A DETECTIVE'S ORDEAL

When two detectives from the Internal Affairs Bureau, Sgt. Robert Boyce and
Sgt. Michael McWilliams, headed up to Sing Sing Prison in Ossining, N.Y., on
March 16, 1995, their mission was to get whatever information they could --
something, anything -- to bring down a fellow cop, an undercover narcotics
detective with a spotless record named Zaher Zahrey.

They wanted Zahrey, known as Zack, bad. There were rumors going around about
him. He was corrupt. He was tipping off gangsters to drug-selling locations
so the gangsters could raid and rob them. He was a louse of the lowest
order, that Zahrey. Yes, he was. No doubt about it.

The only problem was that they didn't have any evidence. They had tried and
tried to get something on Zack but had come up dry.

I have come to learn that in the criminal justice system the absence of
evidence is not an insurmountable problem. Evidence can always be
manufactured.

The man Detectives Boyce and McWilliams went to see that day was a real,
no-question-about-it lowlife. His name was Sidney Quick, and this little
tidbit about him will give you a sense of how credible he was. He was in
Sing Sing under his brother's name, Rubin Quick.

To get a sense of how bad a guy Sidney Quick was, consider that he was a
crackhead who slept with an automatic weapon by his pillow, robbed men and
women at gunpoint, once held a gun to the head of his wife's daughter,
robbed one of his in-laws at gunpoint, held up drug dealers, shot a man who
was slow to respond in one of his robberies, and was a suspect in the murder
of a drug dealer.

None of that bothered Detectives Boyce and McWilliams. What they knew was
that Quick knew Detective Zahrey from the Brooklyn neighborhood in which
both men lived, and that Quick was facing not only a term of six years to
life in Sing Sing as a persistent violent offender, but the possibility of
being prosecuted for additional violent crimes.

Quick was anxious to do whatever he could to get his prison time reduced.

Lies from a lowlife facing hard time are viewed by most cops as part of the
natural order, as common as snow in the Arctic or the surf in the Caribbean.
Unscrupulous cops and prosecutors will develop and craft those lies for use
in criminal prosecutions. But that ugly process is usually done in secret.

What was unusual about the conversation at Sing Sing on March 16, 1995, was
that it was taped. So we get to hear Detective Boyce, in a reference to the
murder of the drug dealer, tell Quick: "You know it's easy to blame you,
Sidney. People on the outside are gonna blame the people on the inside. And
you're already here and you ain't around to defend yourself. Know what I'm
sayin'?"

And we get to hear him say: "Your name was all over that [expletive] case.
All over it!"

Does that mean Quick should be prosecuted for the murder and, if found
guilty, kept in jail for life?

Not at all. Because we also hear Detective Boyce say to Sidney Quick: "If
you give me Zack, I'll drive you home."

And we hear Detective McWilliams tell Quick: "I, honestly, I don't care if
you were there, you know that? I don't care."

To which Quick replies: "Yeah, you just care if Zack was there."

And Detective McWilliams answers: "You know what I care about. Right, that's
all I care about."

He then thoughtfully adds: "You know what else I care about. I care that you
tell me the truth."

That was a good one.

Quick dutifully lied. He told the cops about all kinds of crimes that Zack
had supposedly committed. But neither the cops, nor the office of Brooklyn
District Attorney Charles Hynes (which did all kinds of favors for Quick,
including sending him money), nor the office of the U.S. Attorney for the
Eastern District could corroborate Quick's fantasies.

The U.S. attorney used Quick's testimony to prosecute Detective Zahrey for
corruption, but a jury, appalled, reached a verdict of acquittal within
minutes.

A sane person would think the matter would end there. But no. Detective
Zahrey still faces possible dismissal from the Police Department.

And Sidney Quick is up for parole next month.