Cops' Favorite Target Thug, but Just Who Was the Guy?

NY Times ^ | February 17, 2005 | MICHAEL WILSON

[neverdem]

The police forms call him Advanced Silhouette SP-83A; in some gun shops, he is B-60. He is widely known in police and gun-club circles as the Thug, a life-size, two-dimensional paper target that every New York City police officer has shot at since the early 1960's.

He has not changed over the decades, a husky white guy, maybe a little German, maybe a little Italian, some Irish, with his pug nose and his thick head of dark, wavy hair. His hands are hairy, his jowls clean shaven. He favors a white-on-white track suit that is a little snug in the middle. Whatever the Thug wants with that gun, he seems to be eating well.

As with many tools of police work, a certain lore has grown up around the Thug, giving birth to multiple theories on whether he is based on a real person, and just exactly who that man is. Each different theory attaches a different real name to the crouching bad guy.

He's the Worell. He's the Bruno. He's Ernest Borgnine.

The truth may surprise a few people who thought they knew the answer. The image was created in New York City, but over the years, police departments in other states, including Connecticut, have used it, and anyone can buy one in gun stores. It is the official target used by the Department of Homeland Security.

Vermeer had his girl with the pearl earring. Da Vinci, if you believe what you read in a little novel that is getting around, hid images of Mary Magdalene in his work. So, who was the muse behind the Thug? How to crack the Thug Code?

First, the Worell Theory.

The department's outdoor firing range is located at Rodmans Neck in the Bronx. Officers with enough years remember a sergeant named Fred V. Worell, who taught thousands of New York City police officers how to shoot in his 35 years on the job. The resemblance to the Thug, they say, is too close to be coincidence.

"It was always alluded to, he was the one this target was modeled on," said Detective Stephen Albanese, 48, moments before pumping his 15 rounds into what he believed was the image of the man he once worked with.

Sergeant Worell retired in 1987, and died Feb. 8, 2003, at age 66. Pictures of him at work indeed bear a resemblance to the target, especially the hair.

"Up until the end, he still had it," said John Cerar, 60, a former commander at the range for nine years, until 1994. "Whenever he wrote a report, you saw the words 'vis-à-vis.' That was one of his trademarks, I guess."

Sergeant Worell spent so much time at work, the range became something of a day care center for his two sons. "My brother and I, we grew up at the outdoor range," said Kurt Worell. "The target definitely looked like him. He said, 'It does really look like me, huh?' "

To this day, when officers at the range order new copies of the target, they refer to it as "Worell with gun," or "Worell with knife." (There is one bizarre version, with a woman's head atop the Thug's body, that is no longer in use.)

The second theory is kept alive in another borough, in the basement of One Police Plaza in Lower Manhattan, the printing office for all the department's literature. And targets.

"That's Bruno," said James Gorzelnik, the deputy director. "That's the guy they sketched it from."

"Bruno" is Bruno J. Fulginiti, a member of the police department from 1951 until his retirement in 1977.

Charles Callahan, a former director of printing, said the target was already in use when he arrived in 1968, but everyone agreed that it looked like Officer Fulginiti. "Bruno had a resemblance to the guy," he said. "He was a press operator, the old letter press," back when the office was on Centre Street, he said. "It's a very manly appearance."

Officer Fulginiti died in 1996, at age 69. His widow, Marie Fulginiti, said she had never heard about any target. "He's never mentioned it," she said on the telephone from her home in Brooklyn. "If that was the case, he would have told me."

The third comes from Inspector Steven J. Silks, commander of the range at Rodmans Neck.

"I call it the Ernest Borgnine Target," he said.

In terms of the film and television actor's celebrity at the time the target was created, the theory is solid. Born to Italian immigrants in Hamden, Conn., in 1917 and a boxer in his youth, Mr. Borgnine had appeared in more than 20 films by the time the target was created, most notably as Sgt. James R. (Fatso) Judson, the bully who beats Frank Sinatra's character to death in "From Here to Eternity" in 1953.

Inspector Silks spotted the actor on a trip to California several weeks ago. "On Sunday, I was as close to Ernest Borgnine as I am to this telephone, in LAX," he said. "I was staring at him. I thought, 'Man, he does look like our target.' "

A call to Mr. Borgnine's office in Beverly Hills found the actor during a break between jobs. He turned 88 last month. ("Tell them I'm still working," he said.)

He said he had heard of his likeness to the Thug before. "People say, 'Hey, that looks just like you,' " he said, bursting into his familiar, gravelly laugh. "I've been trying to be nice ever since. I could sue for this, couldn't I?"

The target was created shortly after the range opened in 1960. It was a busy time, with the firearms officers facing brand-new headaches. Bullets sometimes ricocheted off the target posts and back at shooters, until someone developed an angled pole.

