Writer Kevin Arkadie has built a career telling crime stories on top-notch shows such as The Shield and NYPD Blue. Now he's turning those talents to the story of Larry Davis, a New Yorker who became something of a folk hero in the mid '80s following a police shootout and 17-day manhunt. Variety reports that Arkadie will write a script about Davis for Epoch, with the film set to begin shooting in the Bronx next summer.
The deal is well timed, because Saturday is the 25th anniversary of the shootout, which began when police raided the Bronx apartment of Davis' sister on November 19th, 1986. Officially, the raid was intended to bring Davis in for questioning about four dead drug dealers. However, Davis' defense attorneys later claimed that was just a cover story to allow the cops to kill Davis, who supposedly had the goods on several corrupt police officers. Regardless of who was telling the truth, Davis managed to escape the shootout, wounding six officers in the process, and then stayed on the lamb for 17 days before the cops finally caught up with him and he gave up.
That's already got the makings of pretty gripping cinema, but his story doesn't stop there. He was eventually acquitted of the attempted murder during the shootout, as well as the murders of the four drug dealers that supposedly precipitated the raid in the first place. In 1991 he was found guilty of an entirely different murder, and hit with a 25-year prison sentence. After his sentencing, Davis insisted that he was being persecuted by a long-standing police vendetta against him. He was killed in February of 2008 after being stabbed repeatedly during a prison fight.
