Brink’s Heist Lives On in Police Memorials : Crime: Attempted $1.6-million holdup proved to be a surprise when the participants turned out to be revolutionaries, not a gang of robbers.

Arthur Keenan remembers the radio calls in his cruiser, crackling reports of a Brink’s armored truck holdup and shooting. He raced to a roadblock set up at the entrance to the New York State Thruway.

He and three other Nyack police officers were checking vehicles when a U-Haul rental truck pulled up. As they questioned the man and woman in the cab, the back door burst open and six masked men jumped out, guns blazing.

“We never had a chance,” says Keenan. “These people had M-16s. We had revolvers. We were outnumbered and outarmed. Tremendously.”

Two of the officers, Sgt. Edward O’Grady and patrolman Waverly (Chipper) Brown, died in the robbers’ withering fire, as had a Brink’s guard earlier. Keenan himself was wounded. The gunmen commandeered one car and escaped; police pursuing in a second car crashed.

When the dust cleared, four suspects were under arrest and police recovered all the $1.6 million taken from the truck. They also made an amazing discovery.

The robbers, it turned out, were not gangsters but revolutionaries.

Investigators learned that the Oct. 20, 1981, holdup was one of a string of robberies plotted with almost military precision by “The Family,” 1960s radicals who authorities, the FBI included, thought had faded in the 1970s.

Old stalwarts from the Weather Underground, the Black Panthers, Students for a Democratic Society, the May 19th Coalition and the Black Liberation Army, had gotten together for this holdup and earlier, often bloody heists.

Their goal was the creation of the Republic of New Afrika, which was to consist of former “slave states.” The robberies were considered “expropriations.” Those who died in the holdups were, according to the radicals, casualties in the war against imperialism.

There were safe houses around the country, links to various bombings and to the 1979 escape of BLA co-founder Joanne Chesimard from a New Jersey prison where she was serving time for the murder of a state trooper.

There were radical stars among them--Kathy Boudin, a member of the radical Weather Underground and daughter of prominent lawyer Leonard Boudin, was captured as she ran from the scene of the Brink’s robbery.

She had last been seen 11 years earlier running naked from a Greenwich Village townhouse after a terrorist bomb factory in the basement blew up, killing three. At the time, she was wanted for jumping $10,000 bail in connection with a 1969 attack on an armed forces recruiting center in Chicago.

The others arrested initially were two Weather Underground members, David Gilbert and Judith Clark, and Samuel Brown. Donald Weems, who preferred to be called by his African name, Kuwasi Balagoon, was arrested later.

From day one of the first trial, the defendants refused to cooperate. They claimed that they were prisoners of war and wanted to be tried before a military tribunal, recalls James Kralik, chief of the sheriff’s patrol.

They shouted “Freedom fighter!” in court. Their attorneys, as radical as they, often refused to cooperate. Outside their supporters marched and chanted: “The BLA is alive and well; the FBI can go to Hell.”

The jury heard how the robbery occurred as the Brink’s truck arrived at the Nanuet Mall to make a midafternoon bank pickup. A red van pulled alongside and three masked men opened fire. Peter Paige, one of two guards, was killed.

The gunmen quickly loaded $1.6 million in their van and fled. They transferred the money to the U-Haul truck at a parking lot and headed for the thruway entrance at Mountainview Avenue and to their gun battle with police.

Jurors, their names kept confidential to protect them from possible reprisals, convicted Gilbert, Clark and Balagoon of murder and robbery. Judge David Ritter sentenced all three to 75 years to life in prison.

In a second trial, Brown was convicted and is serving a 75-year-to-life sentence. But Boudin struck a deal and pleaded guilty to robbery and murder. She was given a 20-year-to-life prison term.

According to most authorities, 12 people were directly involved in the holdup. Of those 12, one died in a police shootout three days after the heist. Nine are in jail, one is a fugitive and one, Balagoon, died of AIDS in prison.

Marilyn Jean Buck remained at large until 1985 when she was seized in Dobbs Ferry, about 15 miles from the shootout site. The alleged mastermind of the holdup, Mutulu Shakur, was arrested in Los Angeles in 1986.

At their sentencing in U.S. District Court in 1988, Judge Charles Haight described them as “gifted and capable people who crossed the line into deadly violence that mocks compassion.”

The investigation into the BLA continues, according to FBI spokesman Joseph Valiquette. Cheri Dalton, also known as Nehanda Obafemi, believed to be a driver in the Brink’s case, remains at large.

Oct. 20, 1981 lives on in police memorials, police museums and even a county sales tax--originally instituted to pay the heavy security costs involved in jailing and trying the defendants.

O’Grady and Brown were the first officers ever to die in the line of duty in Nyack, a community of about 7,000.

O’Grady’s youngest child, an infant when he was slain, turned 3 the day Boudin was sentenced. His oldest, Edward, now a teen-ager, recently participated in a fund-raising run for the National Law Enforcement Officers Memorial in Washington.

Brown’s son, Greg, is on a waiting list to become a sheriff’s patrol officer.

Keenan, a detective, retired from the Nyack Police Department in 1987 at age 39 and is now self-employed.

The shootout was over in less than two minutes, but Keenan lives daily with its aftereffects: the slug that hit him in the thigh was not removed for medical reasons and he has a permanent hearing problem.

“You go through periods of guilt,” he said. “Why were you spared? You wonder if you did everything right.”

“I had a difficult time with the funerals,” he said. “But I feel I was left behind for a purpose. . . . The only thing that could have been different was that all four of us could have been dead.”