By Andy Newman, The New York Times
Of all the memories rattling around Deputy Inspector Vincent Di Donato’s head yesterday, the one that stuck in his mind was one that he invented. The scene is Friday night in the crowded quarters of the detective squad in the 67th Precinct in Brooklyn.
“The call comes in, I can just see it,” Inspector Di Donato mused. “Bobby Parker stands up from his chair and says, ‘Anybody want to go with me?’ There’s probably 15 people there that could have gone. But Patty Rafferty says, ‘Yeah, I’ll go with you.’ They’re workers, these guys.”
For Detectives Patrick Rafferty and Robert Parker, going out on the call meant their lives. They were killed in the street when they tried to order a felon with a history of violence to get out of his car for questioning. And yesterday in the somber precinct house in East Flatbush, Inspector Di Donato reflected on just how much he had lost.
Detective Rafferty, 39, came to the precinct in 1999 and was assigned to the robbery squad, but Inspector Di Donato said he recognized him as “a superstar in the making” and quickly promoted him.
As for Detective Parker, 43, when Inspector Di Donato was invited to Hollywood to consult on “N.Y.P.D. Blue,” he took Detective Parker along with him.
“I could pick anyone to go with me,’' he said. “And who am I going to pick? I’m the boss. I pick Bobby Parker.”
The reason was simple. Detective Parker was the best. “If a cop got shot,” Inspector Di Donato said, “he was the one I’d go to.”
That situation, unfortunately, was not an imaginary one.
The headquarters of the 67th Precinct, long one of the city’s most violent precincts, is surrounded by reminders of officers who died in the line of duty.
The block of Snyder Avenue where the bunker-like concrete station house stands has been renamed Detective William Gunn Place, for an officer who was shot pursuing a murder suspect in 1989 and lingered in a coma for nearly four years before dying.
In front of the building is a memorial for Officer Anthony Mosomillo, who was shot dead in 1998 when he tried to arrest a parolee who had been mistakenly freed. Now there were two more names to add to the list.
A block away on Nostrand Avenue, one of the main West Indian shopping strips in Brooklyn, dancehall music boomed from car stereos, and the smell of jerk chicken perfumed the air. Inside the precinct house, the mood was a heartbreaking combination of business-as-usual and wake. A couple of weary, taciturn families slumped on chairs waiting to talk to an officer. Behind them in the lobby was a memorial with two big bouquets. The smell of five burning candles mingled with the odor of stale cigarette smoke.
In front of the station house, long-faced detectives in suits stood in a cluster, talking little to each other and less to intruding reporters. “Have some respect,” one of them said, waving his cigarette.
Forty miles away, in Bay Shore, on Long Island, the scene was more bucolic but no less grim.
On any other summer weekend, the neighbors would have gathered at Detective Rafferty’s home for a barbecue or a block party. But yesterday, they clustered on his front lawn to hug one another and grieve for a man they described as the spark plug of his family and his neighborhood.
Detective Rafferty, his friends said, was the guy who left his Christmas lights up all year and lifted weights in the backyard with his 8-year-old son, Kevin.
He was the one who shoveled other people’s driveways after work, crooned Jimmy Buffett songs with his 5-year-old daughter, Emma, and organized Christmas caroling through this tiny neighborhood of trimmed hedges and regular outdoor cookouts.
“His hobby was his family, his friends, his neighborhood and the Police Department,” said a close friend, John Triandafils, a retired police officer who lives opposite Detective Rafferty’s house. “He was one of those guys who was just proud as hell to be a cop. You knew he was behind you.”
Another police officer, Horace Dicks, said in a telephone interview yesterday that he was haunted by the knowledge that he was one of the last people to speak to Detective Parker before the shooting.
Around 8 p.m. Friday, Officer Dicks said, Detectives Parker and Rafferty stopped by the building he lives in on Snyder Avenue in Brooklyn, looking for two suspects in an unrelated case. Officer Dicks was not home, but his mother relayed their message to him.
He called them back, and they chatted about the case. Not long after, Officer Dicks heard the news reports about two detectives in the 67th Precinct getting shot. He thought of Detective Parker.
“Right away I started calling his cellphone,” Officer Dicks said. “I called, and he didn’t answer. I can’t believe this, man. His voice mail was filled, so I couldn’t even give him a message.”
Shaila K. Dewan, Janon Fisher and Patrick Healy contributed reporting for this article.