Larry Davis (May 28, 1966 – February 20, 2008), later known as Adam Abdul-Hakeem, was an American criminal who gained notoriety in November 1986 for his shootout with officers of the New York City Police Department (NYPD), in which six officers were shot. Davis, asserting self-defense, was acquitted of all charges aside from illegal gun possession.Christina Jacqueline Johns & Jose Maria Borrero N., "The war on drugs: Nothing succeeds like failure", in Gregg Barak, ed., Crimes by the Capitalist State: An Introduction to State Criminality (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1991), p 72. Davis was later convicted for the 1986 murder of a Bronx drug dealer and sentenced to twenty-five years to life in prison.Marilyn Corsianos, The Complexities of Police Corruption: Gender, Identity, and Misconduct (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 2012), p 151. Davis died after being stabbed by a fellow inmate in 2008.
On November 19, 1986, nine NYPD officers, with nearly twenty outside the building, raided the South Bronx apartment of Davis' sister.Robert Louden, "Davis, Larry (1966–2008)", pp 142–145, in Delores D. Jones-Brown, Beverly D. Frazier & Marvie Brooks, editors, African Americans and Criminal Justice: An Encyclopedia (Santa Barbara, CA: Greenwood/ABC-CLIO, 2014). Davis escaped the ensuing shootout after a shotgun round creased his scalp, and all six officers who had been shot survived. Police explained the raid as an attempt to question Davis as a multiple-murder suspect, finally obtained an arrest warrant for that and re-explained the raid as an attempt to arrest him. On the seventeenth day of a massive manhunt, Davis was traced to a Bronx apartment block, where he hid in an unknown family's unit. Telephoned by police, he claimed to hold its occupants hostage. After tireless negotiations that lasted the entire night, Davis was eventually convinced that police officers would not shoot him because of all the massive media presence, deciding to surrender peacefully.
Davis' legal defense, led by William Kunstler,Jeffrey Rosen, "The trials of William Kunstler", New York Times, 18 Sep 1994, § 7, p 16. contended that the raid was a pretense to murder Davis for knowledge of officers' alleged complicity in illicit drug sales and to punish him for abandoning his own drug dealing under their sanction. In March 1988, on jury trial for the killing of four drug dealers—allegedly the pretext for the 1986 raid—Davis was acquitted. Then, in November, as to the nine raiding and six shot officers, Davis' acquittal of aggravated assault and attempted murder triggered widespread outrage. About 1,000 NYPD officers publicly demonstrated against the verdict. Yet for many others, Davis became a folk hero. Still others thought of him as an unsavory character, but probably truthful about the police and the shootout.Rosemary L. Bray, "Blacks on blues", New York, 1994 Jul 11;27(27):33–35, p 35.
Serving five to fifteen years on the November 1988 convictions for illegal gun possession, Davis was acquitted of another alleged drug dealer's murder. But in a third murder trial, for the murder of a different alleged drug dealer, Davis was convicted and sentenced to twenty-five years to life in prison. While incarcerated, Davis (who changed his name after converting to Islam) continued to allege that police had framed him. A prevalent view attributes his infamous acquittal, rather, to racial bias by a proverbial "Bronx jury".Stephan Thernstrom & Abigail Thernstrom, America in Black and White: One Nation, Indivisible (New York: Touchstone, 1999), p 517. But particularly with the Mollen Commission's later exposure of widespread criminality, including drug dealing and violence, by NYPD officers,Leonard Levitt, NYPD Confidential: Power and Corruption in the Country's Greatest Police Force (New York: Thomas Dunne Books, 2009), indexing "Mollen Commission". In contemporary journalism, Craig Wolff, "Tales of police corruption not surprising, 46th Precinct residents say", New York City, 10 Oct 1993, reports, in part, "The 46th Precinct is in the Fordham section of the Bronx. It is a crime-ridden precinct where, the Mollen Commission was told, some of the department's worst officers were commonly 'dumped.' And it is where 'the Mechanic' worked, a convicted officer who earned the nickname for the tune-ups,' or beatings, he performed on drug suspects and innocent bystanders alike. The Police Department says there is no policy of using any precinct, including the 46th, as a place of exile for troublesome officers". Nearly two years later, Clifford Krauss, "Police officer convicted of extorting payoffs", New York Times, 21 Apr 1995, reports that perhaps some 30 officers in the 46th Precinct were involved in various criminal activity in the community. and then a 2003 documentary favoring Davis' account, his story continues to provoke divided reactions.
Biography Early and personal life Larry Davis was born in New York City on May 28, 1966. An aspiring rapper, he was known by peers as musically talented, playing multiple instruments. He was also entrepreneurial, reputedly operating small music studios in the Bronx and Manhattan, while also repairing and modifying motorcycles.Troy Reed, director, The Larry Davis Story: A Routine Typical Hit (New York, NY: Street Stars, Inc, 2003), cited by Robert Louden, "Davis, Larry (1966–2008)", in Delores D. Jones-Brown, Beverly D. Frazier & Marvie Brooks, editors, African Americans and Criminal Justice: An Encyclopedia (Santa Barbara, CA: Greenwood/ABC-CLIO, 2014). Davis' peers acknowledge that he had begun dealing drugs midway through adolescence, but claim that he ceased once he learned the woman expecting his first child miscarried, which he blamed on her use of crack cocaine.Azie Faison with Agyei Tyehimba, Game Over: The Rise and Transformation of a Harlem Hustler (New York, NY: Atria Books, 2007), pp 111–112. Davis had one child, a daughter named Larrima, born in 1986.