Edwin Love was the first administrative lieutenant at the range. Today he is 82 years old, lives in Bayside, Queens, and suffers from a permanent ringing in his ears. ("You can shut it right out," he said. "Just think of something else.") He remembers the primitive target in use when he got there.

"If you took a pen and just made a circle for a head, and you made a little open mouth and a couple of dots - it was Mickey Mouse," Mr. Love said. "As soon as I saw it, I felt, 'We got to change that.' "

"I called downtown and they sent up an artist and he was terrific," he said. "I told him what I wanted. He was a quick study. He did excellent, really. Young guy."

The lieutenant - the man who commissioned one of the iconic images of law enforcement - said that he gave the artist a clear command on who it should look like.

Nobody.

" 'The most important thing, don't make it look like anybody,' " Mr. Love said he told the young artist. His fear, he said, was insulting anyone and singling out any specific racial or ethnic group. Whether the artist obeyed, or he happened to glance up and see Sergeant Worell walking past, or he knew Officer Fulginiti from the presses, or he was a fan of the television program "McHale's Navy," which had its debut around that time, may never be known, for Mr. Love does not remember the artist's name.

He does remember inspecting the finished product, and being pleased, for it did look like anybody, and nobody.

Well... almost nobody. Even a target designed to be nobody, it turned out, reminded everybody of somebody else.

"There was a fighter, Rocky Graziano, I thought it looked like him," Mr. Love said, referring to the former world middleweight champion.

"If it looked like anybody, in my estimate," he said. "it was Rocky Graziano."

[neverdem]

Don Hogan Charles/The New York Times
Detective Stephen Albanese with the Thug, a life-size, two-dimensional paper target that every New York City police officer has shot at since the early 1960's.

Don Hogan Charles/The New York Times
For 40 years, the Thug has been the target of choice at the police firing range at Rodmans Neck in the Bronx.

Don Hogan Charles/The New York Times
The image was created in New York City, but over the years, police departments in other states, including Connecticut, have used it, and anyone can buy one in gun stores. It is the official target used by the Department of Homeland Security.

Don Hogan Charles/The New York Times
Another theory is kept alive in the basement of One Police Plaza in Lower Manhattan, the printing office for all the department's literature. Everyone there agreed that it looked like Officer Bruno J. Fulginiti, a member of the police department from 1951 until his retirement in 1977.

Ting-Li Wang/The New York Times
A third theory out of Rodmans Neck is that the Thug is a sergeant named Fred V. Worell, who taught thousands of New York City police officers how to shoot in his 35 years on the job. To this day, when officers at the range order new copies of the target, they refer to it as "Worell with gun," or "Worell with knife."

Sergeant Worrell and his family. He retired in 1987, and died Feb. 8, 2003, at age 66.

Copyright 2005 The New York Times Company

[neverdem]

FReepmail me if you want on or off my New York ping list.

[GeronL]

See this is real reporting, no wonder the NY TIMES doesn't have space to mention the Eason Jordan scandal or all of those Dan Rather articles they never wrote.

[Clemenza]

I was watching Taxi Driver earlier today. Guess what target Travis Bickle uses.

[neverdem]

See this is real reporting, no wonder the NY TIMES doesn't have space to mention the Eason Jordan scandal or all of those Dan Rather articles they never wrote.

Resignation at CNN Shows the Growing Influence of Blogs

You rang? Courtesy of yours truly.

[GeronL]

Well, I meant before he resigned, the scandal raged for 2 weeks totally ignored by the MSM

[neverdem]

Well, I meant before he resigned, the scandal raged for 2 weeks totally ignored by the MSM

It raged mostly on some blogs. What else is new. The MSM has been ignoring or giving minimal coverage to inconvenient stories for almost four decades now.

[archy]

A third theory out of Rodmans Neck is that the Thug is a sergeant named Fred V. Worell

Or, possibly, his twin brother Ernest P. Worell:

[KnowwhutImean, Vern?]

[archy]

Inspector Steven J. Silks, commander of the range at Rodmans Neck, calls it "the Ernest Borgnine Target" after the actor, who is pictured.

I'm not sure if we can post from this collection.

Well, these, from his role as *Dutch* in The Wild Bunch seem appropriate:

[archy]

It is the official target used by the Department of Homeland Security.

But it's not the official FBI *milkbottle* silhouette target:

[neverdem]

I'm sorry to read Ernest P. Worell passed away. May he rest in peace.

Thanks for the Borgnine pics. Take care of yourself.

[rdcorso]

I think it looks more like Seargant Worrell than anybody else.

[Tijeras_Slim]

You might not want to post personal info.