The Ledger

9.11 Ramparts

This is one of those episodes where McCoy gets all agitated about the Sixties because some case reminds him of it and whoever his ADA is can't possibly understand, at least according to McCoy. In any case, this episode (9.11) begins with the discovery of a skeleton in a VW bus sunk in the Hudson River and ends with McCoy trying to get the police to disclose their practices of spying on, and inciting, protesters during the Vietnam Era. Briscoe and Curtis investigate the 30+-year-old murder, and McCoy uses his prosecution of the murderer to launch his own investigation into police practices. Carmichael sits around.

The episode begins with some women yelling after a shooting in the park near the river. Cops chase after the gunman, who throws his gun into the river just before they tackle him. Cut to a diving crew trying to recover the gun. Instead, they find a 1968 VW bus submerged in the water. A crane lifts the van out of the water, and when they open the door, a skull rolls out. Briscoe and Curtis are on the scene by now, and they also find a piece of blue plastic and the rest of the skeleton. The victim has been shot in the head.

Back at the precinct, they talk about where the bus may have rolled into the water from. Curtis says no one really knows, and says it could have been New Jersey, Spuyten Duyvil, or any number of other places.

They talk to the medical examiner (not Rodgers -- the other lady) who tells them the victim might be a skier, based on the fracture in his leg. She says he's a 6-ft-tall man. The forensics on the car yields a VIN, so that's a pretty good place to start. They talk to the last guy who was on record as owning it. He says he swapped it in 1968 for a Mercedes? Who would make a deal like that? His rebellious rich girlfriend, that's who. They track her down, and she's now still wicked rich and living in a giant townhouse, but when they talk to her, she's preparing a benefit for a liberal cause. Her name is Diana Wells and she says she swapped her Mercedes for the van to piss off her parents, and later gave the van to her "first Jewish lover," a guy named David B-something. They go through the records of Kensington College (her school), and narrow it down to David Bernstein. They talk to his brother Seth who says David disappeared when Seth was a young boy and David was in college. He and his family never learned what happened to him. They talk to the detective who is supposedly working David's missing persons case now, and he has no memory of it and only a one-page file. They talk to Kenneth Stratton, who at the time was an activist/student leader who led the occupation of the administration buildings at Kensington. Stratton says he saw cops beating up David. Briscoe gives Curtis a look that implies they think the cops may have "disappeared" David, which makes them nervous.

They talk to David's friend Peter who says David was pretty militant as an activist and even drenched a war memorial in pig's blood. They talk to his girlfriend at the time, a black woman named Tracy Howard, who says she figured David just ran off with a nice Jewish girl. She leads them to the security guard at the campus parking garage that night, an old guy named Grady. They talk to a guy who was a courier back then, and is now a chef, and he points them to another guard who is supposed to be Grady's alibi. He says he was out playing cards elsewhere on campus that night and can't vouch for Grady. They reinterview Grady, and he's all cranky, as is his middle-aged son.

They review news footage of the protests and note that the security guards are wearing plastic name badges -- the plastic appears to match what they found in the van. Looks like a clue!

They talk to Grady yet again, and he tells them how he was pissed off at the protesters because he just learned that day that his other son had gone MIA in Vietnam.

Carmichael talks to the widow of a reporter who was working that day. The reporter had noted that the security guards had guns, and she wants to find out who told him this. The ADAs talk to another female activist who says that David had money and paid for things the movement needed, but they never knew where this money was coming from. They check with Seth, David's brother, who points them to a storage facility. The find pay stubs for a certain amount of money -- and amount Briscoe immediately recognizes as the weekly salary for a rookie cop that year. It looks like David Bernstein was an undercover cop who infiltrated the student movement!

They try and get confirmation of this from the NYPD, but the clerk clams up. Carmichael eventually learns that David was attached to something called "Special Squad 3," an undercover intelligence branch of the department. But she can't get detailed records released.

They talk to another guy who served on Special Squad 3 with David. He says he went to a meeting of 8 "radicals" and 5 of the guys attending the meeting were fellow undercover officers. He says he took directions from his sargeant. AC talks to the sargeant and he says he saw Grady driving off with David's van, but he didn't investigate. The ADAs meet with the police dept. brass to get the records released, but they refuse. AC says police have a right to do what is necessary to prevent terrorism, but McC disagrees.

AC wants a deal for Grady, and she offers one: Man I. During the meeting, McCoy accidentally-on-purpose mentions the secret police records, so as to whet the appetite of Grady's lawyer. AC gets mad, but McCoy says he wants those files, and he'll even team up with Grady's defense to get them.

Grady's son wants a deal, but McCoy won't allow it. He wants the attorney to push for the release of the files with him. They meet with the police brass again and the department's attorney (played by Roy Thinnes). AC doesn't get what McC is doing, and he predictably tells her, "You don't know anything about the 60s," just like he did in that other episode, White Rabbit, where the fugitive mom from the payroll robbery turns up in New Jersey.

Schiff tells McCoy to go after the records, and to find Bernstein's "handler," the police officer who handled Bernstein's undercover operation. The police know where this guy, Sgt Macmillan, is, but they won't turn him over. A judge forces them too.

At a pre-trial hearing, Macmillan testifies. He says that the police department tried to get the civilian activist Stratton to join up with the violent Black Panthers, but Stratton refused. Bernstein was the guy who was supposed to make this happen. In other words, Bernstein was given assignments that would make the student movement look bad. The department even set him up with the pig's blood and told him to splash the monument. They even tried to get Macmillan to frame the Black Panthers for Bernstein's disappearance, but he told them it wouldn't work.

In any case, McCoy gets what he wants. Judge Pongracic orders the files opened, and Grady gets a deal, Man 2, 1-3 years. He confesses.

Thematically, note how both the Grady family and the Bernstein family have similar situations: a son disappears, and a brother is left trying to hold the remaining family together.

I'm not sure what the title "Ramparts" refers to in this context, and don't feel like looking it up right now. A rampart is a barrier, so I guess it might refer to the barrier the NYPD erects to keep people from finding out about their dirty past.

Posted by adm at July 3, 2004 02:55 AM

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