Стрельба Бернхарда Гоетца в Нью-Йоркском метро: история и последствия

Shooting of four Black teenagers by Bernhard Goetz

On December 22, 1984, Bernhard Goetz (/'//g//E//t//s/) shot four young black men on a New York City Subway train in Manhattan after they tried to rob him. All four teenagers survived, though one, Darrell Cabey, was paralyzed and suffered brain damage as a result of his injuries. Goetz fled to Bennington, Vermont, before surrendering to police nine days after the shooting. He was charged with attempted murder, assault, reckless endangerment, and several firearms offenses. A jury subsequently found Goetz guilty of one count of carrying an unlicensed firearm and acquitted him of the remaining charges. For the firearm offense, he served eight months of a one year sentence. In 1996, Cabey obtained a $43 million civil judgment against Goetz, equivalent to $ million today.

In the early afternoon of December 22, 1984, four young black men from the Bronx—19 year olds Barry Allen, Troy Canty, and Darrell Cabey, and 18 year old James Ramseur—boarded a downtown 2 train (a Broadway–Seventh Avenue express). Canty would later testify that the teenagers were en route to steal from a video arcade machine in Manhattan. At the time, about fifteen to twenty other passengers were in a R22 subway car, the seventh car of the ten car train. Troy Canty approached Goetz, asked Goetz how he was, and made some overture for money: According to Canty, he said, "Can I have $5?" According to Goetz, Canty, who Goetz said was joined by another one of the teens, said, "Give me five dollars" in a "normal tone" of voice. While those involved and witnesses disagree as to precisely what happened next, Goetz subsequently pulled a handgun and fired four shots at the four youths, wounding all but Cabey. Goetz stated that he then bent down to Cabey, who was cowering on the ground, and said, "You don't look so bad. Here's another," and shot once again. Cabey's spine was severed, resulting in brain damage and partial paralysis. His father was Lutheran and his mother was Jewish before converting to Lutheranism. While growing up, Goetz lived with his parents and three older siblings in Upstate New York, where his father ran a dairy farm and a bookbinding business. Goetz attended boarding school in Switzerland before returning to the United States to obtain a bachelor's degree in electrical engineering and nuclear engineering from New York University. Goetz reported that three Black teenagers had smashed him into a plate glass door and threw him to the ground, injuring his chest and knee. Friedman's account was excluded from the criminal jury trial, but in a subsequent civil action, Goetz admitted to having used both epithets at a neighborhood meeting.

After the shooting, Goetz took a cab back to his 14th Street home and, in a rented car, fled north to Bennington, Vermont, where he burned the blue jacket he had been wearing and scattered pieces of the revolver in the woods. He stayed at various hotels in New England for several days. On December 29, Goetz called his neighbor, Myra Friedman, who told him that police had come by his apartment looking for him and had left notes asking to be contacted as soon as possible. Goetz told police that he felt that he was being robbed and was at risk of violence, and he explained he had been both mugged once before and nearly mugged several times: Asked what his intentions were when he drew his revolver, Goetz replied, "My intention was to murder them, to hurt them, to make them suffer as much as possible." Goetz also said that, after firing four shots, he moved to Cabey and said, "You seem to be doing all right, here's another," before shooting him again. He denied any premeditation for the shooting, something that had been speculated on by the press. Refusing offers of bail assistance from the public and from his family, he posted bail with his own funds and was released on bond January 8.

A month after the shootings, Cabey, represented by William Kunstler and Ron Kuby, filed a civil suit against Goetz. The civil case was tried in 1996. Unlike Goetz's criminal jury, which was predominantly White and from Manhattan, the civil jury was half African American and entirely from the Bronx. While race had only been subliminally addressed in the criminal trial, For the defense, Jimmy Breslin testified that, in a 1985 hospital bed interview, Cabey, while denying his own involvement, said that Allen, Canty, and Ramseur intended to rob Goetz because he looked like "easy bait," but Cabey's attorneys pointed out that Cabey had suffered brain damage prior to the interview and that Breslin's column described Cabey as "confused." The jury found that Goetz had acted recklessly and had deliberately inflicted emotional distress on Cabey. Jurors awarded Cabey $43 million–$18 million for pain and suffering and $25 million in punitive damages. Goetz subsequently filed for bankruptcy, saying that legal expenses had left him almost penniless. A United States bankruptcy court judge ruled that the $43 million judgment was
Because Goetz was only "sporadically employed as an electrical engineering consultant," the expectation was that 10% of Goetz's income for the next 20 years would be garnished. Stephen Somerstein, one of Cabey's attorneys, expressed some optimism that a portion of any book deal Goetz signed could contribute to the judgment. In 2000, Kuby told reporters that he had hired a firm specializing in debt collection to pursue Goetz, but he noted that Goetz "appear[ed] to be living in voluntary squalor." Asked in 2004 whether he was making payments on the judgment, Goetz responded "I don't think I've paid a penny on that", and referred any questions on the subject to his attorney. The suit was dismissed. In 1994, Goetz filed another defamation action related to My Life as a Radical Lawyer, a book by Kunstler, published by Carol Communications, Inc. Amongst other claims, Goetz objected to the book's description of him as a "paranoid" "murderous vigilante" who had "developed a hatred for blacks."

