Editor’s Letter
10 | Rolling Stone | July 2019
JASON FINE
EDITOREditor’s Letter
NIGHT SHIFT
Sgt. Danny Brennan of the Brooklyn North Homicide Squad waits for the Crime
Scene Unit outside an apartment building in Bedford-Stuyvesant, where four
people had just been shot. “It was just ‘wrong place, wrong time,’ ” says the squad’s
lieutenant, Samuel Herrera. “And unfortunately that happens in Brooklyn.”FOR THE PAST YEAR, photographer
Theo Wenner embedded with the
NYPD’s Brooklyn North Homicide
Squad, one of the city’s elite detective
units. It’s a tense time for the NYPD:
Despite historically low crime rates,
murders have surged in north Brook-
lyn (21 through March this year, up
from 12 in the same 2018 period), and
police face unprecedented mistrust
and scrutiny, especially in minority
communities. “The political atmosphere is intense around po-
lice now,” says Wenner. “But the thing I noticed is, these detec-
tives get a ton of respect on the street. They know the neigh-
borhoods they work, and there’s almost an unspoken code:
They aren’t out to hassle people but to do the right thing.”
Wenner’s unflinching photo essay, “The Homicide Squad”
(page 70), tracks detectives from a gritty precinct house
straight out of The Wire to the neighborhood streets and hous-
ing projects to their favorite diner, as they navigate harrowing
homicide cases, including an ax murder in May that made na-
tional headlines. “It’s the little details that stick with you that
are the most disturbing,” Wenner says, “like a PlayStation con-
troller on the couch covered in blood. Blood has a very specif-
ic, metallic scent to it.”
At a time when technology has transformed police work,
and when social media has become a valuable source for in-
vestigations, the Brooklyn North detectives still spend plenty
of time on the streets and knocking on doors. “With all the ad-
vances — forensics and police science and computers — I think
it’s easier to investigate cases,” says Detective Thomas Hand-
ley. “But there’s tools like interrogations and talking to people
— like a kid on the street — that come with time.”
Wenner and his writing partner, Sam Freilich, got access to
Brooklyn North after months of inquiries that went all the way
up to Commissioner James P. O’Neill. “[Wenner] showed up
before he actually started shooting and became familiar with
the guys,” Handley says. “It became natural. When you’re on
a crime scene, it’s chaos to begin with, and you just get in the
zone and don’t realize he’s there.”
This essay is part of our renewed commitment to outstand-
ing photojournalism in the pages of our oversize monthly is-
sues. Unique photojournalism has always been integral to our
way of telling stories, from Annie Leibovitz tagging along with
the Rolling Stones on tour in 1972, to Sebastião Salgado doc-
umenting indigenous cultures, as he did in the Amazon last
year. “We dive into these different worlds in hopes of sharing
things most people can’t ever see,” says creative director Jo-
seph Hutchinson, “and to illuminate deeper truths.”
Trailing the NYPD Homicide Squad
“No matter how powerful our military is, no matter how impressive
our space program is, it isn’t going to come to much if we can’t
deliver a good, everyday life for Americans.” —PETE BUTTIGIEGPHOTOGRAPH BY Theo Wenner