The Trial of Patrolman Thomas Shea

APRIL 28, 1973. IT IS 4:50 A.M., STILL DARK AS NIGHT.

Ten-year-old Clifford Glover is walking with his stepfather, Add Armstead, down a New York City street toward the auto salvage yard where Armstead works. Patrolman Thomas Shea is driving down the same street in an unmarked car with his partner, Walter Scott. They are on the lookout for a pair of armed robbers who, through a coincidence of fate, were dressed similarly to Clifford and his stepfather.

The destinies of Clifford Glover and Thomas Shea are about to collide. When they do, Glover will be mortally wounded by a shot in the back and the gun that killed him will be smoking in Shea's hand. A child is dead, and the echoes of the shot that killed him will reach far beyond the Shea and Glover families. They will shake New York City, its police and politicians, its black and white citizenry, and send tremors across the nation as Shea becomes the first New York City cop in fifty years to be indicted and tried for murder for a shooting in the line of duty.

The Trial of Patrolman Thomas Shea is the gripping account of the events that inspired Audre Lorde's 1975 poem "Power" and challenged accepted notions of police conduct and criminal justice in America.