Fort Apache: Tom Walker, Fourth-Generation Bronx Cop
Tom Walker gets out of his late-model four-door car with a struggle. He's 6-foot-3, 66 years of age and his weight is now close to 300 pounds. His body unfolds and he stands smiling in front of the Baychester Diner on Boston Rd. in the Bronx. He walks toward the restaurant and with each step you can see the cop and athlete he once was: despite his weight, he has a quick and light step. You follow because this man knows the stories of the Bronx. A fourth-generation cop, Walker made it all the way to captain and commanded the 41st Pct. during the wild years when it was known as Fort Apache.
He tells me how his great-grandfather, Matt Ryan, was wounded at Fredricksburg during the Civil War. He came back to New York in 1863 as a decorated veteran and became a cop. As a rookie he was attacked during the New York Draft Riot while guarding a boarding house that was under attack from a bloodthirsty mob.
"The oral legend has it that a man named Patty O'Reilly shot him in the leg, but he never gave up his post," Walker says with pride.
Walker's grandfather, John Ryan, became a cop during Teddy Roosevelt's reign as police commissioner in the 1890s.
"Legend has it that he liked his drink. When he walked into a bar, he'd hit his nightstick on the wood and if a beer wasn't quick coming down the bar, there would be a problem." With no irony Walker adds, "He was later killed when a beer truck ran him over."
Walker's father became a cop in 1938 and had a good career going until he ran into Inspector McDonald, "The Hat."
"Dad made an arrest in a bar. He collared a black guy for murder and The Hat walked in and started to beat up the suspect. My father wasn't going to let that happen, so The Hat and my father went at it... They went through a window in the bar. For this, the higher-ups in PD went after my father. Back then, to punish a cop they'd transfer you from precinct to precinct and change your hours till you had a heart attack or committed suicide. My father was told the only way he was getting out of PD was to die," Walker said, looking down. "He did. He had a heart attack."
None of this deterred Tom Walker. He came on the force in 1956 while working on a degree in physics from City College. The degree came in handy when he was promoted to the police lab, where he analyzed samples from crime scenes. He made sergeant in short order and eventually moved to the photo unit. Walker and his wife set about having five kids and raising the family in the Bronx. Walker's daughter Mary Anne joined the police department in 1989 and is now the fifth generation walking the beat.
In 1970 Tom was promoted to lieutenant and came to work in the notorious 41st Pct.
"The first night I worked there I parked my car around the block and walked to the precinct. A cop standing on the steps was attacked by two men with a pipe and he fell into me. I chased the guy down the block but he easily outran me. So I walk into my new precinct panting, and my shirt full of blood."
It only got worse. That night a man killed a junkie with a crossbow. He was arrested, and in the precinct the crossbow sat next to a red wig. The junkie had stolen the wig from the victim's wife; it was the reason the guy was killed. It didn't end there. The friends and relatives of the killer thought it was unfair that the cops would arrest a man who had only killed a junkie, so, as a mob, they attacked the precinct. The cops beat them back with nightsticks. Shots were fired at the precinct's window. Cop cars were trashed. A veteran cop made a call to headquarters claiming that they were under attack like it was Fort Apache. The name stuck.
"What a night! I left that day a complete mess, and I go to my car. Someone had stolen all four tires, and it cost me $200 and four hours just to get home," Walker remembers with a laugh.
The riot took its toll, and the Walkers left the Bronx for Rockland County. That didn't last long.
"I didn't like it up there," Walker says. "Too sterile. Plus, at that time the Mayor had said that anyone who lived outside of New York wouldn't get promoted. So I moved back to the Bronx."
Walker sat there, telling me tales of Fort Apache in the 1970s. If this stuff wasn't documented you wouldn't believe it. Like the true "urban legend" about how he got a call that, on Boone Ave., there was a decapitated male lying in the street. Walker took the call and, sure enough, a huge body was lying next to a building. No one wanted to get near the bloody mess. The Medical Examiner finally showed and said they had a dead body all right, only it wasn't human. It was a gorilla.
"Then we realized that there was a hotdog factory down the block and it must have fallen off of one of their trucks. Cops started getting sick in the street. But that wasn't the worst of it," Walker goes on, chuckling. "A few months later we caught the owner of a nearby Chinese restaurant hunting cats and stirring them up in his chop suey. It got so bad everyone brought in their own food from home."
Walker made it out of the 41 and became a captain in a quieter precinct. But the neighborhood still haunts him.
"That time and place really affected people. It was tough to police. It was a pocket of the city that was lawless. Anyone who treaded into that territory at night was set upon."
Walker took all of the tales he had seen and penned a book. He titled it Fort Apache Bronx, NY. As luck would have it, three weeks before the book was to be released in 1976 he was transferred back to the 41 as the commanding officer.
"All hell broke loose. A commanding officer writing a book! The cops loved it, but a lot of people in the community took offense and the higher-ups in PD came after me. They even started to investigate my mother, who was still receiving my father's pension. When the Internal Affairs investigators came to her house, she told them, 'I still have my husband's revolver in the closet and if you don't leave I'll use it.' They left," Walker says, laughing.
By 1978 he realized he would never get another promotion, so he left PD at 43 and never looked back. The book sold well?almost 100,000 copies in paperback?and there was talk of a movie. In 1981 a movie was made and it was called Fort Apache, The Bronx, but Walker got no credit and no money. He sued and lost.
Walker went on to work in private industry as the head of security for Lehman College and later at Jacobi Medical Center in the Bronx, where he still works, as head of the Occupational Health Dept. He wrote another book, Death of a Bronx Cop, and that and his earlier work are still in print from Grove Press.
As Walker gets up to leave he orders a cup of chicken soup with rice to bring back to his wife waiting for him in Co-op City. Out on the street he was a man who belonged to the borough. Maybe the last of his kind. Now he looks up at the night sky and smiles.
"There is nowhere else I'd rather live."