JOSEPH PIAGENTINI AND WAVERLY JONES
by Gabriel L. Nathan, Author: "The Paper-Cutter & The Check-Sorter"
(one-act play about the Jones & Piagentini assassinations)

Joseph A. Piagentini was white and Waverly M. Jones was black. The two men went through the police academy together. They graduated from the Academy in the same class. In fact, Jones and Piagentini joined the New York City Police Department on the very same day, 1 August, 1966. Patrolman Piagentini was assigned to the 32nd Precinct in Harlem, while Patrolman Jones worked in the 40th and 46th Precincts, in the Bronx. In August of 1970, Patrolman Jones was transferred to the 32nd. Many months later, he would be partnered with Joseph Piagentini. The two men were assigned to a radio car together on the night of 21 May, 1971. They answered a domestic assault call at the Colonial Park Apartments. The female victim allegedly refused ambulance transport and so the two policemen did what they could for the woman and they went downstairs and exited the building. They strolled through the warm spring air together, and made their way back to their radio-car. They were never meant to make it.

"My father and his partner were victims of the times". Those are the words that New York City Patrolman Waverly Jones' son, (also named Waverly), said to me on the telephone, not too long ago, almost thirty years after 21 May, 1971. Waverly Jones is quite correct: his father and his father's partner were indeed victims of the times. They were victims of a time where cowardly "revolutionaries" used the backs of random, anonymous police officers for target practice. They were victims of a time where cop-killing was considered brave by some, and the cop-killers were considered warriors by some. They were victims of a time where a police officer was not even a cop-- but a pig. And what was the act really to the men who killed Jones and Piagentini? Nothing but the butchery of a couple of animals.

Waverly Jones was shot four times-- once square in the back of his head and three times all along his back. His partner, Joseph Piagentini was shot a total of thirteen times, with the guns of the killers, and with the gun of his slain partner, stripped from Jones' body and used against Piagentini who simply would not die in front of his assailants. It was the fiercest kind of pride ever shown on that Harlem sidewalk that terrible night. Piagentini could not hold on much longer, and he died in the back seat of the radio-car that tried to get him to Harlem Hospital alive-- only human in the end, he had lost too much blood and had fought too hard. The fight was now over. Waverly Jones was thirty three, and Joseph Piagentini was twenty eight. They had each been on the force for five years.

It was a crime of horrifying brutality. According to the New York Times, several of the emergency room nurses wept and screamed when Jones and Piagentini were rolled into Harlem Hospital. "Oh no, it can't be," one of them reportedly exclaimed. But it could be-- and it was. It was all true. The Black Liberation Army, having machine-gunned two patrolmen on the 19th of May, had declared a bloody, guerilla war on police officers-- and even the color of your skin did not matter to these killers. The color of Waverly Jones' skin did not matter. This was a different kind of racism, a new kind of bigotry. The hated group was not white or black or Asian, or Catholic or Jewish or straight or gay-- the hated group was all of the above, so long as they had a tin shield covering their heart.

In the early to mid 1970s, according to the Black Liberation Army's own accounts, the BLA committed over forty armed ambush-assaults on police officers all across the country in a mis-guided effort to seek some sort of perverted justice, revenge, or power. In a twist of tragic irony, it was Jones and Piagentini-- a white cop and a black cop, working together, an example of productive, progressive racial integration for all of Harlem to see-- who were mercilessly slaughtered in an act of hatred, insanity, and barbarity.

This crime, this assault on humanity, left many victims in its wake. It left 33,000 other New York City police officers rage-filled, anxious, and afraid, (and with good reason, eight months later another black and white patrol partnership, 9th Precinct Patrolmen Rocco W. Laurie and Gregory P. Foster were gunned down in a shockingly similar manner). The Jones and Piagentini murders left the police free to feel justified in some of their deeper suspicions of certain members of the black community, and it left many members of the black community scared of police reprisals and mis-directed hate and violence. This crime left wives without husbands and children without fathers. But, and it is supremely important that we all remember what this crime did not lead to. This cowardly, unpardonable deed did not lead to some great revolution. It did not lead to glory for the accused and eventually convicted. It lead to pain, emptiness, and, for the assassins, jail, and rightfully so. One of the convicted killers, Albert Washington, died in prison last year of liver failure. Is that justice?

Is it justice that Diane Piagentini will never know what it would have been like to celebrate twenty years of marriage with her husband? Is it justice that Piagentini's children most likely have few fleeting memories of their father, if any memories at all? Is it justice that Patrolman Waverly Jones will never know what it would have felt like to share in the joy of his son, named for him, turning thirty years old this year? All these things to be forever unknown... all because, on the 21st of May, 1971, Herman Bell, Anthony Bottom, and Albert Washington, all members of the Black Liberation Army, felt like making a statement. They could have just as easily made a statement by picking up a pen and paper, perhaps even a typewriter. Instead, they chose to pick up guns to make their statement.

Well, today, I feel like making a statement too, and I can think of no better place to make it than on this site. My statement is not one of hatred, it is one of deep sincerity. As the 30 year anniversary of this atrocious crime rapidly approaches, I have a statement to make to all of you. Here is my statement: We must never forget what happened to Joseph Piagentini and Waverly Jones. We must never forget the pain that the patrolmens' widows felt at their funerals, and every day thereafter. We must never forget the anguish that must haunt the Jones and Piagentini children as they continue with their lives. Furthermore, we must all never forget about the times. They were victims of the times, he said to me-- what times? They were victims of a time where people were hateful and ugly and unfair and evil to each other, just because they happened to look different on the outside. Jones and Piagentini were victims of a time where most violence was racial, and most things racial were violent.

And so, as 21 May, 1971 so quickly turns into 21 May, 2001, how can we as a society best honor the memory of Joseph A. Piagentini and Waverly M. Jones? Well, we can start by visiting the Memorial during Police Week, perhaps on the anniversary of their deaths. We can pause in our daily routines on the 21st and remember what those two men stood for, and what they fell for. We can write to the New York State Board of Parole and demand that they deny parole for Herman Bell, (2004) and Anthony Bottom, (2002). Yes, we can, and definitely should, do all of these things.

But there is something else that we can do to remember and honor Piagentini and Jones, and it's really quite simple: we can be good to each other. We can try our damndest to make absolutely certain that we never behave in a manner that serves to replicate the hateful, unjust environment that drove Bell, Bottom, and Washington to take to the streets and thirst for the blood of cops. It is in our power, ladies and gentlemen, to a certain extent, to work tirelessly for a world in which a black cop and a white cop can walk along their beat together and chat amicably with each other about nothing at all really-- without having to look over their shoulders every time they hear footsteps behind them in the night.

Thank you, and God bless the memory of slain 32nd Precinct New York City Patrolmen Waverly M. Jones and Joseph A. Piagentini.

OfficersNames: Patrolmen Waverly M. Jones and Joseph A. Piagentini
OfficerDepartment: New York City Police Department
City: New York, NY Date of Deaths: 5/21/71