[Zahn:] This week, our spotlight is on survivors, people who have persevered through the most trying challenges. Well, tonight, the rise and fall of a cop who patrolled some of the toughest streets in the nation's biggest city, until all that evil nearly consumed him. It is tonight's "PEOPLE IN THE NEWS" profile.
[Cea:] I was suicidal. I had a gun in my mouth. And I climbed out of the darkest hole you could possibly be in. And I wanted to be the best that I could as a cop and try to help people and stop crime before it happened, before it occurred, you know, be out there and sort of be the savior. That's all I wanted to do. And it slowly changed.
[Zahn:] Robert Cea was a cop in Brooklyn, where he grew up. He had always dreamed of being a cop, fascinated by movie cops like Serpico, Seven-Ups, Bullit. Cea enrolled in the New York Police Academy at 16.
[Cea:] The first day of the scademy, there was an NYPD flag." Fidelis Ad Mortem" is the letters on the flag, which means faithful until death. That meant so much to me, that I was going into a job where you would do anything that you could, even right up to dying for it. In the academy, they teach you how to do everything by the book.
[Zahn:] When Robert Cea graduated from the police academy in the early 1980s, he went back to his native Brooklyn. Life on the street was a lot different from the movies and from what he had learned at the academy.
[Cea:] Once you get out in the street, you realize you have to throw all that out the window, because it doesn't work that way. It is never structured when you're in the street. And this is East Flatbush is where I first began my career, here. So, it everything changed. I ended up in the 67, which is in East Flatbush. Now, I lived in Brooklyn, which was one precinct south of the 67, which was the 63. It was like a totally different world. I didn't even know it existed. It was like being in a Third World country. It was one of the most horrific experiences on the job that I ever seen.
[Zahn:] His beat included the neighborhood called the Badlands.
[Cea:] And what he did was, he put gun under his head and he blew his head off right in front of us. It was a very, very busy precinct. And it ran the gamut, from robberies to delivering babies to shootings, to murders, to rapes. Church Street Avenue, I think it's about six miles long. There are hair extension stores, there are rowdy restaurants, there are jerk chicken restaurants, there are Jamaican nightclubs. There are stores that sell bongs, intricate carved pipes, it is just rife with color. Music is jury rigged to all of the stores. Bob Marley and the Walers are play on one block, Jimmy Clifford is playing on another block. But every corner was a weed spot, where they sold weed. There is nothing more exciting to me, I don't think, there's a moment that passes when they make you as a cop and you make them as a bad guy, you know, that split second and then it is the chase. And...
[Zahn:] His sharpened street senses warned him about the danger all around him.
[Cea:] I was dating a girl at the time. She told me immediately, you know that you're starting to talk differently. You're acting differently. You know, you become more defensive. You become more paranoid. You become more suspect of everything around you. That literally happens in a week. You start to change then when you feel invincible, and it is an incredible feeling. And it's not because you can lock somebody up or put somebody away, it's the life and death situation that you feel every single day. It is adrenaline 247. You can't turn it off.
[Zahn:] Soon after, Cea put in for a transfer from the Badlands to another Brooklyn district, the 76 in Red Hook. Another tough neighborhood that Cea thought he could help clean up. Guys who wanted to take as many guns off the street as they could, this was the place to be. The big difference from the Badlands was that in Red Hook, almost all the criminal activity was in the projects, where slinging or selling heroin was a major business.
[Cea:] At night, it is like a tunnel here. Trust me. This is everybody is you know, nobody is slinging now. They start slinging about 3:00 in the afternoon. This place is a supermarket or at least it was in the day.
[Zahn:] Even today this place is so dangerous that our camera crew needed a uniformed police escort.
[Cea:] It's a little scary, you know. But I still feel excitement because I did so much work here. I mean, this is where I did most of my work. Trust me, we are being watched now probably by 100 people.
[Zahn:] To succeed here, Cea needed an informant.
[Cea:] Shot King was one of the biggest drug dealers in the city. He sold heroin, and he was as dirty as they came and he was very bad guy. His number one drug dealer was a guy named Chilledo. I like him so much, he was my informant. But again, he was slinging drugs, you know. He was the best at what he did.
[Zahn:] Now Cea had to find a way to turn Chilledo.
[Cea:] The way you cultivate informants, you got to sort of you've got to make them feel like you understand them, you're a part of them. But as I was cultivating him, I was developing, like, a kinship with him, a friendship with him because I liked the guy so much. So, I turned him and what he would do is he would give me incredible information on guys who were wanted.
[Zahn:] The murky informant cop relationship worked both ways. Chilledo insulated himself from persecution by giving information to Cea. And in turn, Cea was setting gun collar records in Red Hook. But within months, Chilledo was murdered, shot between the eyes on a tenement roof. And because Cea and his partner dealt so closely with the drug dealer, possibly too closely, the NYPD considered him a prime suspect.
[Cea:] I felt betrayed by the job. I certainly knew that I we didn't commit the murder. And I liked the guy. I mean, it broke my heart when he was killed.
[Zahn:] Heartbroken and angry, Cea's emotions clouded his ability to do his job.
[Cea:] At one point, we saw a guy tighten up on the street. So, I got the guy in the back seat of the car and I asked him who did you know anything about the Chilledo murder. He said no. I just snapped. I jumped over the seat, and I got on top of him in the back of the seat. I took my five shot out and I dumped all the bullets out, took one bullet put it back in, pulled the trigger and closed it. I put it to his head. And I clipped the trigger.
[Zahn:] No bullet. Cea pulled the trigger a second time, but again, no bullet.
[Cea:] I realized when I that I had become the monster. My whole career was being the hunter, now I'm the hunted.
[Unidentified Male:] And in a minute, Rob Cea's bid for redemption ends in a fight for his life.
[Cea:] The next thing I heard was were sort of two gunshots and the next thing I know is I woke up in a hospital.
[Zahn:] "Survivor" stories continue when we come back.