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Bernard Hugo Goetz, known as Bernhard or Bernie (born November 7, 1947) was dubbed the "Subway Vigilante" by the New York press. He became a symbol of New Yorkers' frustrations with a high crime rate when he shot four muggers intent on robbing him on the Seventh Avenue 2 express subway train in Manhattan in 1984. Image File history File links This is a lossless scalable vector image. ...
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Times Squareâ42nd Street station entrance The New York City Subway is a rapid transit system owned by the City of New York and leased to the New York City Transit Authority , an affiliate of the Metropolitan Transportation Authority and also known as MTA New York City Transit. ...
He has a bachelor's degree in electrical engineering and nuclear engineering from New York University. At the time of the shooting incident, he was self-employed, running an electronics repair business out of his Greenwich Village apartment. A bachelors degree is usually an undergraduate academic degree awarded for a course or major that generally lasts for three, four, or in some cases and countries, five or six years. ...
Electrical Engineers design power systems⦠⦠and complex electronic circuits. ...
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The incident
In the early afternoon of December 22, 1984, four young African-American men — Barry Allen, 19; Troy Canty, 19; James Ramseur, 18; and Darrell Cabey, 19 — boarded a downtown No. 2 express train on a stated mission to steal money from video arcade machines in Manhattan. is the 356th day of the year (357th in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar. ...
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arcade, see Arcade. ...
Goetz entered the same subway car at the 14th Street station and sat down near the four young men, who were then located at his right. According to Goetz's statement to police, approximately ten seconds later Troy Canty asked him, "How are you?" Goetz responded "I'm fine". According to Goetz, the four men gave signals to each other, and shortly thereafter Canty and Barry Allen rose from their seats and went over to the left of Goetz, blocking Goetz off from the other passengers in the car. Canty then calmly said to Goetz, "Give me five dollars." According to the young men's testimony, Canty was panhandling, although eyewitness testimony given at Goetz's criminal trial generally agreed that the four men were aggressive and threatening. Goetz told police that he thought from the smile on Canty's face that they wanted to "play with me," and he decided on a "pattern of fire" that he would use to shoot them. Goetz, pretending not to hear them, asked Canty, "What did you say?" Canty calmly repeated, "Give me five dollars." Goetz admitted to police that he "snapped" and that his intention at that point was to "murder them, to hurt them, to make them suffer as much as possible." At the criminal trial, Goetz's defense attorneys, Barry Slotnick and Mark Baker, claimed that this and other extreme statements by Goetz were the product of an overactive imagination. A rapid transit, underground, subway, tube, elevated, or metro(politan) system is a railway system, usually in an urban area, with a high capacity and frequency of service, and grade separation from other traffic. ...
Beggars in Samarkand, 1905 Begging includes the various methods used by persons to obtain money, food, shelter, or other necessities from people they encounter during the course of their travels. ...
Barry Slotnick is a New York defense attorney, in part known for obtaining an acquittal of the New York City resident Bernard Goetz on attempted murder and assault charges related to his shooting of assailant Darrell Cabey in 1984. ...
Mark Baker can refer several people including: Mark Baker (Religious Prophet) Mark Baker (animator) Mark Baker (author) Mark Baker (basketball) - Dayton Jets head basketball coach and former Ohio State University player Mark M. Baker (attorney) Category: ...
After the second demand or request for money, Goetz rose from his seat, and from beneath his blue windbreaker fast-drew a .38 Special five-shot Smith & Wesson revolver and fired five shots with speed shooting. (Speed shooting is a very fast technique, primarily effective at close range, where the shooter initiates trigger pull prior to the sights being aligned on the target.) In media interviews, Goetz, who had prior firearms and target shooting experience, described how he discharged all five rounds in less than 1.6 seconds. (Some eyewitnees testimony stated all shots were fired within one second.) The first hit Canty in the center of the chest; the second shot struck Allen in his back and came out his arm; the third shot hit the subway wall just in front of Cabey; the fourth shot hit Cabey in the left side, severing his spinal cord and rendering him paraplegic; the fifth shot went through Ramseur's arm and lodged itself in his left side. Goetz then immediately looked at the first two men to make sure they were "taken care of." Goetz then saw Cabey moving on the bench and confessed to approaching Cabey and saying, "You don't look too bad; here's another," and then attempted to shoot Cabey again in the stomach, with an empty gun. Cabey, who was briefly standing prior to the shooting, was sitting on the subway bench during all attempted shots. In his subsequent police statement, Goetz explained, "if I had had more [bullets], I would have shot them again, and again, and again." All four men survived, though Cabey was permanently paralyzed and suffered brain damage as a result of the bullet that severed his spine. Left to right: .38 Special, .17 HMR and . ...
