The NYPD’s Despicable Lie

Saturday marked the 46th anniversary of the shooting of NYPD Patrolman Phillip Cardillo inside Louis Farrakhan’s Nation of Islam mosque in Harlem. A conspiracy of cover-up and silence immediately surrounded the case. Decades of controversy followed. No one served a day in jail for the murder. In March, Judicial Watch sued the New York City Police Department for records in the case.

The New York Daily News asked Saturday: “Could the secret to unraveling the Cardillo murder be in the withheld records of the NYPD? The Judicial Watch lawsuit may be the last chance to get to the bottom of New York’s most infamous cold-case killing.” The op-ed was written by legendary NYPD detective Randy Jurgensen, who literally wrote the book on the case, “Circle of Six.”

46 years after the Cardillo shooting, Jurgensen notes, “the NYPD won’t release investigative files, a promised report and an audio tape, preposterously claiming an investigation is still ‘active and ongoing.'” A ruling in the case is expected soon. Legal action also is moving forward in a parallel case against the FBI in Washington. Read more about Judicial Watch’s legal moves here. Read more about the Judicial Watch investigation into the Cardillo killing here.

The Cardillo murder has been pursued across the decades because of an abiding sense of injustice: that law-enforcement and politicians conspired to make the case go away; that evidence vanished; that the shooter was arrested and acquitted due to the earlier cover-up. The injustice continues with the NYPD’s despicable lie that there is today, 46 years later, an “active and ongoing” investigation.

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