It's a sunny fall morning on Broadway, where a squad of police officers patrol a demonstration. Several cops greet a man standing quietly to one side, hiding behind his sunglasses.
"Mr. Goetz - pleasure to meet you," says one fresh-faced young cop, enthusiastically shaking hands. Bernie Goetz smiles, adjusts his shades and says thank you. "I took a lot of pressure off those guys," Goetz says. "`Killer cops and Bernie Goetz' - that used to be the chant."Ten years after he fired the shots heard 'round New York City, people still recognize Goetz - and not all of them are pleased to see him.
"It's the people who were against me that really tend to remember who I am," Goetz said, walking through Manhattan with a crowd of anti-fur protesters last month. "But people still come up to me quite a bit."
Goetz, now 47, said he had turned down several interview requests as the 10th anniversary of the Dec. 22, 1984, shooting approached. "I'd really rather not get into it," Goetz said before launching into an impromptu 20-minute discussion of the subway shooting.
An animated Goetz described in detail (from his perspective) what happened that afternoon, right down to the position of Darrell Cabey's coat when he was shot. Goetz explained how he was so focused on pulling the trigger that his hearing shut down as the bullets rattled around the subway car.
"Nobody knows this case better than I do," said Goetz. He's putting his mouth where his money is, representing himself in a $50 million lawsuit filed against him nine years ago by Cabey.
Goetz, who still lives in a Greenwich Village apartment, looks the same now as he did after his 1984 arrest: Tall, thin, hunched slightly forward. There's gray hair around his temples, and the hair in the front is thinning.
Under his jacket, where he once carried a .38-caliber Smith & Wesson with hollow-point bullets, is a button with a marijuana leaf that urges, "Legalize."
He acknowledged that his legal battle has left him with little cash. But he remained convinced that he will prevail in the Cabey suit. Lawyer William Kunstler will represent the wounded Bronx man.
Goetz remains in Greenwich Village, Cabey in the South Bronx. But a decade after the subway gunman opened fire, his three other victims have moved on - two of them to state prison.
James Ramseur has been jailed since July 9, 1985, for a brutal rape and robbery. Serving an 81/3-to-25-year sentence in a maximum security jail, his earliest parole date is February 1995.
Barry Allen is also incarcerated, serving 31/2 to 7 years on a 1991 conviction for robbing a 58-year-old diabetic of $54. He is due out of jail on June 28, 1995, unless additional disciplinary problems extend his time.
Troy Canty, a ninth-grade dropout, was a petty thief and crack smoker who went through drug rehabilitation and took vocational training as an automobile mechanic. The last blip on his criminal record was a 1990 conviction for shoplifting a home pregnancy kit from a department store; he completed a year's probation in Westchester County in 1991.