Smith & Wesson NASDAQ: SWHC (S&W) is the largest manufacturer of handguns in the United States. ...
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Goetz claimed that at the moment of the incident he experienced severe distortion of his visual depth of field, one of many known significant physiological effects of epinephrine (adrenaline), a fight-or-flight hormone released by the adrenal medulla. He also apparently suffered a combination of loss of hearing and audio exclusion, in part from the adrenaline rush and also from the tremendous decibel level of the gun discharge reverberating inside the confined space of the subway car with its carbon steel walls and fiberglass benches. In media interviews, Goetz has described in haunting, vivid detail, the incredible high-pitched ringing in his ears as a part of his overall state of mind at the moment of the incident. Goetz claimed he suffered this hearing loss and audio exclusion after the first shot and up to the point he noticed two women who he thought were unintentionally hit by his bullets. These women in fact fainted outright in response to the trauma of the incident. In optics, particularly film and photography, the depth of field (DOF) is the distance in front of and beyond the subject that appears to be in focus. ...
Adrenaline redirects here. ...
This article or section should include material from Fight-or-flight The flight or fight response, also called the acute stress response, was first described by Walter Cannon in the 1920s as a theory that animals react to threats with a general discharge of the sympathetic nervous system. ...
In mammals, the adrenal glands are the triangle-shaped endocrine glands that sit atop the kidneys. ...
After the shooting, the only other passengers of the original 15 to 20 that remained in the subway car were the two nearby women who had fainted. After talking to the two women to determine if they were injured - they were not - Goetz was approached by the conductor who had been in the next car. Goetz refused to hand over his gun to the conductor, stating "They tried to rob me", and a few minutes later left the train which had halted because of the incident, a common practice on the New York City subway system during certain emergency situations. Due to the tremendous decibel volume of the shots inside the confined space of the subway car, there were initial witness reports after the incident that suggested the gun involved was a .44 Magnum or other large caliber handgun. Goetz alluded to these reports in a 2005 media interview on the Opie and Anthony radio show that the volume was in part due to the fact that the shots he fired that afternoon "cleaned the barrel" of the small-frame .38 revolver he used. In other words, those shots were purportedly the first time he had ever fired that particular gun. Look up magnum in Wiktionary, the free dictionary. ...
A Browning 9 millimeter Hi-Power Ordnance pistol of the French Navy, 19th century, using a Percussion cap mechanism Derringers were small and easily hidden. ...
Opie (Gregg Hughes, b. ...
Radio broadcasts have been a popular entertainment since the 1910s, though popularity has declined a little in some countries since television became widespread. ...
Goetz fled the subway system at the Chambers Street Station. He then rented a car and drove to Bennington, Vermont and buried the gun and the blue windbreaker he wore at the time of the shooting. He walked into a Concord, New Hampshire police station to turn himself in on December 31, 1984. While he was away, police had already tried to contact him at his Greenwich Village apartment for an interview because he fit the description of the shooter. Bennington (town), Vermont Old Bennington, Vermont Bennington County, Vermont North Bennington, Vermont Bennington (CDP), Vermont This is a disambiguation page — a navigational aid which lists other pages that might otherwise share the same title. ...
Location in Merrimack County, New Hampshire Coordinates: Country United States State New Hampshire County Merrimack County Incorporated 1733 - City Manager Thomas J. Aspell, Jr. ...
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The Washington Square Arch Greenwich Village (IPA pronunciation: ), also called simply the Village, is a largely residential area on the west side of downtown (southern) Manhattan in New York City named after Greenwich, London. ...
After the incident, rumors spread that Goetz had been threatened with sharpened screwdrivers. This rumor was published as fact by some newspapers; however, neither Goetz nor the young men made any such claim. In fact, during his subsequent statement to the police Goetz expressed a belief that none of the young men was armed. Paramedics and police did find a total of four unsharpened screwdrivers on two of the men, which they explained were to be used to break into video arcade game change boxes. Goetz's confession to shooting Cabey twice, first in the left side and later in the stomach, and Goetz's use of the phrase "You don't look too bad; here's another" was made public by the DA prior to the second grand jury. This was reported as fact in the media for 18 months up to the time of the criminal trial, when Cabey's medical records were released indicating he was shot once in the left side. A basic screwdriver made by Craftsman (slotted tip shown) A rechargeable battery-powered electric screwdriver from Black & Decker The screwdriver is a device specifically designed to insert and tighten, or to loosen and remove, screws. ...
