Four years ago five Chicago police staged a narcotics raid at an apartment building near the University of Chicago. Seventeen minutes after the raid began, two officers were wounded and the tenant of one of the apartments was dead.
Honor, however, may be another matter.
At about 2:15 PM, Dignan, Peck, Tyler, and Woullard proceeded directly to Richard’s front door while Officer Wise approached the rear. All five officers carried radios, but only Dignan’s could communicate outside the team. Dignan knocked and announced his office. When there was no answer, he turned to Tyler, who attacked the door with a sledgehammer. Ordinary doors don’t stand a chance against such force, but this door seemed to have been fortified. Tyler pounded until he tired, then Woullard took over. Five minutes passed before part of the door, probably the upper right corner, gave way.
By now, passersby had begun calling 911. The dispatchers became confused; their initial broadcast contained the correct address–6038 S. Cottage Grove–but a few seconds later they reported the incident was taking place at 6038 S. Calumet. Six different addresses were broadcast over the course of a few minutes. Four were in the immediate vicinity of the shooting, but two were on Calumet, nine blocks west.
Separate ambulances carried Tyler and Peck to Northwestern Memorial Hospital. Peck’s wound was not life threatening, and he was able to give his account of the incident to Detective Joseph Danzl at 3:15 that afternoon, less than an hour after the shooting started. Peck was released from the hospital five days later.
At the time the roundtable was in session, Tyler was in surgery and unable to confirm or dispute Dignan’s account of his heroics. Peck, however, had already been interviewed at Northwestern by Detective Danzl. Danzl presented Peck’s version of events at the roundtable, and that version differed sharply from Dignan’s. Peck said that while hiding behind the refrigerator, he saw a man with a gun leave the front bedroom. Peck said he fired two shots and that the man fell in the doorway. (The autopsy would later reveal that one of Peck’s shots went through Richard’s heart.) As a precaution, Peck left his cover, went to the prone shooter, picked up the man’s gun, and returned to the kitchen. (The police would later discover that by that time the gun contained no bullets.) Peck told Danzl that after returning to his hiding place, he heard more shots and the sound of a weapon being reloaded.
