My late
father enjoyed the repeated telling of old, corny jokes to his children. I in
turn often told the same old jokes to my children.
One of the old jokes
was about an armed robber who confronted a man in an alley and said “Stick ‘em
down.”
“Don’t you mean stick ‘em up?” the would-be-victim asked the
robber.
“Don’t confuse me,” the robber said. “This is my first
job.”
I thought of this old joke as a friend told me about a rather inept
trio of armed robbers who attempted to rob his bar.
Frank Tamburro owned
and operated a corner taproom in South Philly. Tall, lean, with a beer belly
from tasting too much of his own product, Tamburro was an outgoing and jovial
barkeep in the old tradition of neighborhood “tapies.” His bar had a small
dining room in the back where they served great food. Accompanied by my wife and
friends, I often went there to drink, eat, listen to music and gab.
I was
leaning on the bar and sipping a Vodka on the Rocks when Tamburro came up to me
and said he had to tell me about what happened in the bar the day
before.
Tamburro said there were only a half-dozen customers in the bar
on a Thursday night when two guys came in just before closing time at two.
Tamburro described the first man to the police as a young white guy, about 25,
who wore a blue baseball cap with the peak turned sideways, a long white
t-shirt, worn-out jeans and white sneakers. He entered the bar sheepishly, sat
at the bar and quietly ordered a beer.
Less than a minute later, a young
black guy came in. He was wearing an outfit identical to the white guy at the
bar. instead of sitting at the bar or taking a seat at one of the tables, the
black guy stood at the bar entrance with his arms folded across his
chest.
“We were all looking at this odd couple, wondering what the fuck
they were up to, when the white guy pulled out this big, silver revolver and
turned it sideways - you know, like the gangbangers do in the movies - and
screamed he was holding up the place,” Tamburro recalled.
The man at the
door also brandished a gun. Slanting the large black automatic, the man pointed
it towards the people at the tables.
“We were sort of shocked, you know,
because we’d never been robbed before,” Tamburro explained. “Poor Ginny, my
bartender, was told to open the cash register by the white guy, but she was so
scared she couldn’t open the damn thing.”
The armed robber didn’t believe
her and he shouted threats at her.
“Ginny was pounding away at the cash
register, trying to get it open, and she looked like she was playing a fuckin’
piano,” Tamburro said, laughing at the memory of the scene.
The white
robber fired off a shot over the bartender’s head and she screamed and fell to
the floor behind the bar. Tamburro threw his hands up and ran behind the bar,
saying he would open the register and hand over the money.
One of the
customers sitting at a table and watching the crime go down was a 72-year-old
bookmaker named Joe Hess. He didn’t fear the young man waving the gun wildly, as
Hess ran in tough gambling circles all of his life and he was a veteran of a
half-dozen mob wars.
After the shot went off, Hess bolted out of his
chair, picked up another chair, and hurled it at the shooter. The shooter
collapsed when the chair hit him across the back. Hess rushed up to the young
man and began kicking and stomping him. The gun flew across the floor. Several
of the young guys pounced on the robber at the door, punching and kicking him.
He dropped his gun and tried to scramble out the door.
Despite the severe
beating the two robbers received, they were able to get out the door and run
towards their getaway car, which was double-parked outside the bar. When the
driver of the getaway car saw his two partners being pursued by a small, angry
mob, he gunned the car and took off in a lurch down the small street,
sideswiping several parked cars as he sped away. The two robbers ran frantically
after the car, as Tamburro and his customers stood on the sidewalk
laughing.
“They were like the Three fuckin’ Stooges!” Tamburro
said.
I wrote about the botched armed robbery in my column. I later
ventured to the police station at 24th & Wolf Streets, which housed the 1st
Police District and South Detectives. I went there to meet and interview the
detective who was handling the armed robbery as I planned to write a follow-up
column.
Ernie Pine was a veteran detective. He was a short, burly,
tough-looking black cop, but he was also calm, soft-spoken and had a keen sense
of humor.
Pine said he believed the three men who held up Tamburro’s bar
were the same armed robbers who were engaged in a wild crime spree across South
Philadelphia. They held up several bars and stores over the course of a
three-week period. Had they not been heavily armed and nearly killed a man in
one of their robberies, the trio would be amusing.
