A Tree Grows in Harlem: Life, Death and the NYPD’s Unhappily Ever After

If a black policeman falls in Harlem, does his body make a sound?

“Mr. Nathan, my name is Essie Jones,” the email to me began, “I’m Waverly Jones’s daughter. I’m writing to you about my father’s tree.”

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On May 21, 1971, two young patrolmen had just answered a call for help at the Colonial Park Apartments in Harlem. It was a distress call — a domestic. They were in the same academy class together, raising their white-gloved hands at their swearing-in ceremony in 1966. Over their short career, they answered hundreds of radio calls — thousands — passing thousands of hours on the springy, unforgiving vinyl bench seat of a green, white, and black patrol car — a Dodge Coronet, a Plymouth Fury; all horsepower and hubcaps. Some of those calls they’d answered together, other times paired with other partners. But tonight, on a beautiful spring evening, they were together. They would always be together, after that night. Spoken into microphones together. On the television screens together. In the New York Times together. On the wall of Intermediate School 192 together, named for them.

Jones and Piagentini.

On the Harlem sidewalk, together. Sprawled out, in their spring uniforms together. Their blood running down cracks in the pavement, pooling together. One was black and one was white. Much would be made of this in the…