A captain that I knew tells me the story and jokingly says, “Make sure this guy doesn’t die.” I even smiled, a little bit, good-natured gallows humor. It turns out four hours later we shoot this guy to death in the hallway. The captain who was by then off duty called me up and apologized.

In his apartment the guy had his eighty year old father at gunpoint. Our tactics and response unit drilled a hole from the apartment above and put down a little filament which is a television camera, a little wire hanging down over his refrigerator.

This guy wanted cigarettes.

We could see him standing at the door with the gun. We said no. This is a bad guy. As a tactic we cut off communications.

He wants to talk to us now. He threatens, “If youse don’t talk to me I’m going to set the house on fire.”

You’ve got a building with forty families in it, and he’s on the first floor. We call in the fire department stand ting by, all lined up in the streets with their hoses.

The guy does in fact start a fire. It’s starting to go good in there, but you can’t run in because he’s got a gun.

All of a sudden the smoke starts to get real heavy. Through the smoke we see he’s got his father in front of him, this eighty year old man. He’s pushing him forward. One cop grabs the father and pulls him out of the smoke.

There’re two guys with rifles in the hallway. They shoot this guy on the spot. He goes down. Every body gives him quick CPR. You don’t want him to die. We put him on a stretcher ran him out past the firemen.

They say, “What happened to him?”

One of the cops says, “We shot him.”

“For starting a fire?” He didn’t know what was going on in the hallway.

“I did this joke, saying, ‘If I can’t beat the guy up, I’d sue the bastard.’”

From the audience came a yell. “Hey, Jew-boy!”

In a beat the comic replied, “Listen, pal. I wouldn’t need my lawyer for you, OK? Knock it off.”

Again came the taunt, “Jew-boy!”

It was a hot moment as the comic turned to him, “You know, look at the size of you, you big Aryan man you. I’ll be honest with you. You’d probably kick the shit out of me. There’s really nothing I could do. And, yet, I feel bad for you, because I know that’s not somethng you learned in college, how to hate Jews. So it must be something you learned at home around the dinner table. Your father, working for a rich Jewish man, saying ‘Jew, Jew, Jew, Jew-boy’. Yeah, you’d kick the shit out of me.”

As the comic scanned the audience his eyes settled on a table of black students.

“Hey you black dudes out there! If he hates Jews, you know what he thinks about you guys. Would you take that shit? ” With their attention riveted on him, he asked, “Could you do me a favor? Will you escort this asshole out of here?”

“You got it, brother!” came the reply.

The black students stood up as a group of ten and turned to the taunter. One of them said, “Get your motherfucking ass out!”