Officers at the 35th wonder when anguish will end

For the officers of the 35th Police District, it was an extraordinarily cruel blow.

Sixteen months ago, one of their own, Officer Charles Cassidy, was gunned down when he interrupted a robbery in a doughnut shop. On Friday night, just a half-mile away, Officer John Pawlowski was shot in another deadly confrontation.

At the district's brick headquarters, on Broad at Champlost, black draping again hung over the entrance. The scene was grimly familiar, and not only at the 35th. Eight Philadelphia police officers, Pawlowski included, have been killed in the line of duty since 2006.

"It just keeps coming," said a somber Lt. Robert Weitman, standing inside the station yesterday afternoon. "We haven't even gotten over losing Chuck yet. We'll never get over it. And then this happens."

The circumstances that led to Pawlowski's killing felt wrenchingly similar. Cassidy, 54, walked into an armed robbery. Police said Pawlowski, 25, had been gunned down by a man who tried to rob a cabbie.

When Pawlowski and his partner approached, they were met by a hail of gunfire. Pawlowski was shot at least twice in the chest, once in an unprotected spot right above his bulletproof vest. Within an hour, he was dead.

Pawlowski, a five-year veteran of the force, grew up with policing in his blood. His brother Robert is a corporal in the radio room, and his father, John Sr., is a retired lieutenant with the Special Victims Unit.

Pawlowski's supervisors said he had thrived on adrenaline and sought out challenging work. He started out in the Sixth District, at 11th and Winter Streets, but asked for a transfer to the 35th, which is one of the city's high-crime areas.

The North Philadelphia district was one of nine that Police Commissioner Charles H. Ramsey targeted with increased patrols at the beginning of last year.

Those patrols have had mixed results. Homicides in the 35th District dropped 27 percent in 2008 from 2007. Rape increased 28 percent. Armed robbery declined slightly, while other types of robberies stayed level. Aggravated assaults increased, both with a gun (15 percent) and without (13 percent). Overall, violent crime there was up 5 percent over 2007.

The morale among officers in the 35th District has suffered for other reasons recently. In May, Ramsey fired four of the district's officers, including a decorated veteran of the war in Iraq, after a news helicopter captured footage of the men beating three shooting suspects amid a swarm of other officers.

Ramsey said the men had used excessive force. One officer from the 35th District was suspended for his role, and another was demoted for not trying to stop the assault.

The toll of the streets is visible on the building itself. A towering mural, unveiled in November, commemorates the fallen from the 35th. There are colorful portraits of Cassidy and Officers Walter T. Barclay Jr. and Robert Hayes. A drug courier killed Hayes in 1993. Barclay was paralyzed from the waist down after he was shot in 1966. In August 2007, he died from what authorities determined were complications related to the injury.

Someone had placed a small teddy bear beneath the mural yesterday.

Officers were subdued as they arrived for the night shift yesterday. Just 24 hours earlier, Pawlowski had gone through the same routine.

Several officers said they weren't ready to talk. The pain was too fresh.

"Everyone's hurting right now," said one, who did not want to be named. "It's just been a bad time."

Police said Pawlowski had been killed by Rasheed Scrugs, a 33-year-old West Philadelphia man with a history of theft, robbery, and gun crimes.

When Pawlowski and his partner, Officer Mark Klein, approached him, Scrugs fired a .357 Magnum handgun, police said. The officers fired back, critically injuring Scrugs. He remained at Albert Einstein Medical Center yesterday.

Meanwhile, officers of the 35th will plan another funeral. Weitman, the lieutenant, said: "People are reeling right now."

"This just seems unthinkable."