Why a retired NYPD cop lobbied to rename a street in ‘Fort Apache’

By Tina Moore and Bruce Golding

The scene where officer Thomas Ruotolo was killed in the Bronx.

New York Post

When two pairs of Bronx cops traded assignments on the afternoon of Feb. 14, 1984, no one could have imagined how fateful the decision would be.

Patrolman Thomas Ruotolo was slated to work crowd control at Radio City Music Hall for a concert by the boy band “Menudo,” which was playing a sold-out, record-setting run of 10 shows there.

But Ruotolo, 30, was about to be transferred to a desk job with the NYPD’s Management and Information System and wanted to spend his last day as a beat cop on the streets of the 41st Precinct, known as “Fort Apache” for its high crime rate and outpost-style station house on Simpson Street.

“I said, ‘Sure, we’ll go down to Manhattan,’” recalled former colleague Joe Johnson, who headed off to the concert with partner Kenneth Stevenson.

Ruotolo’s regular partner was on vacation, and he and Officer Tanya Braithwaite were assigned to the “market car,” to “stay in the Hunts Point Market and handle whatever comes over,” said Chief of Department Terence Monahan, who was a 41st Precinct cop at the time.

Around 6:40 p.m., Ruotolo and Braithwaite were getting coffee at a shop on 149th Street near Southern Boulevard — which “had the best coffee in the Four-One” — when “a radio run came over with a robbery of a moped” and they hopped in their squad car to respond, Monahan said.

“Right off the corner of 149th Street, in the gas station, they see a guy on a moped,” Monahan said.

Officer Thomas Ruotolo