In the American common law legal system, a grand jury is a type of jury which determines if there is enough evidence for a trial. ...
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Background This incident occurred during the 1980s, a time of unprecedented crime rates in New York City. In the mid-eighties, New York had a reported crime rate that was over 70% higher than the rest of the U.S. In 1984, NYC police reported a rate of 2 homicides, 18 total violent crimes, and 65 property thefts per 10,000 people per year. On average, 38 crimes were reported on New York City subways each day. It has been alleged that official New York City crime rates (excluding homicides) were far lower than actual crime. For other uses of terms redirecting here, see US (disambiguation), USA (disambiguation), and United States (disambiguation) Motto In God We Trust(since 1956) (From Many, One; Latin, traditional) Anthem The Star-Spangled Banner Capital Washington, D.C. Largest city New York City National language English (de facto)1 Demonym American...
After being mugged once in the mid 1970s while with friends returning to a Harlem subway station, Goetz was mugged yet again in 1981 by three men and sustained injuries from the assault. Though he had prior target shooting experience earlier in his life, it was this second violent mugging that prompted Goetz to begin carrying a gun. Goetz did apply for a permit to carry a handgun, which was denied as are most such applications in New York City. Goetz bought a five-shot, alloy J-frame Smith and Wesson "Airweight" revolver with a shrouded hammer out of fear for his safety. Goetz had brandished the pistol on two occasions prior to the attack on the subway in order to frighten away would-be robbers. It was this firearm that Goetz used to shoot the four men who confronted him on the subway in 1984. Look up mugging in Wiktionary, the free dictionary. ...
An alloy is a homogeneous hybrid of two or more elements, at least one of which is a metal, and where the resulting material has metallic properties. ...
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At the time of the incident, Goetz had no criminal record while each of the four men had been previously arrested and had a total of fourteen outstanding criminal bench warrants, although only Cabey had been charged with a felony, armed robbery. When the incident occurred, all of the men were either 18 or 19, and had reached the legal age of majority. This article does not cite any references or sources. ...
Public reaction The "subway vigilante", as Goetz was labeled by the New York tabloids, was front page news for months, partly due to the repressed passions it unleashed in New York and other urban areas. Some viewed the soft-spoken Goetz as a hero for standing up to his attackers and defending himself in an environment where the police were increasingly viewed as ineffective in combating crime. This camp felt that, in his cornered and threatened circumstance, Goetz's best defense was to use the element of surprise, his only strategic advantage over four younger, and more physically powerful, men, to shoot all four men quickly and decisively with overwhelming force, in order to resist the mugging, the potential great bodily injury that four young men could inflict on a single victim, and to avoid the possibility of having his gun appropriated and used against him by one of the four men. For other uses, see Vigilante (disambiguation). ...
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This article does not cite any references or sources. ...
Look up Mugging in Wiktionary, the free dictionary. ...
The Guardian Angels collected thousands of dollars in donations from N.Y.C. subway riders for a legal defense fund for Goetz. The Congress of Racial Equality (C.O.R.E.), a civil rights organization, also offered to raise money for his legal defense. C. Vernon Mason, a candidate for district attorney, and the Rev. Al Sharpton, who are both black, said Goetz's actions were racist. The prior criminal convictions of the four men (and the published accounts of such) prevented the muggers from gaining sympathy from many people. This article does not cite any references or sources. ...
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Some wondered whether the trial result would have been different if the participants' races were reversed. Benjamin Hooks, NAACP director, said "The jury verdict was inexcusable. It was proven - according to his own statements - that Goetz did the shooting and went far beyond the realm of self-defense. There was no provocation for what he did.'" Representative Floyd Flake said "I think that if a black had shot four whites, the cry for the death penalty would have been almost automatic." In contrast, Time Magazine correspondent Otto Friedrich pointed out the case of Austin Weeks, a 29 year old African American man who shot a white teenager, yet a New York City grand jury refused to indict Weeks for that shooting. Others viewed Goetz's shooting of the four men as a callous overreaction to the events. On the 2005 Opie and Anthony Show radio interview, Goetz alluded to this camp and recalled how an audience telephone caller, on a radio talk show interview he previously sat for, suggested to him that at the moment of the incident, Goetz "should have been thinking of (19 year-old Darrell) Cabey's mother." In contrast Goetz advised that at the moment he was cornered by what witnesses testified as four hostile men, he was first and foremost concerned for his own safety and survival and that he was not thinking of the men's relatives. Those in the first camp tended to believe Goetz's version of the incident, that he was aggressively accosted and cornered by the four men demanding money. Those in the second camp tended to believe the version of the incident as told by the four men, that they were merely panhandling with neither intimidation nor threats of violence. This latter view of events was later substantially discredited when one of the four men admitted that they planned to rob Goetz. Look up Mugging in Wiktionary, the free dictionary. ...