The shootings initially drew considerable support from the public. A Daily News WABC TV poll released in January 1985 showed 49 percent of the 515 New Yorkers questioned approved of Goetz's actions, while only 31 percent disapproved. A special hotline set up by police to seek information was swamped by calls supporting the shooter and calling him a hero. The same month, a Gallup poll interviewing 1,009 adults found that 57% of respondents approved of Goetz's shootings and two thirds said that Goetz had acted in self defense. But, compared to the January poll, Goetz's support among African Americans had dipped considerably: while only 36% of Black respondents disapproved of his actions in the January poll, 53% reported disapproval in the March poll. The Los Angeles Times reported that, during the criminal trial, demonstrators outside the courtroom chanted "Bernhard Goetz, you can't hide; we charge you with genocide." Initial sources differed in reporting the sequence of shots fired, timing of shots, whether Cabey was shot once or twice, and whether any of the men Goetz shot were armed. Some reports, picking up on Goetz's statement to the police, suggested that Cabey had been shot twice, Additionally, early reports suggested that the teenagers had approached Goetz carrying "sharpened" screwdrivers; those reports, too, were found to be false: The screwdrivers—Cabey carried two and Ramseur carried one—were not sharpened and, based on the available testimony, were not removed from Cabey's or Ramseur's pockets When Canty testified at Goetz's criminal trial, he said they were to be used to break into video arcade change boxes and not as weapons. Supporters viewed Goetz as a hero for standing up to his attackers and defending himself in an environment where the police were increasingly viewed as ineffective in combating crime. The Guardian Angels, a volunteer patrol group of mostly Black and Hispanic teenagers, collected thousands of dollars from subway riders toward a legal defense fund for Goetz. CORE's director, Roy Innis (who had lost two of his sons to inner city gun violence and would later be elected to the executive board of the NRA), offered to raise defense money, saying that Goetz was "the avenger for all of us". A legal group founded by the NRA—the Firearms Civil Rights Legal Defense Fund—donated $20,000 to Goetz's defense. While race was never explicitly mentioned at the criminal trial, Professor George P. Fletcher argued that Goetz's criminal defense team—which referred to the men Goetz shot as "savages," "predators," and "vultures" As to the criminal verdict, Benjamin Hooks, director of the NAACP, called the outcome "inexcusable," adding, "It was proven—according to his own statements—that Goetz did the shooting and went far beyond the realm of self defense. There was no provocation for what he did." Representative Floyd Flake agreed, saying, "I think that if a black had shot four Whites, the cry for the death penalty would have been almost automatic." United States Attorney Rudolph Giuliani met with black political and religious leaders calling for a Federal civil rights investigation. C. Vernon Mason, an attorney and spokesperson for the group, said, "We have come to the Federal Government as [B]lack people traditionally have done to seek redress when it is clear that state and local authorities have either failed to act or are incapable of acting." In a 2007 interview with Stone Phillips of Dateline NBC, Goetz admitted that his fear may have been enhanced due to the fact that the four men he shot were black.

After reaching an all time peak in 1990, crime in New York City dropped dramatically through the rest of the 1990s. New York City crime rates by 2014 were comparable to those of the early 1960s. Darrell Cabey fell into a coma after the shooting; he suffered irreversible brain damage and was paralyzed from the waist down. In 1985, the Bronx District Attorney determined that Cabey had the mental capacity of an eight year old. One of Canty's attorneys, Scott H. Greenfield reported that Canty planned to attend culinary school. The following day, after detectives played back to Ramseur the emergency 911 recording reporting the kidnapping, Ramseur admitted it was his voice on the call and to fabricating the report. Ramseur explained it was merely to test police response when a Black person was a crime victim, and was not prosecuted for this hoax. Ramseur was convicted in 1986 of the 1985 rape and robbery of a young pregnant woman. Conditionally released in 2002, Ramseur returned to prison for a parole violation in 2005; he finished his sentence in July 2010. In 1989, Barry Allen was charged with robbing a 58 year old man of $54. In 1991, he was convicted and sentenced to 3.5 to 7 years. Goetz achieved celebrity status after the shooting. In 2001, he unsuccessfully ran for mayor of New York City; amongst other issues, Goetz advocated for a vegetarian menu in New York City schools, jails, and hospitals. In 2004, Goetz was interviewed by Nancy Grace on Larry King Live, where he stated his actions were good for New York City and forced the city to address crime. In 2005, Goetz unsuccessfully ran for public advocate. In 2023, African American civil rights leader Al Sharpton and former assistant district attorney Mark Bederow compared the Goetz case to the killing of Jordan Neely.

The protagonist (the Joker) of the 2019 film Joker is partly inspired by Goetz. Todd Phillips, who wrote, produced and directed the film, grew up in New York City and remembered the 1984 subway shooting from his youth.