Yesterday, the police arrested Francisco Torress of Queens, as well as Herman Bell and Anthony Bottom, in connection with the 1971 murder of a San Francisco police officer. Bell and Bottom are currently serving jail time for murdering two NYPD officers in 1971; while Bell and Bottom were convicted of the 1971 killing NYPD cops Joseph Piagentini and Waverly Jones, Torres and his brother were found innocent due to insufficient evidence. A SWAT team descended on Torres's home in Jamaica, Queens yesterday morning. A neighbor told the Post, "We thought he was a disabled Vietnam veteran. That's what he told people."
Torres, Bottom and Bell, as well as four others across the country, are accused of being a part of a series of attacks on police officers in the late 1960s and early 1970s planned by the Black Liberation Army. The San Francisco Police Department said that with the murder of SFPD Sergeant John Young, new "advances in forensic science led to the discovery of new evidence." Though Torres was heard muttering, "This is a frame-up" when lead out of One Police Plaza yesterday, the Daily News reports his DNA was found on a cigarette butt left at the scene.
Photograph of Francisco Torres being led out of Police Headquarters yesterday by Louis Lanzano/AP
