Excop’s book takes to ‘The Streets’
Former officer recounts Stamford’s years of crime, corruption and mob control
STAMFORD – Most people wouldn’t recognize the Stamford that Michael Docimo knew when he was an officer.
When he began walking the beat in 1972, neighborhoods were plagued by drug dealing, shootings, armed robberies, prostitution, gambling, muggings and burglaries. To make things worse, the city was under the influence of two New York crime families that had infiltrated the police department itself.
There was corruption on top of crime.
Docimo was among the police officers who worked for years to break that stranglehold. The effort nearly broke him, too.
Now he has written a book, “The Streets,” published in December, chronicling times that were punishing for the city and – Docimo would learn – for himself.
“I had been going full throttle for years. I have made quite a name for myself on the street and in the department,” Docimo writes in the book. “I have been nonstop and very aggressive. But these past months have been hard ... I don’t know if the end is up ahead, but I’m so tired.”
That was his thinking shortly before the night he pulled into the parking lot at police headquarters on Bedford Street to begin his shift.
“I don’t know exactly what’s happening. I can’t see straight. Everything around me seems to be going in slow motion,” Docimo writes. “I try to move my hand to the door to get out, but I can’t. It’s as if I’ve been cuffed by someone, arrested by an invisible force. Before I can try again, the world around me goes black. When I wake, I’m crying, holding a gun to my chin.”
It was a scene no one who knew Docimo would envision.
Jumping; getting jumped
He had a reputation that began after about a year on the job, following his pursuit of a man with a long criminal history. There was a chase downtown. The man tried to
shoot at Docimo’s squad car with a machine gun. The man drove to the South End and jumped out of the car. Docimo followed him on foot into an alley and fired, grazing the man’s shoulder and taking him down.
The incident shook Docimo, but he was back at work the next day.
A few months later, he was assigned to secure a crime scene on Cook Road in Waterside. A man had killed his wife and their two sons, ages 4 and 5, with an ax, then hanged himself. The man put his wife’s head on a table.
“I have never seen so much blood,” Docimo writes. “I will never forget the sight of those bodies.”
Weeks later, he and his partner were surrounded by an angry mob as they attempted to capture a burglary suspect. They were jumped. In the ensuing melee, the officers were punched, kicked and struck with objects.
In the sleeting rain of Christmas Eve 1974, an officer called for backup at the Pulaski Street bridge downtown. A young woman had climbed to the top. Docimo responded.
He found the officer standing on a railing, talking to the woman. Suddenly she jumped. The officer couldn’t swim, so Docimo plunged into the freezing water. He was sucked down repeatedly by the undertow but eventually pulled the woman to the riverbank.
Those were his rookie years.
Day and night
His active career, backed up in the book with Stamford Advocate stories from the time, had only begun.
He apprehended, alone, gun
wielding robbers in backtoback incidents. Once, he and his partner pursued an armed robbery suspect who shot out their windshield as they chased him on East Main Street.
“Looking back, I would say I was naïve,” Docimo said Friday from his home in South Carolina. “As a rookie, I quickly learned that Stamford in the daytime and Stamford in the nighttime were two different cities.”
Downtown, Docimo said, “each corner had three or four prostitutes. On Main Street, two bars were hubs of illegal activity. On West Main Street, drug trafficking was everywhere. Pool halls were dens of narcotics activity, illegal card games, and selling cigarettes and liquor out of back rooms. Every 20 feet on South Pacific Street you could buy cocaine, heroin, and later crack. I would get assigned to the railroad station three nights a week to help protect the commuters from muggings and the homeless alcoholics.”
In 1979 he was chosen to restart the narcotics and organized crime unit. He discovered a place known as the Penthouse, where people entered day and night, slipping money through a slot in a door and collecting a packet of drugs. He found two more Penthouses.
Once, the leader of a drug and gambling operation called police headquarters and threatened Docimo’s life. Docimo drove to West Main Street and arrested him. “There’s no time to think about this thing,” he writes in the book. “I either deal with it, or I let it end me as a cop.”
Managed by the mob
Much of the drug and gambling activity was traced to the Gambino and Genovese crime families. But raids, wire taps and other attempts to shut down illegal operations were thwarted by police officers with ties
to the mob.
“We had leaks at headquarters,” Docimo said. “To get around them, we would go to an outoftown judge for search warrants, and we would not radio we were executing a search warrant until we were on our way into the location, so there was no time to warn anybody.”
One of his targets was a sportsbetting operation on Stillwater Avenue.
“The person in charge was a captain in the Gambino family whose brother was a member of the police department,” Docimo said. “We were setting up a game plan for how to get in there without tipping off the brother. I said I’m just going to walk in. I put on a black suit, a black shirt and sunglasses and walked through the door. I saw guys counting money. I said, ‘Nobody move. Police.’”
They arrested the Gambino captain.
“At headquarters I walked him through the detective area because I knew his brother was on duty,” Docimo said. “It was to let him know, there’s no more leaks.”
Long time coming
He was involved in 1,100 arrests. He thought many times he would be killed. Finally, toward the end of his 25 years on the job, it all crashed down on him.
“I went from macho, socalled ‘super cop’ to a broken person,” Docimo said.
When he returned to consciousness in his car that night in the police parking lot, Docimo walked into headquarters. He told his lieutenant what had happened. The lieutenant took his gun and badge and called a doctor who treated police officers.
He was diagnosed with something that was new at the time, Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. He has spent years in therapy, bolstered by long talks with his wife, Cesidia. In the weeks since his book has been out, officers have contacted him to say they went through a similar thing.
“It’s created a new circle of friends who I guess were ashamed to talk about it. I felt that shame, like I let everyone down,” said Docimo, now 69. “It took nine years to write this book. I kept putting it away so I could regain my composure. Now I feel it will help others and that makes me feel better.”