By Nathan Duke
Burke, 63, who was born in Manhattan but has lived in the same house in Astoria since 1949, has taken on all the dangers New York City has to offer, including organized crime, drug cartels and violent criminals, but it was her own department that proved to be her most difficult nemesis when she sued a sergeant for sexual discrimination, a move which nearly cost the detective her career. Burke details her climb from answering telephones at the 103rd Precinct in 1968 to her landmark case against the Police Department in 1984 and her promotion in 1991 to first-grade detective, the department's highest honor, in “Detective: The Inspirational Story of the Trailblazing Woman Cop Who Wouldn't Quit,” a recently released autobiography she wrote over a period of five years with former Daily News editor Neal Hirschfeld.Burke said she decided to write the book during her first day on the job. “I saved everything – every match book cover,” she said. “My intention was to write a book from the beginning because there were no books in the library on police women. The times have not changed.”Burke has recently spoken on radio stations across the nation and Canada about the book and hopes to get a movie made about her life.In 1968, Burke's prospects were more limited. She said female officers were seen as matrons who could deal with female prisoners, lost children and battered women.But through hard work and perseverance, she convinced the department to move her into Manhattan's narcotics division. On the first day of her new job, she said she entered the current site of the Police Museum in Manhattan and spotted a group of stragglers she believed to be derelicts. It turned out they were cops and pretty soon Burke would look just like them.Weighing only 95 pounds and standing just over five feet in the early 1970s, Undercover Officer Burke became junkie Marie Martin, scouring the five boroughs for drugs. In 1972, she was honored with a bag over head to protect her identity after a drug user put a gun to her head in the Bronx, but misfired. “We bought drugs all over the city, from marijuana cigarettes to kilos of heroine,” she said. “It was a lot of fun, but it also involved a lot of fear. We went into the belly of the city where people lived with a needle in their arm and children were put on the street for prostitution, so their parents could have drugs. When you became an undercover, you became part of that world. When you went into a shooting gallery, you had to make sure nobody would grab you and put a needle in your arm to make sure you were a user. You had to expect the unexpected.”She said it came as no surprise when her two daughters, now ages 26 and 28, became social workers.”They said to me, 'Mom, you've been bringing crazy people home your whole life, so what did you expect?” she said.Between 1984 and 1986, Burke's career was almost cut short twice. In 1986, she and her partner of 21 days were tailing a captain and two soldiers from the Genovese crime family in Queens when she realized she was being followed.When her partner insisted he had to use the rest room, she pulled over on Myrtle Avenue and was blocked in by two cars. She ran around to the side of a building which her partner had entered to find several men holding him against a wall. One of the men fired at her, hitting her in the chest and causing her to black out. Her partner was shot four times and died.Burke said one of the men shot at her head as she lay on the ground to make sure she was dead, but the bullet went into her hair, which she described as “big” at the time. She said she staunched the blood flow from her body with breathing exercises she had practiced with former partner John Gaspar that may have saved her life.Burke said she now has a hole in her aorta valve and part of the bullet in her lung.”If you take a picture of my lung, it looks like Haley's Comet,” she said.Burke said several men were caught and acquitted in the shootings, but served prison terms for racketeering.But she said the shooting paled in comparison to her decision to file a sexual discrimination lawsuit against a sergeant in her department two years before that. Burke said she had fallen out of favor with many fellow officers at the time of the shooting because she had tape recorded the sergeant, whom she said believed women should not be police officers.”I knew I was going to stand alone,” she said. “I could understand the shooting because I didn't expect more from bad guys, but I did not expect to be victimized by the very group I took an oath to serve. It was the hardest thing I ever did as a cop and I paid dearly for it. It destroyed my reputation.”Burke said she was not only given the cold shoulder by other cops but also found drugs planted in her car.”She was attacked because she was a woman,” said Gaspar, who retired in 1985 and now lives in Florida. “But she is an exceptional character, a very motivated person, and had excellent detective skills.” She was eventually granted a transfer and became a hostage negotiator. In 1991, she settled her case out of court and was made first-grade detective, retiring shortly afterward.But Burke's battles were not yet over. In 1995, she was diagnosed with ovarian cancer and underwent eight months of chemotherapy. She said she still visits her doctor every few months. Burke said she would eventually like to write a novel, most likely about a police officer. Despite some turbulent years, she said she has been fortunate.”I've had so many things thrown in my way,” she said. “My happy ending is that I survived.” Reach reporter Nathan Duke by e-mail at news@timesledger.com or by phone at 718-229-0300, Ext. 156.