In the middle of these two polarized views were people who believed that Goetz was indeed being threatened with violence, but seriously questioned whether the drastic nature of his actions could qualify as self-defense. People in this camp thought that Goetz overreacted when he opened fire without warning on not only one, but all four of the men who confronted him.
First and second grand juries Shortly after the incident a grand jury exonerated Goetz of all shooting charges and indicted him only for gun possession charges. The case had high media profile (some said there was hysteria in the media) and a few months later a second grand jury was convened, based on the testimony of Troy Canty and James Ramseur. The media was only informed that new witnesses on the train would testify, and the media was not informed of contradictory independent eyewitness statements. Goetz was then indicted on numerous assault and attempted murder charges. This second indictment was later dismissed after two of the shooting victims were arrested on separate rape and robbery charges, and a third shooting victim stated in a newspaper interview that the other members of the group decided to rob Goetz because he looked like "easy bait." Independent eyewitness statements were still withheld from the media. The New York Court of Appeals, the highest court in New York, reversed the dismissal of the second grand jury indictment of Goetz on charges of attempted murder, assault and criminal possession of a weapon. The court held that Goetz's actual belief that he was in imminent danger was not dispositive because the standard is not purely subjective. Rather, the self-defense justification of deadly force requires an objectively reasonable belief that an imminent threat exists. That is, considering all the circumstances, a "reasonable person" in Goetz's place would have believed he or she was in danger. Main Holding The defense of justification which permits to use of deadly physical force is not a purely subjective standard; the actor must not only have the subjective belief that deadly physical force is necessary, but those beliefs must also be objectively reasonable. ...
// The United States Reports, the official reporter of the Supreme Court of the United States Case citation is the system used in many countries to identify the decisions in past court cases, either in special series of books called reporters or law reports, or in a neutral form which will...
Criminal trial The Goetz trial was a significant news event. Goetz confessed to the shooting but argued that his actions fell within the New York self-defense statute. Under Section 35.15, "A person may not use deadly physical force upon another person...unless...He reasonably believes that such other person is committing or attempting to commit [one of certain enumerated predicate offenses, including robbery]." Goetz was convicted of Criminal Possession of a Weapon in the Third Degree and initially sentenced to six months in jail, one year psychiatric treatment, five years' probation, 200 hours community service, and a fine of $5,000. He appealed, and the appellate court affirmed the conviction and ordered a resentencing for a period of one year in jail without probation. The order of the appellate court was affirmed because the trial court did not err in instructing the jury that, if it found the People had proved each of the elements of the crime beyond a reasonable doubt, it "must" find defendant guilty. This was not a directed verdict. Goetz served eight months. // The United States Reports, the official reporter of the Supreme Court of the United States Case citation is the system used in many countries to identify the decisions in past court cases, either in special series of books called reporters or law reports, or in a neutral form which will...
Civil trial Darrell Cabey, and his lawyer Ron Kuby filed a civil suit against Goetz in 1985. In 1996, a jury found that Goetz acted recklessly and deliberately inflicted emotional distress on Cabey. Goetz admitted to using racist language. The all-minority jury awarded Cabey $43 million. Goetz subsequently filed for bankruptcy. He stated in 2004 that he hadn't paid "a penny" yet[1]. Ronald L. Kuby (born in 1956 in Cleveland, Ohio) is a criminal defense and left-leaning civil rights lawyer, radio talk show host and TV commentator. ...
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Year 1996 (MCMXCVI) was a leap year starting on Monday (link will display full 1996 Gregorian calendar). ...
At the civil trial, newspaper columnist Jimmy Breslin testified that Cabey denied his involvement in an attempted robbery, but said that Canty, Allen, and Ramseur intended to rob Goetz. Jimmy Breslin (born October 17, 1930) is an American columnist and author who has written numerous novels and appeared regularly in various newspapers in New York City, where he lives. ...
