The Long Blue Line

Philly's finest and bravest are getting accustomed to burying their dead.

by Mike Newall

The men stand in the long line of mourners processing down Academy Road toward John F. Givnish Funeral Home, where the casket of slain Highway Patrol Officer Patrick McDonald lies. They wear their dress blues and talk of what men in uniform talk about at these funerals: transfers, station politics, the past — anything at all to keep distracted. One man yells out to a retired officer who lives near the funeral home and is sitting on his stoop watching the line snake past.

"Yo, Bob, your grass needs cutting."

"Yeah, when you gonna do it for me?"

"Be by in the morning."

Laughter.

Another man in line, a firefighter, is busy calling Bonesy, a colleague who a few days earlier left a beer cooler in the man's Bronco. 

"I know Bonesy's here somewhere," the man says. "Why isn't he picking up?"

The normalcy in the men's voices does not seem contrived. Just as the men and women of the NYPD and FDNY did after 9/11, Philly's finest and bravest are getting accustomed to burying their dead. Most here tonight have been to this same funeral home, and walked this same path, twice in the past year: In May, to honor Sgt. Stephen Liczbinski, killed in the streets of Port Richmond with an assault rifle, and then last month for Officer Isabel Nazario, killed in a crash during a car pursuit. Before that, there were the memorials for Officer Gary Skerski, shot in the throat in 2006 with a sawed-off shotgun at Pat's Café in the Northeast, and Officer Chuck Cassidy, shot in the head in 2007 with a handgun at a North Philly Dunkin' Donuts. To these men, grieving has become habitual, even routine.

"Too many too fast," says one of the men, adjusting his clip-on dress tie as the line creeps forward.

Funeral home employees walk by now, handing out memorial fliers bearing photos of McDonald, who, at 30 years old, was a muscular man with his father's square jaw and pug nose, and his mother's smile and puffy cheeks.

"I heard he took the first one in the face," says one of the men. "And the rest in the chest."

"I heard that, too," says another. "I heard his gun stove-piped, jammed, because he was trying to get a round off so fast."

One man in line has a crime scene photo on his cell phone of McDonald's murderer, Daniel Giddings, lying dead in the street after being shot by Highway Patrol Officer Richard Bowes. Giddings is on his back with one arm extended upward, the other sideways. There is a hole in his chest, and his left eye bulges as if there is a bullet lodged behind it. Most of the men in line have seen the photo too many times now to gain any pleasure from it.

"I heard Bowes got him from 50 yards running," says one of the men. "I bet the bastard thought he was getting away with it."

The line files into the funeral home.

"Please do not linger at the coffin," a uniformed highway patrolman announces at the doorway. "Thank you for your cooperation."

The men file past, making signs of the cross and nodding their heads respectively toward Patrick's father, Larry McDonald, a former firefighter who stands up straight in the first row holding his wife, Patricia, in his arms. 

"I was surprised it was an open coffin," says one of the men, outside now. "They did some pretty good work on him. All I seen was a little circle on his left cheek."

The men make their way back to the parking lot to stand by the Bronco and drink some of Bonesy's beer. They tell tales of drinking and fighting and standing up to command. They laugh together.

"Christ, Bonesy, I bet you could get your money back in a whore house," says one of the men after a gut-busting story.

"I heard they took Larry McDonald over to the crime scene today," says another man as the laughter ebbs. "They said Giddings stood over so him so close that the bullets went through his body and dug into the pavement. There's big holes in the pavement."

"Was it the asphalt or the pavement?" asks one of the men.

"The pavement. It was a .45 round. Thing's fucking powerful."

"I don't understand, if he got him in the face with the first one, why he came back and emptied his clip?"

"Because it was an execution, that's why."

The men drink in silence for a few minutes.

"Anybody want another one?" Bonesy asks.

Dispatch is filed from all corners of Philadelphia. E-mail mike.newall@citypaper.net.