George Villanueva has been arrested again and again for domestic violence with no real consequences - even on the numerous occasions when he was charged with punching his girlfriend, even when he hit her so hard she needed 10 stitches.
He was not even being arrested for assault early Sunday morning, only for violating an order of protection. He had no cause to believe that this would be yet another instance where he got not even a slap on the wrist.
Reason dictated that he should have just gone along peacefully, but any cop will tell you that to answer a domestic violence call is to handle a human bomb liable to detonate at any moment.
The spark came as he was being led from the house on Bergen St. where the 42-year-old lived with Mommy and Daddy when not behind bars. The police had brought his girlfriend from her apartment on the next block to confirm this was the man who had just threatened to kill her.
If she had just stayed in the police car and quietly made the identification, then it likely would have been recorded as just another of more than two dozen arrests for Villanueva and just another of some 700 domestic disturbance calls a day, some 250,000 a year for the NYPD.
She instead popped out of the car and called out, signaling that he was no longer the one with power, no longer the one in control
"That's him!"
Villanueva exploded into a blind fury as the police sought to handcuff him. The sudden, unreasoning violence of the moment proved anew that a domestic violence call, like a bomb disposal call is never really routine.
Witnesses say that Villanueva pushed Police Officer Alain Schaberger with both hands. Schaberger went over the 21-inch railing and pitched from the low stone stoop into an exterior stairwell that is as narrow as a grave.
Villanueva must have known there was a good chance Schaberger was hurt, but he was as indifferent as an IED in midblast. He kept exploding with a rage further fueled by the beers he drank earlier while watching the televised match between Miguel Cotto and Ricardo Mayorga.
After Tasering him twice, the two other cops finally managed to subdue this punk who does his punching while going "mano a girlfriend." They could do nothing to help Schaberger.
Three years ago, a window washer survived a 47-story fall in Manhattan. Schaberger fell 9 feet and was pronounced dead on arrival at Lutheran Medical Center. Doctors said he had suffered a broken neck. They added that relatively short tumbles can be deadly because you do not have time to break your fall.
In the late morning, cops hung the black and purple bunting over the Gold St. stationhouse to signal that the 84th Precinct was in mourning.
His comrades spoke of a deeply decent and profoundly professional cop who had still been in the academy on 9/11. He had spent his first days escorting grieving families to the site of the biggest terrorist attack in American history.
As a cop working midnights in Brooklyn, Schaberger had often handled the intimate, one-on-one terrorism known as domestic violence.
Now this first responder in the war on the most domestic of terror had been killed by a human bomb.
And today, there will be another 700 calls.
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