IT WAS the night of the animals, as a cop from the Ralph Avenue station house in Brooklyn told me on July 14, 30 years ago.
On that day and days after it, there was no other way of saying it as Brooklyn, The Bronx, Queens and Manhattan burned – I mean burned.
As history will show, a miniscule minority of morons held our city hostage.
At Linden Street and Broadway beneath the BMT in Bushwick, looters set up a giant supermarket selling stolen furs.
I, together with many Post reporters, actually saw looters back up trucks into Brooklyn stores.
Windows had been long shattered, and the worst skels loaded fruits of other men’s work into the backs of the trucks.
“It was like chasing the wind,” cop Jack McGowan said. He was leading an anti-looting patrol.
“You go there, you get some bums, and then a call and then another call. You don’t know which bum and where to go, and you’re worried about cops getting injured.”
I was there with the late newsman, Arty Pomerantz, who took hundreds of photos of lowlifes fighting tugs-of-war over TV sets. I was with Arty, strong as an oak, when on two occasions, big guys swung a shovel at our heads.
As fire surrounded us everywhere, these guys were dissuaded by a middle-aged, black small-business owner who had bought a shotgun to protect his tiny store against looters.
Three precincts in Brooklyn were under siege by people who had been whipped up to a frenzy by thugs who wanted to divert attention from wholesale looting. Things got very ugly.
I was in one of those precincts, unsure whether the mobs could be held off without police gunfire, when came the most amazing moment.
Over an intercom came a voice that called out names – but it was obvious they were from several precincts. It was a de facto roll call.
The cops wore T-shirts and jeans and carried very long batons. Some had no holsters but had revolvers tucked in their belts. I had never seen that, before or since.
They looked like injured hockey players. Some had broken noses and cauliflower ears. Obviously, I couldn’t check their teeth. But on a glance, they were the toughest sons of guns I had ever seen.
Suddenly, as they marched through the streets, silence overwhelmed, for once, the sound of police and fire sirens.
Amazingly, there was not more bloodshed.
That was in the summer of 1977.
Hardly, a day at the beach.