1972 Harlem mosque incident

Officers Phillip Cardillo and Vito Navarra of the New York City Police Department's 28th Precinct responded, entering the mosque.He fired several shots through the broken glass into the hallway which scattered the men who had been assaulting the officers, thus enabling Negron to unbolt the double metal door.During the initial attempt to enter the mosque, police officers, including Navarra, claimed that prior to being forced out, they witnessed a man named Louis 17X Dupree standing over the dying Cardillo with a gun in hand.He said years afterwards that he called Chief Inspector Michael Codd from the basement and asked for two busloads of police cadets, to be armed only with nightsticks, to keep the peace outside.[9] In a decided break with tradition, neither mayor John V. Lindsay nor the police commissioner at the time, Patrick V. Murphy, attended officer Cardillo's funeral.[11] Due to political pressure, officers in the basement directed by Chief Seedman released a dozen suspects in the shooting without identifying them.Two years after the shooting, prosecutors brought charges against the mosque school's dean, Louis 17X Dupree, after an informant who witnessed the incident testified against him.In 2012, however, a year before his death, he admitted that his disgust with Codd's refusal to provide the extra officers was his real reason, and he did not want to say so at the time because "I loved the police department so much that I couldn't drag it through the dirt by saying what those bastards did.