Page 36 - October Newsletter

REMEMBERING CONTINUED FROM PAGE 35
“There is a great picture that kind of depicts what my dad was before he was shot,” Adam describes. “He and Erik were out in the backyard working on the fence. They both had their shirts off and bandannas on their heads. Erik has a toy shovel in his hand. He was the exact picture of my dad.”
Details to add to the picture now start to flow. There was the po- lice officer Halloween costume Bernie made for Erik. Before he be- gan building cabinets at his work station in the garage, he made a replica station for Erik with plastic tools.
“Before he was injured, Bernie was very motivated,” Denise rem- iniscences.
That’s the lasting image of Bernie.
As all Chicago Police Officers know, they have very few words for each other to define their quality of policing. Often a tour ends with “Get home safe” and that’s enough praise.
Looking back on the tours he did with Bernie Domagala on the HBT Unit, Garza submitted perhaps the highest praise one copper extends to another. “He did things the right way,” Garza honors. “He was aggressive. He was careful. He took care of business.”
Denise recalls one of the happiest days of his life before the inju- ry was when Bernie received the letter accepting him into the De- partment and an even happier one when he was sworn in as Star #8996. For the past 29 years, she has taken pride in telling people that Bernie enjoyed every minute he spent on the job as much as every minute he spent with the boys. She also shares how Bernie loved working the night shift because that’s when it was busiest, and he loved being active on the job.
Bernie’s progression from patrol to detective to Gang Crimes South to HBT endows the tribute to his stature he achieved as a police officer. HBT was the elite response unit in the City in the late ‘80s, the forerunner of SWAT whose members were sent to Great Lakes Naval Air Station periodically for combat-like training. “We were police officers but another level because of our training,” Gar- za explains.
After his injury, when Bernie would see a SWAT team vehicle on the street, his eyes shined like Buckingham Fountain on a summer night. It probably made him remember he was the Police, or feel
36 CHICAGO LODGE 7 ■ OCTOBER 2017
like he still was perhaps. Adam said that would get his father going, talking about the beat cars he was in, the duty weapons he carried, and one of the incentives that kept Bernie going for 29 years was that “he had a special place in his heart for police.”
Erik relates that his father enjoyed the same euphoria anytime he saw somebody with a badge and a vest. He loved when the white shirts would see him and stop to shake his hand. “He was like, ‘The bosses are here and they remember me,’” Erik details. “That’s when you would see the smile on his face.”
After the injury, Bernie was celebrating a birthday and Denise asked a couple of officers to stop by to see him at the assisted liv- ing facility where he spent his last several years. They stayed for two hours listening to Bernie’s stories and answering his questions about what types of calls they had been on.
“It was the respect the police had for each other that was so amazing,” Denise believes.
It was the police who played such an important role in helping Bernie feel good for so much of those 29 years.
Those officers who don’t know the story of what happened on July 14, 1988, should, for it exemplifies the essence of the Chicago Police and Officer Bernie Domagala. Their HBT shift had just end- ed, and Bernie and Garza were with their group having breakfast at one of their favorite spots at Archer and Pulaski.
“We heard the call, so we said, ‘Let’s saddle up and get going,’” Garza asserts.
The call was a hostage situation at 7237 S. Stony Island Ave., where former Chicago Police Officer Tommie Lee Hudson had shot a person trying to evict him and then barricaded himself inside the home. HBT took up positions surrounding the house; Bernie had rear containment and his job was to make sure Hudson didn’t es- cape out the back.
Bernie poked his head around the corner. Hudson saw him from about 100 feet away and fired. That split second changed Bernie’s life forever with the shot that hit him in the forehead. Garza had front containment and heard that Bernie was dead. He recalls the patrol cops with him were so upset they started sobbing.
Bernie had been hit in the temple with a “big black ball” fired from a .44-caliber, Italian-made replica of a “cap and ball” pistol. Former Area 1 Detective Commander August Sylvain said at the time, “It’s like getting hit in the head with a 16-pound sledgeham- mer.”
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