Charge Jamaica man in San Francisco cop murder

New York City Police Detectives teamed with members of the FBI and officers from the San Francisco Police Department (SFPD) to apprehend Jamaica resident Francisco Torres and press additional charges against two convicted New York City cop killers for the murder of a San Francisco Police Sergeant that took place more than 35 years ago.
Authorities arrested Jamaica resident Francisco Torres on Tuesday morning, January 23, and implicated Herman Bell and Anthony Bottom, who are currently serving time in New York prisons for their roles in the murder of New York City police officers Waverly Jones and Joseph Piagentini on May 21, 1971.
“Today’s developments only reinforce our opposition to their [Bell and Bottom] parole,” said NYPD Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly. “They shot two New York City police officers in the back, as part of a series of assassinations directed against police officers in those murderous days. It may have been 35 years ago, but I certainly haven’t forgotten. Neither has anyone who was a member of the police department back then.”
On August 29, 1971, more than three months after the murder of the two New York City detectives, Bell and Torres entered the SFPD Ingleside police station while other accomplices waited outside. Bell allegedly fired shotgun blasts through the speaker hole of a bulletproof protective barrier, killing Sergeant John Young and wounding a civilian clerk, and Torres attempted to ignite sticks of dynamite as the pair fled the station, but the device failed to explode.
Bottom and Albert Washington were supposed to be involved in that attack, but were arrested the night before in a San Francisco car stop, after they attempted to fire at another officer. Inside their car, SFPD found the .45 caliber gun used to kill NYPD officers Jones and Piagentini in Harlem three months earlier, as well as the .38 caliber service revolver of Piagentini.
Torres had been a suspect in the murders of the NYPD detectives, but charges were dismissed for lack of evidence.
Washington died in prison in 2000 while Bell and Bottom remain locked up.
“Obviously, SFPD Sergeant Young’s murder and the murders of NYPD Officers Jones and Piagentini were linked,” Kelly said. “No one rested until their killers were brought to justice. Nothing restores the lives of those young police officers, and all that might have been. Nonetheless, today is a good day for police officers in New York and San Francisco and everywhere.”