Larry Davis

Larry Davis (May 28, 1966 – February 20, 2008), later known as Adam Abdul-Hakeem, was an American criminal who gained notoriety in November 1986 for his shootout with officers of the New York City Police Department (NYPD), in which six officers were shot. Davis, asserting self-defense, was acquitted of all charges aside from illegal gun possession. Davis died after being stabbed by a fellow inmate in 2008. Davis escaped the ensuing shootout after a shotgun round creased his scalp, and all six officers who had been shot survived. Police explained the raid as an attempt to question Davis as a multiple-murder suspect, finally obtained an arrest warrant for that and re-explained the raid as an attempt to arrest him. Telephoned by police, he claimed to hold its occupants hostage.

Davis' legal defense, led by William Kunstler, contended that the raid was a pretense to murder Davis for knowledge of officers' alleged complicity in illicit drug sales and to punish him for abandoning his own drug dealing under their sanction. About 1,000 NYPD officers publicly demonstrated against the verdict. Still others thought of him as an unsavory character, but probably truthful about the police and the shootout.

Serving five to fifteen years on the November 1988 convictions for illegal gun possession, Davis was acquitted of another alleged drug dealer's murder. But particularly with the Mollen Commission's later exposure of widespread criminality, including drug dealing and violence, by NYPD officers, and then a 2003 documentary favoring Davis' account, his story continues to provoke divided reactions. Davis' peers acknowledge that he had begun dealing drugs midway through adolescence, but claim that he ceased once he learned the woman expecting his first child miscarried, which he blamed on her use of crack cocaine. Davis had one child, a daughter named Larrima, born in 1986. By the time of the November 1986 shootout, a court hearing for that violation had been postponed four times. Soon after the successful manhunt, the Bronx District Attorney's office alleged that, as The New York Times then paraphrased, "Davis was part of a small, loosely organized, 'very violent' group of gunmen who have robbed, assaulted and slain drug dealers in the Bronx and northern Manhattan in recent months."

Approaching trial, the district attorney's office had one witness outside of law enforcement: Roy L. Gray, who admitted under oath to steering "traffic to coke spots." Allegedly, on October 26, 1986, Gray was robbed of two dollars in Manhattan's Washington Heights neighborhood. Four days later, on October 30, Gray spotted the robber, later understood as Davis, about to rob some cocaine dealers in Harlem. Months later, it was reported that "officials from the Bronx District Attorney's office and the Police Department deflected questions about why no warrant had been issued for Mr. Davis's arrest after the Jerome Avenue incident. Each agency referred questions to the other."

Police collected the shotgun and the expended shells from the .45 caliber pistol that Davis took with him. A .32 caliber revolver and .357 Magnum pistol were also left behind. A police official said that all escape routes had been covered by officers but none apparently saw Davis leave. He also said that the wounded officers were unable to return fire effectively due to the presence in the apartment of the two infants and other bystanders. Davis fired four shotgun rounds and nine .45 caliber pistol shots; police fired four shotgun rounds and twenty pistol shots. Neither Davis nor the two infants with him in the bedroom were wounded.

Search and capture The six wounded officers were carried across the street to the Bronx-Lebanon Hospital, and the manhunt began. The rest of the building and the surrounding area were searched immediately. Police stakeouts were set up at terminals, bridges and tunnels leading out of New York City, and a nationwide alert was issued. As the manhunt spread, raids were staged in Chicago, Albany, Newark and other cities where Davis had relatives or friends. A man who claimed to be Davis contacted ABC News, expressing fears he would be beaten by police and stating he would not be taken alive. As she recuperated three days later, she urged her son to call the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), who had offered to help arrange a safe surrender.

On the afternoon of December 5, police received another tip that Davis had been seen entering the Bronx housing project where his sister Margaret lived. They surrounded the fourteen-story building, closed off local streets and posted sharpshooters on nearby rooftops. After searching his sister's second-floor apartment, police began a systematic canvass of all 312 units. At some point during the day, Davis forced his way at gunpoint into Apartment 14-EB, where Elroy and Sophia Sewer lived with their two daughters, just as neighbor Theresa Ali and her two-year-old son arrived for a visit. To assure Davis that he would not be harmed, police showed him the press credentials of three reporters in a nearby apartment and allowed him to speak to his girlfriend. At about 7:00 a.m. Davis laid down his .45 caliber pistol and surrendered. As he was taken from the building in handcuffs, residents leaned out of their windows, clapped and chanted Davis' name.

