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Philadelphia Cop Killers Were 'Walking Time Bombs'

A digital billboard along side Interstate 95 in Philadelphia photographed Tuesday, May 6, 2008, displays the image of accused cop killer Eric DeShawn Floyd who is wanted in connection with the murder of Philadelphia police officer Sgt. Stephen Liczbinski

PHILADELPHIA, PA – Their adrenaline pumps, their eyes dart back and forth and they inhale short, panicked breaths. With a gun in hand, they try to make a quick escape from the scene of their crime.

Suddenly, unexpectedly, they come face-to-face with a cop. They raise the gun and quickly pull the trigger.

A Philadelphia police officer is dead.

And in that split-second, they become cop-killers.

In the latest slaying of a Philadelphia cop, a massive hunt continues for Eric DeShawn Floyd, the only suspect still being sought in last weekend’s slaying of Sgt. Stephen Liczbinski.

Experts say that most cop-killers have criminal records – as do alleged cop-killers Floyd and accomplices Levon Warner and Howard Cain – but that’s not always the case.

What they share, however, is an impulsive, fatal decision made in the heat of the moment shortly after or in the midst of committing a crime.

Chad Lassiter, adjunct professor for the Graduate School of Social Policy and Practice at the University of Pennsylvania, is convinced that cop-killers can be easily detected.

Look for people with no hope, he said. “They’re walking time bombs.”

Philadelphia has endured three fatal cop shootings in two years. All but one of the shooters have long rap sheets.

Floyd, 33; Warner, 39, and Cain, 33, had a history of robbing people. They set out to rob the Bank of America branch inside the ShopRite on Aramingo Avenue Saturday morning, disguised as female Muslims, police allege.

They fled the bank and Liczbinski, responding to a radio call about the robbery, saw the suspects’ van and followed it several blocks, to Almond and Schiller streets, in Port Richmond.

Liczbinski, a married father of three who would have turned 40 yesterday, was exiting his cruiser when Cain allegedly fired a Chinese-made SKS assault rifle at him from a short distance away and killed him.

Liczbinski didn’t have a chance to fire his gun. Cain was then shot and killed by cops.

“They didn’t set out to kill a police officer, they set out to rob a bank,” said Dr. Lawrence Sherman, director of the Jerry Lee Center of Criminology at the University of Pennsylvania.

He said that the robbers were simply in a “defiant mode” and had the weapons to back them up.

Yesterday, officials traced another gun, a .22-caliber revolver that they’d recovered from the suspects’ van, to 19-year-old Levi Swigart, of Duncannon, Pa., who had sold it for drugs in Harrisburg after he stole the revolver from his mother.

The manhunt continues for Floyd, who first entered the system in 1995 when he was convicted of robbery in Lancaster County. He was released four years later.

He was back in prison in 2002 for robbery. He was transferred to many other prisons before being released on parole. In 2007, he was ordered to report to a community corrections center, but failed to do so. He was found and placed back in prison.

In February of this year, he was transferred to a halfway house in Reading from which he escaped that same month.

The manhunt is now nationwide, involving the FBI and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, among other law-enforcement agencies, said Police Commissioner Charles H. Ramsey. The reward is up to $125,000, he added. But as one day rolls into another, hope dims for Floyd’s imminent capture, Ramsey said.

“We do not know if he’s in Philadelphia, outside of Philadelphia,” Ramsey said yesterday.

Detectives continue to speak with Floyd’s relatives in the hope that one of them will know of his whereabouts.

Investigators remain on “high alert” in several local spots, including Lancaster and Reading. Cops are also looking for him in Newark, N.J., where a man who supposedly matched his description fled from a New Jersey Transit train on Monday after the daughter of a Philadelphia police officer noticed him.

Detectives are waiting for DNA results on a wig that the man left behind before dashing off the train.

“We’re getting calls from people who are spotting him all over the place,” one investigator said last night.

Cain’s criminal life started in 1997 when he was convicted of robbery and was incarcerated in the same Lancaster County prison as was Floyd.

Cain was bounced around to four correctional facilities in seven years before he was granted parole in 2006. He was later transferred to a South Philadelphia corrections center.

In 1991, Warner was arrested and charged with burglary. He was paroled two years later. Since 1995, Warner had violated his parole twice and had been arrested again for burglary and robbery before being transferred to a local corrections center.

In the two other recent cop killings, there were also numerous sightings of the fugitives – John “Jordan” Lewis and Solomon Montgomery.

Lewis is awaiting trial in the Oct. 31, 2007, murder of Officer Chuck Cassidy. Montgomery pleaded guilty to the May 8, 2006, murder of Officer Gary Skerski.

Montgomery was a thin, quiet kid, a loner, a drifter.

Friends say he spent his high- school years dabbling in drugs and bouncing from house to house. Sometimes he lived with his mom; other times he was on his own or with a girlfriend.

When he was 15, he had his first brush with the law, getting arrested on suspicion of dealing drugs. When he was a few years older and a bit more aggressive, police say, he shot a friend during an attempted robbery.

Last year, Montgomery allegedly tried his hand at crime on the West Coast.

Somewhere along the way, police say, Montgomery changed from a small-time thug to a cold-blooded killer.

Montgomery, 23, is awaiting sentencing for killing Skerski after robbing a dozen patrons inside a quiet bar in the Northeast. He ran into Skerski at the back door.

Unlike Montgomery, John “Jordan” Lewis, a chubby, baby-faced 21-year-old, wouldn’t be considered a cop-killer at first glance.

He had no previous criminal history and was not considered violent. But he robbed a Dunkin’ Donuts in West Oak Lane and was headed out the door when Cassidy was walking in.

Lewis allegedly shot Cassidy at point-blank range.

A disconnect between police and young men in society, and the access to illegal weapons, are major factors in cases of cop killings, Sherman said.

Because cop-killers are typically desperate and with no hope, they don’t care whom they destroy.

“They shoot the cop and he goes out in a blaze of glory,” Lassiter said.

“They have no regard for their lives. They’re not selective in who they kill. They’re already dead.” *

Staff writer Christine Olley contributed to this report.

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