By Rich Bockmann
The new top cop in Jamaica said that when he learned about his new assignment, his first thought was of a notorious slaying 26 years ago in southeast Queens, where bloodshed is still one of the biggest problems the commander will have to tackle.
“I got a phone call that said, ‘John, you’re being transferred to the 103rd Precinct,’” Deputy Inspector John Cappelmann told the 103rd Community Council during its monthly meeting at the St. Benedict the Moor Church in St. Albans Tuesday evening.
“I immediately thought of [Officer] Eddie Byrne, who was shot and killed here in February 1988, and I can remember specifically where I was at that time,” he said.
Cappelmann was in the U.S. Army in the winter of 1988 when he saw patrol cars from the 103rd Precinct on the nightly news.
“It immediately made me jump up and take notice, because at the time my father was a sergeant assigned to the 103rd Precinct,” he explained.
Cappelmann’s father was safe that night and retired from the force after 35 years of service, but Byrne’s gangland murder while he was staking out a witness was seen as endemic of an out-of-control city hard hit by the crack epidemic and run over by crime. And while those days are long gone, southeast Queens continues to struggle with violence.
Citywide, murders were down last year about 85 percent from where they were in 1990, and as of March 30 the figures were down 9.5 percent compared to the same stretch last year, NYPD crime statistics show.
But so far this year the 103rd has the highest number of murders in the city.
As of March 30, the precinct had recorded five murders, up from just one at the same time last year.
When going over the 103rd’s crime statistics, Cappelmann referred to the most recent killing, when a teenager was shot dead March 30 while he waited with a friend outside a home on Lakewood Avenue in South Jamaica, just four blocks away from where Byrne was killed in 1988.
“There are some issues with violence that we’re really looking hard to reduce,” he said, pledging that the latest case will be solved.
Cappelmann was the commanding officer of the 9th Precinct on Manhattan’s Lower East Side before he was reassigned after the 103rd’s previous commander, Inspector Charles McEvoy, was moved over to the school safety division.
Cappelmann called his predecessor “caring, hardworking and dedicated to the community.”
The NYPD generally moves commanding offers after two or three years, though it appears to be undergoing a department-wide shake-up under new Commissioner Bill Bratton.
Cappelmann said he was ecstatic when he got the news.
“Of course, I spoke to my wife and told the kids and then I called my parents,” said Cappelmann, whose father spent 19 years working at the station house.
“I called my dad and said, ‘Dad, guess what precinct I’m going to?’ he said, ‘John, you’re going to the 103.’”
Reach reporter Rich Bockmann by e-mail at rbockmann@cnglocal.com or by phone at 718-260-4574.
