By Rocco Parascandola, Staff writer
Newsday
Copyright 2006 Newsday, Inc.
The Brooklyn cop who ran away while his partner was involved in a life-and-death gun battle last year with a drug suspect has retired from the NYPD.
Officer Gilberto Marrero, 37, left the force March 14, Newsday has learned. Police sources said no departmental charges are pending against the 13-year veteran and he gets to keep his pension.
Marrero made headlines after a security surveillance tape showed him running away from a Brownsville shootout on June 1, 2005, while his partner, Officer Patrick Caprice, exchanged gunfire with a suspect. The partners had followed the man, David Redden, 19, after seeing him buy marijuana, police said.
When the officers pulled his car over on Dumont Avenue, Redden pulled out a .45-caliber handgun and fired through the window at Caprice, police said.
Instead of drawing his gun or helping Caprice, Marrero bolted from the car and ran, actions that were caught on security video from a building on the block, police said.
Marrero subsequently said he ran because he thought he was being fired upon, according to a source familiar with his explanation to investigators.
At the time, a number of officers said they could not say with certainty how they would react in such a situation. Others, however, lambasted Marrero as a coward and said that abandoning a partner is inexcusable.
Meanwhile, words of praise were heaped upon Caprice, who despite several gunshot wounds struggled to get up on one knee and fire 14 times, wounding Redden. Redden committed suicide later.
Before he retired, Marrero had been assigned to the Medical Division, where he had a desk job, police said. Sources said he had “slipped into a funk” after the shooting incident.
The NYPD and Marrero’s lawyer had no comment.
Marrero has not spoken publicly about his actions. Yesterday, no one answered the door at his Canarsie home. Marrero’s sister, who lives nearby, said she had not been aware he had retired.
Caprice, 43, was promoted to detective after the shooting and, after recuperating from his injuries, returned to his command at the 73rd Precinct. He is on vacation in Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic, according to his father, and could not be reached for comment.
The hero detective previously has said he has no ill feelings toward Marrero.
“I do wish him well,” he said when he was promoted. “I have nothing against him.”
Caprice’s father, Charles Caprice, has been critical of Marrero, once calling him “an enemy to my son.”
Yesterday, though, he spoke less harshly.
“All the time, they asked Patrick about this and he said, ‘I am not the judge.’ Me? I don’t feel that way. My son, he is almost like me, but he feels differently about this.”
June 9, 2006