Goetz Is Still Recognized, but Still Shuns the Limelight : New York: Under his jacket, where he once carried a gun, is a button with a marijuana leaf that urges, "Legalize."

Goetz Is Still Recognized, but Still Shuns the Limelight : New York: Under his jacket, where he once carried a gun, is a button with a marijuana leaf that urges, “Legalize.”

By LARRY McSHANE

Jan. 8, 1995 12 AM PT

ASSOCIATED PRESS

NEW YORK — It’s a sunny fall morning on Broadway, where a squad of police officers patrol a demonstration. Several cops greet a man standing quietly to one side, hiding behind his sunglasses.

“Mr. Goetz--pleasure to meet you,” says one fresh-faced young cop, enthusiastically shaking hands.

Bernard Goetz smiles, adjusts his shades and says thank you.

“I took a lot of pressure off those guys,” Goetz says. “ ‘Killer cops and Bernie Goetz’--that used to be the chant.”

Ten years after he fired the shots heard ‘round New York City, people still recognize Goetz--and not all of them are pleased to see him.

“It’s the people who were against me that really tend to remember who I am,” Goetz said, walking through Manhattan with a crowd of anti-fur protesters in November. “But people still come up to me quite a bit.”

Goetz, now 47, said he turned down several interview requests as the 10th anniversary of the Dec. 22, 1984, shooting approached. “I’d really rather not get into it,” Goetz said before launching into an impromptu 20-minute discussion of the subway shooting.

An animated Goetz described in detail (from his perspective) what happened that afternoon, right down to the position of Darrell Cabey’s coat when he was shot. Goetz explained how he was so focused on pulling the trigger that his hearing shut down as the bullets rattled around the subway car.

“Nobody knows this case better than I do,” said Goetz. He’s putting his mouth where his money is, representing himself in a $50-million lawsuit filed against him nine years ago by Cabey.

Goetz, who still lives in a Greenwich Village apartment, looks the same now as he did after his 1984 arrest: Tall, thin, hunched slightly forward. There’s gray hair around his temples, and the hair in the front is thinning.

Under his jacket, where he once carried a .38-caliber Smith & Wesson with hollow-point bullets, is a button with a marijuana leaf that urges, “Legalize.”

He acknowledged that his legal battle has left him with little cash. But he remained convinced that he will prevail in the Cabey suit. Lawyer William Kunstler will represent the wounded Bronx man.

“I think Mr. Kunstler is afraid of me,” said Goetz. “I think we’re doing well. . . . I’m not looking forward to the trial, but I am looking forward to not having it hanging over my head.”

Goetz said his defense in the case is simple.

“If you’re injured, paralyzed or whatever while committing a violent crime against me, that’s not my fault,” Goetz said. “If you’re raping a woman, and she throws you out of a window to stop it, is that her fault?”