November 1988 acquittal for shooting of nine police officers Davis faced numerous charges from the infamous shootout, where he shot six police officers: nine counts of attempted murder, six counts of aggravated assault, eight counts of criminal weapons possession and two counts of criminal firearm use. Convicted only on criminal weapons possession, Davis was sentenced to five to fifteen years in prison. During jury selection, the defense accused the prosecution of refusing black women, who would likely empathize with Davis. The judge ruled that the defense, likewise abusing peremptory challenges, had excluded white jurors on racial reasoning. Dismissing the first six seated jurors, then, Judge Fried declared a mistrial.

A second mistrial was declared, at the request of both sides, once the new jury's only white member expressed concern that acquitting Davis would subject him to harassment by police. Finally seated was a jury of ten blacks and two Hispanics. In any case, the defense contended that Davis, knowing that police officers sought to kill him, shot in self-defense. They charged that police officers were corrupt and involved in the drug trade.

On November 20, 1988, after deliberating 38 hours over five days, the jury acquitted Davis of all charges, except six counts of criminal possession of a weapon. McCarren, who had been the most seriously wounded in the raid and had been forced into retirement, called it "a racist verdict" and added, "The day this happened, a bunch of good honest police officers went to lock up Larry Davis because he had killed people, and not for anything else." Kunstler said, "The jury understood what happened—that he acted in self-defense." Stewart quipped, "I really think that the black community is no longer going to have black Sambos—they're going to have black Rambos."

December 1989 acquittal for the murder of a Harlem drug dealer Victor Lagombra, reputedly a "mid-level" crack dealer in Harlem, was murdered in September 1986. Davis went on trial for the murder in October 1989. The prosecution accused Davis of robbing two drug dealers when surprised by Lagombra walking into the apartment, prompting Davis' "cold-blooded act of savagery." Ballistics tests tied Davis's .32 caliber revolver to the killing. Two defense witnesses testified that, on the day of the murder, Davis was in Florida making a rap album.

March 1991 conviction for the murder of a Bronx drug dealer Raymond Vizcaino, reputedly a drug dealer in the Bronx, was murdered in August 1986. In January 1987, Davis' older brother Eddie was arrested and charged. Allegedly, Eddie and Larry, along with two others, attempted a robbery at a Webster Avenue apartment and shot through the door, killing Vizcaino. A jury convicted Eddie in June 1989.

Larry Davis' trial began five months later. In March 1991, the jury found him guilty. Already serving five to fifteen years on weapons convictions, Davis received another twenty-five years to life in prison. Once sentenced, creating a loud scene until the judge expelled him, Davis spoke for about an hour, airing again his longstanding complaint that police and the judicial system were conducting a vendetta against him.

Death Davis served his sentence at Shawangunk Correctional Facility near the Ulster County hamlet of Wallkill, New York. At approximately 7 p.m. on February 20, 2008, a correctional officer overseeing the block yard noticed inmates congregating around an argument between two prisoners. When the officer went to break it up, he found Davis using his walking cane to fend off an inmate from attacking him with a 9-inch (23 cm) long metal shiv. Davis was unsuccessful and was stabbed numerous times.

After questioning by the New York State Police and the New York State Department of Correctional Services's (DOCS) inspector general's office, another inmate, Luis Rosado, an alleged self-made Crip from the Lower East Side of Manhattan, was charged with the murder. Rosado was already serving a sentence of twenty-five years to life for murder and assault charges in the early 1980s and had been denied parole in 2007. He was arraigned at Shawangunk Town Court the next morning. DOCS officials said both he and Davis had long disciplinary records, including fights with other inmates, but there was no record of any previous violence between the two. In February 2009, Luis Rosado pleaded guilty to first-degree manslaughter in Ulster County Court and was sentenced to an additional 10 years in prison, to be served consecutively with his current 25-to-life sentence for murder. Rosado was later paroled in 2021. Following his parole, Rosado stated in an interview that Davis was not his intended target, claiming that Davis had intervened in Rosado's attempt to kill a convicted child molester.