Problems with NYPD Davis' arrest record, beginning in early 1983, included a 1984 robbery conviction and subsequent probation violation. By the time of the November 1986 shootout, a court hearing for that violation had been postponed four times.David J Krajicek, "Justice stands on its head after Bronx massacre in 1986", New York Daily News, 3 Oct 2010. Soon after the successful manhunt, the Bronx District Attorney's office alleged that, as The New York Times then paraphrased, "Davis was part of a small, loosely organized, 'very violent' group of gunmen who have robbed, assaulted and slain drug dealers in the Bronx and northern Manhattan in recent months."
Approaching trial, the district attorney's office had one witness outside of law enforcement: Roy L. Gray, who admitted under oath to steering "traffic to coke spots." Allegedly, on October 26, 1986, Gray was robbed of two dollars in Manhattan's Washington Heights neighborhood. Four days later, on October 30, Gray spotted the robber, later understood as Davis, about to rob some cocaine dealers in Harlem. Reportedly, Gray thus alerted the New York City Police Department (NYPD) and rode in the police car that chased a getaway car, carrying Davis and two other men. The pursuit ended in Highbridge, where, along Jerome Avenue, upon issuing three gunshots at police, Davis and his accomplices evaded arrest by vanishing into an apartment building.
In early November, acting on a tip, police sought Davis but failed to find him at his sister's apartment at 1231 Fulton Avenue in the Bronx's Morrisania neighborhood. They returned to the apartment on November 19, when the infamous shootout occurred. Afterward, the NYPD explained the raid as an effort to question Davis, then later changed their rationale as an attempt to arrest him, albeit without an arrest warrant.David J. Langum, William M. Kunstler: The Most Hated Lawyer in America (New York & London: New York University Press, 1999), p 296. Months later, it was reported that "officials from the Bronx District Attorney's office and the Police Department deflected questions about why no warrant had been issued for Mr. Davis's arrest after the Jerome Avenue incident. Each agency referred questions to the other." At some point, a senior NYPD official argued that "once you move to introduce an accusatory instrument, you lose the benefit of being able to talk to that person."
In any case, the NYPD reported that Gray, as a robbery victim of Davis, examined photos and provided the "positive identification" of Davis; that Davis' fingerprints were in the getaway car; that two shell casings, recovered from the scene, matched the pistol on Davis at his December 6 arrest; and that ballistics tests tied this gun to the killings of four suspected drug dealers in Manhattan just hours before the October 30 car chase to Jerome Avenue.
Davis maintained that the NYPD had framed him for these murders. Similarly, his attorneys William Kunstler and Lynne Stewart, as well as Davis' peers and family, all contended that, five years before the November 1986 shootout, certain NYPD officers had recruited Davis, then aged 15, to deal drugs under their sanction, and then turned a blind eye to the dealing of Davis' associates who began working under him. However, these officers began harassing these dealers and communicating death threats once Davis stopped dealing drugs in late 1986 while withholding drug proceeds, reputedly some $40,000.
1986 shootout and escape On the evening of Wednesday, November 19, 1986, acting on a tip, an NYPD team of twenty-seven officers from the 41st Precinct and the Emergency Service Unit (ESU) converged on the six-story apartment building at 1231 Fulton Avenue, where two of Davis' sisters lived in adjoining apartments on the ground floor. At about 8:30 p.m., fifteen officers surrounded the building and twelve others entered; nine of these went to the three-room apartment of Davis' sister Regina Lewis and seven entered. Inside were Davis, his girlfriend, his sister, her husband and four children. Lewis' two infant children were asleep in the rear bedroom.
Interviewed the next day, Lewis reported that once she answered a door knock, police entered the living room with weapons drawn, ordered the adults to get the children out of the apartment and called, "Come out, Larry, you don't have a chance—we've got you surrounded!" At trial, police alleged that Davis had fired first. The jury believed the events presented by the defense, in which an officer entered the apartment with a shotgun and fired at Davis while he was seated behind a desk holding his baby. The officer, thinking he had hit Davis, was then shot in the neck by Davis with a handgun. Police then took cover, returning fire as they retreated. In the confusion, no one kept track of Davis, who slipped into his other sister's apartment and escaped out a back window. Lewis had complained to her brother about bringing guns to the apartment and told him to get out; he left but returned. She quoted him as telling her, "If I'm caught in the street, the police are going to shoot me. But I am going to shoot them first."
Police collected the shotgun and the expended shells from the .45 caliber pistol that Davis took with him. A .32 caliber revolver and .357 Magnum pistol were also left behind. Ballistics tests would allegedly later link the .32 caliber revolver to the killing of a Manhattan drug dealer and the .45 caliber pistol to the four dead drug dealers in the Bronx. A police official said that all escape routes had been covered by officers but none apparently saw Davis leave. He also said that the wounded officers were unable to return fire effectively due to the presence in the apartment of the two infants and other bystanders. Davis fired four shotgun rounds and nine .45 caliber pistol shots; police fired four shotgun rounds and twenty pistol shots. Neither Davis nor the two infants with him in the bedroom were wounded.