 241 robberies and 166 burglaries. Back in the ’70s, the average was 17 burglaries and eight robberies per day.
But the camaraderie lives on, as do the legends.
“The Four-One has been a tight house for years,” said NYPD Chief of Patrol Terry Monahan, who started at the precinct back in 1982.
“Fort Apache had a mystique and we kept it. The old guys broke me in. They went through it in the ’70s. I am where I am today because of those guys.”