“We’ve identified the
trio of armed robbers,” Pine told me as I sat next to his desk. “Two of them are
John and Joseph Allen, twin brothers with a long history of robbery and other
violent crimes, even though they are only 26-years-old. John Allen was only
recently released from prison.”
Pine said the third bad guy was
identified as William O’Brian, another young knucklehead with a long arrest
record.
“Together they have an IQ of about 50,” Pine said, laughing
softly. “We have warrants out for the three of them.”
Pine described
O’Brian as a white “wanna-be-gangsta.” O’Brian grew up poor and dumb and he
teamed up with the black Allen brothers before the three of them dropped out of
high school.
Although I didn’t know O’Brian, I knew nitwits like him. They
acted, dressed and spoke more street-black than the blacks themselves. Although
these clueless kids thought they were accepted, most of the black kids thought
of them as fools.
So did Pine, who chuckled and said “Dopey white boys
like O’Brian are a bit of pay-back for slavery and years and years of racial
discrimination.”
The Allen brothers, who were not too bright either,
according to Pine, were amused by O’Brian and they took him under their criminal
wing.
Pine told me about some of the robberies they believed the trio
committed. They hit several bars and fast food restaurants, mostly scoring small
amounts of cash, which they quickly blew on drugs.
They also attempted to
rob a drug store the day after their beat-down at Tamburro’s bar. They were
stuffing money and allergy and cold medicine into a large brown bag when a
patrol officer happened to walk into the drug store. One of the Allen brothers
barreled out the door, shoving the cop aside and leaving O’Brian holding the bag
- literally.
O’Brian turned his gun sideways and fired two shots at the
cop. Naturally, he missed. But his wayward shot hit an unfortunate 68-year-old
customer.
O’Brian dashed out the door with the cop in hot pursuit.
O’Brian attempted to dive into the open car window and onto the back seat of the
getaway car - just like they do in the movies - but his head hit the top of the
car door and he fell violently back into the street, blood gushing down from his
head.
One of the Allen brothers laid down a wild field of fire from the
front passenger seat and the cop took cover behind some parked cars. Allen
grabbed O’Brian and the car took off, dragging the bloodied robber alongside the
fast-moving car.
The cop called the crime incident in and then he
recovered the paper bag with the cash and the drugs from the street. The police
found the getaway car illegally parked five blocks from the drug store. As they
suspected, the detectives learned that the car had been stolen that morning.
Pine said they had a task force working the trio and they had stake-out
units covering stores and bars the armed robbers might hit in the future. Pine
told me that he would be in touch if anything broke on the case.
A few
days later I received a call from Detective Pine.
“We got ‘em,” Pine
said.
I met Pine at Tamburro’s bar. I sat next to Pine at the bar and he
told me that John Allen, apparently the smartest of the three, came forward and
offered to turn himself in. He said he was willing to lead the police to his
brother and O’Brian, providing he could get a deal for a lesser prison sentence.
Pine said Allen did not want to return to prison for a long period, so he was
willing to give up his twin brother and his childhood friend.
“We moved
in on Allen and O’Brian, who were laid up in this shithole house and we took
them without a struggle,” Pine explained. “O’Brian was passed out from his head
injury and Allen was so high he could not keep his eyes open. They came along
nice and quiet.”
In celebration of the arrest of the armed robbers,
Tamburro set up drinks on the house.
“Here’s to dumb criminals.” Pine
said as he raised his glass.
© 2009 By Paul Davis
Note: The above short story originally appeared in the online journal When Falls the Coliseum Coliseum
The online business magazine http://www.businessknowhow.com/ published my On Crime & Security column today.
The British Daily Mail offered an interesting piece on a new book by military historian Sean Longden.
I went on a "ride-along" with the U.S. Coast Guard in a 25-foot Defender Class Response boat (seen in the above photo) as they patroled the Delaware River in Philadelphia. 
The national web site for small business people, www.businessknowhow.com, published my On Crime & Security column today. The column covers National Preparedness Month and explains why business people, and all Americans, should be ready and prepared for disasters like fires, floods, hurricanes, tornadoes and terrorist attacks.
Below are links to my interview with the New Jersey Homeland Security Director.
