Ronnie Polaneczky: Family left to wonder how Philadelphia cop lost his way

BISHOP CATLIN Williams believes in the power of love and in the necessity of personal accountability.

"When my son comes home, the first thing I'll tell him is that I love him. He needs to hear that," says Bishop Williams, father of disgraced Philly Police Officer Mark Williams - one of three cops charged last week in an alleged plot to steal heroin and sell it.

But, he adds, with a sadness that hurts to hear, "There is also a law of reciprocity - you reap what you sow. The law was written not to be broken, and if you break it, you are subject to the full extent of penalty of the law."

So you will not hear Bishop Williams, 61, make excuses for Mark Williams' behavior. He will attempt, though, to understand what led his 27-year-old son to make the devastating decision to betray the oath to protect and serve the city.

They will soon have ample opportunity to talk. Yesterday, a judge ordered that Mark Williams, Robert Snyder and James Venziale be placed on 24-hour house arrest, pending trial.

Williams will spend his confinement at his parents' North Philly home. It will be the first time, since his indictment, that his parents will be able to ask him, directly, "What happened?"

What happened to the straight-arrow son who, as a child, was so sensitive, his siblings affectionately called him "The Weeper"?

What happened to the young man who used to be so knitted into the bosom of kin that he never missed a holiday meal with his family? Why had he recently avoided that family - an exemplary tribe that includes 11 siblings, countless nieces, nephews and cousins, doting aunts, uncles and grandparents?

What made him ignore the inner voice that, his father is convinced, told him from the get-go that what he was about to do with those two other officers was dead wrong?

"His mother and I just want to get him home, so we can talk to him," says Bishop Williams, who asked that I not identify his church, nor his wife's first name. "He's been so isolated from us."

I wouldn't normally be inclined to write about the pain of an alleged criminal's family, especially when the perp is a police officer who has confessed to dealing drugs, as court documents indicate Williams has.

But the more I spoke with Bishop Williams this week, the more confounded I felt by the predicament Mark Williams has gotten himself into. And I understood why the Williams family - at least 30 of them crowded the courtroom at the bail hearing - is so devastated by his actions.

Basically, this is not what many would envision as a criminal's family - you know, the dysfunctional mess we picture when we hear someone has been arrested for drug-dealing.

Bishop Williams and his wife have been married 41 years. Before Mark's arrest, none of their 12 children had ever been in trouble with the law.

For years, Mrs. Williams was a stay-at-home mom - "She had to be; we had a new baby every year," Bishop Williams says fondly - and her husband made sure his children were well cared-for.

"They never went hungry, or barefooted," says Williams, who works, during the week, as a data processor on main-frame computers. "They might have worn hand-me-downs, but this was a solid home."

He was home every night, and he and his wife, he says, never used harsh words or disrespected each other.

They always held hands.

"We wanted to show our children an example of how to love and honor your spouse. We're still courting, after 41 years."

Their children are outgoing, he says, so their house was always crawling with their friends, who stayed for dinners and, if it was Tuesday night, took part in the Williams' weekly prayer sessions.

"Their friends called us 'mom and dad,' " he says. "They still do. Our family was the family everyone wanted to belong to."

Mark was the son who never gave his parents a worry, says the bishop. After graduating from Northeast High School, he drove a school bus before entering the Police Academy.

"He was the youngest in his class; they called him the 'baby,' " says Bishop Williams. "He became a cop. He seemed happy."

In the last few years, though, Mark Williams changed, says his father. He became aggressive and angry, used profanity and began to drink. His dad thinks he was influenced by the coarseness and violence of the job.

"I had the same reaction when I went to war," says Bishop Williams, a Marine who fought in Vietnam for 13 months and returned, at age 20, a broken man. He married his wife and credits her love with helping him through the post-traumatic stress of seeing his friends perish and surviving his own near-death battles with the enemy.

"I think, when Mark became an officer, he entered a world he was totally unprepared for, and he hardened himself, the way I did," he says.

By the time of his arrest, Mark Williams was also a father of three children, by three different women, and was drowning in the financial stresses of fatherhood.

"I think it all came down on him," says Bishop Williams.

This year, as his son started missing more and more family get-togethers, Williams decided it was time to pull him aside and ask what was going on. Before he got chance, they got the call that Mark had been arrested.

"I think I stared into space for half an hour, after the call," says Williams. "I felt sure I was in a nightmare and would wake up."

The last nine days, he says, have been a heartbreak for the family.

His wife has been so devastated, she's missed work at her job as an administrator at a local medical school. His daughters can't stop crying. No one can believe that Mark is facing lengthy time in a federal prison, for a crime that seems so out of character for the man they knew - or thought they knew - him to be.

"We just want to get him home," says Bishop Williams. "We know he's ashamed and scared. We want him to know that we still love him. We don't know what the future holds, but God will guide us through whatever the outcome will be."

Because what the Williams family does best is trust God.

They just never imagined they'd have to trust Him with something like this.

E-mail polaner@phillynews.com or call 215-854-2217. For recent columns:

http://go.philly.com/polaneczky. Read Ronnie's blog at http://go.philly. com/ ronnieblog.