Friends mourn officer killed in line of duty

The guys pop open cans of Pepsi, crush cigarettes into a black plastic ashtray, and start the first round of Texas Hold-'em. Police Officer Michael Carr, taking the chair at the head of the table, deals. Beside him, they leave a seat empty in honor of Officer John Pawlowski, who looks down on them from a black-framed photo on the memorial wall. His family gave them the picture, showing him clean-shaven and grinning in a sunny yellow polo shirt.

"That's the Johnny we all knew," says Carr. "Not the one all GQd up for his wedding."

Every Monday night for three years, except for the week he spent in the Bahamas on his honeymoon, Pawlowski played poker with his big brother, Bob, and a dozen friends. They would gather around a rickety, handmade, royal blue-felted table in a smoky clubhouse deep inside a Port Richmond warehouse and linger from 8 p.m. until they wore out the conversation, ran out of pizza and beer, or had to leave for a midnight shift.

All but a few of the players are police, and all were members of the Bullets motorcycle group, except the Pawlowski brothers.

"I'm pretty sure John didn't ride because Kimmy didn't want him to," said Carr, one of Pawlowski's best friends and the Bullets' vice president. "She didn't think it was safe."

Last week, when they moved the poker game to a bigger clubhouse, they dedicated an entire wall to the Philadelphia police sergeant, who was killed in February.

Any one of the players can recite the details. It was Friday the 13th. They were all at a beef-and-beer fund-raiser for Sgt. Timothy Simpson, who was killed responding to a robbery in November when a suspect fleeing police crashed into his patrol car. The Bullets were raffling off a flat-screen TV and schmoozing with the McDonalds and the Cassidys, families of other slain officers.

About 8:45 p.m., on Broad Street across from the transportation center in Olney, a cabdriver called police, saying a man was trying to rob him. Pawlowski and his partner arrived and spoke to the cabbie. They saw 33-year-old Rasheed Scruggs backing away with his hands in his coat pockets, then the flash of gunfire.

Scruggs, police say, shot Pawlowski three times, firing a .357 Magnum through his coat. The shot that pierced his chest just above his bulletproof vest killed him.

He's been gone now for six months, and although his friends might not be sitting around crying in their beers, not a Monday night passes that he's not on their minds.