Friends mourn officer killed in line of duty

The guys pop open cans of Pepsi, crush cigarettes into a black plastic ashtray, and start the first round of Texas Hold-'em. Police Officer Michael Carr, taking the chair at the head of the table, deals. Beside him, they leave a seat empty in honor of Officer John Pawlowski, who looks down on them from a black-framed photo on the memorial wall. His family gave them the picture, showing him clean-shaven and grinning in a sunny yellow polo shirt.

"That's the Johnny we all knew," says Carr. "Not the one all GQd up for his wedding."

Every Monday night for three years, except for the week he spent in the Bahamas on his honeymoon, Pawlowski played poker with his big brother, Bob, and a dozen friends. They would gather around a rickety, handmade, royal blue-felted table in a smoky clubhouse deep inside a Port Richmond warehouse and linger from 8 p.m. until they wore out the conversation, ran out of pizza and beer, or had to leave for a midnight shift.

All but a few of the players are police, and all were members of the Bullets motorcycle group, except the Pawlowski brothers.

"I'm pretty sure John didn't ride because Kimmy didn't want him to," said Carr, one of Pawlowski's best friends and the Bullets' vice president. "She didn't think it was safe."

Last week, when they moved the poker game to a bigger clubhouse, they dedicated an entire wall to the Philadelphia police sergeant, who was killed in February.

Any one of the players can recite the details. It was Friday the 13th. They were all at a beef-and-beer fund-raiser for Sgt. Timothy Simpson, who was killed responding to a robbery in November when a suspect fleeing police crashed into his patrol car. The Bullets were raffling off a flat-screen TV and schmoozing with the McDonalds and the Cassidys, families of other slain officers.

About 8:45 p.m., on Broad Street across from the transportation center in Olney, a cabdriver called police, saying a man was trying to rob him. Pawlowski and his partner arrived and spoke to the cabbie. They saw 33-year-old Rasheed Scruggs backing away with his hands in his coat pockets, then the flash of gunfire.

Scruggs, police say, shot Pawlowski three times, firing a .357 Magnum through his coat. The shot that pierced his chest just above his bulletproof vest killed him.

He's been gone now for six months, and although his friends might not be sitting around crying in their beers, not a Monday night passes that he's not on their minds.

As they flip their cards and rake in chips, they rib one another: "You're a lewzah!" "You're dirty, man."

Pawlowski, they say, was good at poker. "And he knew it," says Carr. "He used to say, 'I'm awesome.' And he was."

Quiet and funny, he'd regularly deliver unforgettable one-liners that his friends all wish they could remember now. They dubbed him "J.P. Party" because he loved a good time. That's the name on the patches sewn into their black leather vests. It's also on the memorial T-shirts they stapled to the rafters high above the poker table.

Selling thousands of these T-shirts, Pawlowski's friends raised $150,000 for Kim and $15,000 for the Fraternal Order of Police survivors fund.

The first Monday after Pawlowski died, the Bullets met at the clubhouse, just to be together.

"John and I sat next to each other in Police Academy," said Mike Palmer, 28, the Bullets' sergeant-at-arms. "I was a groomsman at his wedding."

Pawlowski didn't go for tattoos, but the Sunday after he died, Carr and Palmer set out to get his badge number, 5649, on their arms. "We found the only place open on a Sunday," Carr recalls. "It was somewhere on Rising Sun Avenue." The tattoos didn't hurt, says Palmer. "At that point, I really wasn't feeling much."

A young officer comes over to join the game and starts to sit in Pawlowski's empty chair. Carr stops him and in a hush says, "You'll have to check with him," tipping his head toward the windows where Bob Pawlowski and a group of friends are discussing the budget crisis and worrying that Mayor Nutter's proposed cutbacks to the police force will jeopardize their safety.

The young officer, deciding not to bother Bob Pawlowski, heads for the bar instead to share cheesesteaks with a few of the guys.

Between games, John Pawlowski's friends tell stories. About the poker table that once sat in his living room. About the first time he invited Kim over for dinner, made mac and cheese with ground beef, and served it on his friends' best dishes with a bottle of Yellow Tail. About his facial hair: When he was recovering from a hand injury last year, for a laugh he grew a Fu Manchu mustache and mortifying 1970s sideburns.

"We gave him a really hard time," says Brian McBride, an officer from the 15th District. "But he didn't worry about what people thought."

For the first few weeks after his death, the poker game shut down. Palmer and Carr were busy preparing for the funeral, and afterward trying to take care of Kim.

"We started playing again because we knew that's what John would have wanted," says Carr. Pawlowski's father comes by from time to time for the comfort and company of his son's friends.

Carr and Kim are childhood friends. He says she and John III, born June 11, are doing well. Although, inevitably, there are dark days. Some are expected, like Pawlowski's birthday July 1, when they went to the cemetery.

Others seem to creep up on them.

Last winter, Pawlowski bought a fistful of tickets to last Thursday's Elton John and Billy Joel concert. When she laid her husband to rest, Kim put one of the tickets in his casket along with their baby's sonogram.

"She couldn't bring herself to go to the concert," Carr says. "So she gave all the tickets to his friends and family."

Going back to work has been rough for Carr and Palmer. Their district was also home to Officer Chuck Cassidy, killed two years ago after a shooting at a Dunkin' Donuts. "We both thought about leaving" the district, Carr says, but they've stayed to honor Pawlowski.

"If we quit," he says, "they win."

Who is they?

"Anyone who is anti-cop."