The jury apparently was confused. Goetz and the two doctors who testified at the trial said Cabey was shot once. The only two jurors who were willing to make brief statements to the media after the trial said they believed Cabey was shot twice.
Legacy The New York State legal standard for the self defense justification use of deadly force shifted after rulings in the case. New York jurors are now told to consider a defendant's background and to consider whether a reasonable person would feel imperiled if that reasonable person was the defendant. After reaching an all time peak in 1990, crime in New York City dropped dramatically throughout the rest of the 1990s. As of 2006, New York had statistically become one of the safest large cities in the U.S., with its crime rate being ranked 194th of the 210 American cities with populations over 100,000. The New York City crime rates in the first half of the 2000s decade were comparable to those of New York in the early 1960s. Goetz and others have interpreted the significance of his actions in the subway incident as a contributing factor precipitating the groundswell movement against crime in subsequent years. While that claim is impossible to verify, Goetz achieved celebrity as a popular cultural symbol of the reaction to urban crime and disorder. The New Yorker columnist Malcolm Gladwell described the incident in chapter four of his best-selling first book, The Tipping Point (2000), within a discussion about the sharp drop in crime in New York City since the 1980s. The chapter is entitled "The Power of Context." For other uses, see New Yorker. ...
Malcolm Gladwell Malcolm Gladwell (born September 1, 1963) is a United Kingdom-born, Canadian-raised journalist now based in New York City who has been a staff writer for The New Yorker since 1996. ...
The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference (ISBN 0-316-31696-2) is a book by Malcolm Gladwell, first published by Little Brown in 2000. ...
Activities since the incident James Ramseur and Barry Allen committed serious crimes after the original incident. Soon after being released from the hospital for the treatment of his gunshot wound, James Ramseur committed another crime with an associate: he was later convicted of raping, sodomizing, beating and robbing a pregnant nineteen year old woman on a building rooftop in the Bronx, and in 1986 was sentenced to 8 ⅓ to 25 years in prison. Barry Allen committed two muggings after the shooting. Sodomizing (or sodomy) is any of various forms of sexual intercourse held to be unnatural or abnormal, especially anal intercourse or bestiality. ...
A beekeeper Robbing is a term used in beekeeping. ...
A pregnant woman Pregnancy is the process by which a mammalian female carries a live offspring from conception until it develops to the point where the offspring is capable of living outside the womb. ...
Look up Mugging in Wiktionary, the free dictionary. ...
As of 2005, Goetz is again living in New York City and has run for both mayor (in 2001) and public advocate (2005). Goetz has stated that while he did not expect to be elected, he did hope to bring attention to issues in the public interest. He is also an advocate for vegetarianism and the service of vegetarian lunches in the New York City public school system. He occasionally gives media interviews about the 1984 subway incident that suddenly brought his private life into the public eye. He sells and services electronic test equipment via his company "Vigilante Electronics". In the 2002 film Every Move You Make, Goetz played a criminologist who teaches a female stalking victim how to use a concealed carry weapon. In 2004, twenty years after the incident, Goetz appeared on Larry King Live. He stated that his actions helped precipitate the drop in crime experienced in New York City in the early 1990s. 2005 is a common year starting on Saturday of the Gregorian calendar. ...
A variety of vegetarian food ingredients Vegetarianism is the practice of a diet that excludes all animal flesh, including poultry, game, fish, shellfish or crustacea, and slaughter by-products. ...
Back to Electronics A Tektronix model 475A portable analogue oscilloscope Electronic test equipment (sometimes called testgear) is used to create stimulus signals and capture responses from electronic Devices Under Test (DUTs). ...
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Footnotes - ^ http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0412/17/lkl.01.html
References - Subway Gunman: A Juror's Account of the Bernhard Goetz Trial (ISBN 0-945167-08-3).
- The Tipping Point (ISBN 0-316-34662-4).
- A Crime of Self-Defense : Bernhard Goetz and the Law on Trial (ISBN 0-226-25334-1).
- The trial of Bernhard Goetz (ASIN B0006DAN94).
- People Vs. Goetz: The Summations and the Charges to the Jury (ISBN 0-89941-657-8).
- People v. Goetz, 68 N.Y.2d 96 (N.Y. Ct. App. 1986)
- The Remarkable Drop in Crime in New York City, Patrick A. Langan, Matthew R. Durose, International Conference on Crime, Rome, Italy, December 3-5, 2003.
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