Winning a Pulitzer in Philly
Jonathan Neumann was still new on the job as a court reporter for the Philadelphia Inquirer in 1976 when he noticed that, although murder suspects routinely testified that they had been beaten by police, officials never investigated. When Neumann, a former New Yorker, asked an editor what was going on, he was told: "Welcome to Philadelphia."
William Marimow knew better. A native Philadelphian, he had been an Inquirer reporter since 1972 and had seen the city's police grow increasingly intransigent under Mayor Frank Rizzo, the city's former top cop. The situation galled Marimow as much as it did Neumann. Joining forces, the two produced a well-documented series of articles that exposed local police brutality and that have to date led to the indictment of 15 policemen. So far nine have been convicted and three acquitted, and three are awaiting trial. Seven more cops have been arrested, and two others have pleaded guilty to departmental misconduct charges. In addition, the local district attorney has created a special unit to prosecute police misconduct, the police department has strengthened a civilian complaint procedure, the state legislature and the U.S. Civil Rights Commission have announced hearings on the Philadelphia police. Last week Neumann and Marimow won this year's Pulitzer Prize gold medal for public service, the most prestigious of the 20 awards.
The Philadelphia story was one of the most elaborate Pulitzer-winning investigations since the Watergate days of Woodward and Bernstein—a pair that Neumann, 28, and Marimow, 30, evoke in their youth, dedication and hand-in-glove collaborative ease. They even had a "Deep Nightstick," a source with close ties to the police department who nudged their investigations in the right direction. Neumann and Marimow's first major step was obtaining from court administrators a rundown of pretrial hearings in 433 Philadelphia homicide cases between 1974 and 1977. To their surprise, statements or confessions had been thrown out because of illegal interrogation in 80 of the cases, but no action had been taken against the cops. To check out the 80 incidents, the reporters labored day and night for more than a month reading court records in a dusty attic of Philadelphia's city hall. In addition to victims, the pair interviewed 100 lawyers, 35 judges and ten detectives, including one who expressed the feeling of many of his colleagues that no one in the legal system cared about avenging the victim except the cops on the case. Says Neumann: "We sympathized, but it was clear that this was illegal and a violation of the Constitution."
The major product of the reporters' work, a four-part series in April 1977, is full of sickening examples of beatings and harassment by the police of suspects, their friends and relatives. Often the victims had to be hospitalized for injuries sustained during interrogation at the Roundhouse, Philadelphia's futuristic police headquarters. In one such case recounted by the Inquirer, police raided a house without a search warrant, arrested a murder suspect without an arrest warrant, and beat four members of his family.