Vazquez - A Messed Up Case

On 17 February, we wrote the following post regarding the murder of off duty SOS Officer Jose Vazquez (partial excerpt):

• We've also heard that the investigation into this case has hit a brick wall. This isn't for lack of effort on the Detective's part but rather the fact that the investigation is being run out of 35th Street rather than Area 4.
  
  We won't speculate aloud on this one, but the rumors and e-mails have been flying back and forth between ourselves and a large number of disgusted PO's, bosses of all levels and more detectives than we'd care to mention regarding the conduct of this investigation. Rumors will NOT be published at this point - keep the BS to yourselves - we've read a bunch of it and it isn't going to get aired here at the moment. Stay sharp people.

You can click on the link and read the comments if you like.

On 05 March, we published this post. Here's the first paragraph:

• Two people were in Area 4 for two days last week as "persons of interest," but both were cut loose as of the weekend. One story is that a girlfriend snitched them out. One rumor has them flipping on each other and then lawyering up. Another story has one or both of these scumbags as known stick up men.

We published 3 comments in that post, all of them by us, each one of them an effort to explain what we saw as a failure to keep the faith with the boys and girls on the front line regarding the murder of one of their own.

From that moment onward, we deleted dozens of comments over ensuing months attempting to link the murder of Vazquez to the Finnigan crew. It was never hinted at and we didn't feel the need to fan a nonsense rumor. Since Wednesday, however, it would seem that almost nothing is beyond the reach of this madman and we've allowed a number of commentators to speculate openly about connections.

We've been in contact with a couple of people who want to shed a little light on the investigation and what happened. (What follows is a summary of their writings and thoughts). They were unanimous in their opinions that this investigation was "big footed" from the start, that is to say it was never run out of Area 4 as it should have been. 35th Street was all over it and couldn't keep their fingers out it because of the recent indictments of SOS officers. Downtown ran on the assumption that this was an effort to silence someone and didn't let the detectives do what they do best, which is to grab players off the street, sweat them, interrogate and solve this homicide. One individual compared this killing to that of Officer Brian Strouse, where there were upwards of 50 or 60 people in interrogation rooms across the city being questioned non stop. None of that happened for Vazquez because 35th Street wouldn't permit it.

But Area 4 solved it anyway. They got two names, got both of them into rooms, questioned both extensively and got one to flip on the other. As we heard it from two different sources, there was only one problem - no one turned on the video. And the reason no one turned on the video is because when you turn the key on the machine, downtown knows you've got someone in custody, they know you're recording, and they start making calls to each other. They start calling the dicks trying to solve the case so they can be ahead of the information curve. Then they call Sneed and every other reporter they have on speed dial. So while this played out, the "flipper" lawyered up, the clock ran out and the suspects walked. Gang Intel sat on these people for weeks, maybe months afterwards until they left town. And that's where it sits.

No grand conspiracy. No "hit." This was a robbery, plain and simple, and it went bad. And what happened afterwards, if true, is bad, too.