Episode 342: NYPD Detective & Pilot Mike Sileo

Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:04):
You're listening to The Mike the New Event podcast hosted
by media personality and consultant Mike Cologne. My poor guest

(00:43):
had to listen to me complain pre show about the
state of my New York sports team, so I apologize
to him in advance. Welcome back, ladies and gentlemen to
The Mike the New Aven Podcast, episode three hundred and
forty two. If you haven't checked out the previous episode,
volume five of the Best the Bravest Nationwide edition that
was with the Dan Jones. Dan Jones did forty one
years in the Fire Service, between sixteen years in Panelas Park, Florida,

(01:06):
then in nineteen ninety he went over to Chapel Hill,
North Carolina, stayed on there for twenty five years, finished
up as their chief. And that was a really fascinating
conversation with him. He's been active, of course and teaching,
both while his career was going on and of course
in retirement as well. And I'm very happy we we
hear that mini series is because as we said last episode,
between the Beat and the Best of the Bravest Nationwide,

(01:27):
it's good that we're expanding outside the New York City area,
but at the podcast is core, it's very centric to
New York. So we'll continue to do New York City
themed interviews with our NYPD and FD and WY friends,
one of whiches joining us tonight, who will introduce momentarily,
but just want to say a quick to welcome to
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(01:48):
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(02:09):
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fascinating career in the NYPD and the New York City
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(03:15):
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(03:36):
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and hello to Joe Maligai. Will make sure to get
to your question tonight. We know what the running joke

(03:56):
is of course between us, and I'm sure I will
have the opportunity to ask you at some point during
the program. All right, My next guest enjoyed a twenty
seven year law enforcement career that took him from the
subways to the airways, starting in nineteen ninety one with
the old New York City Transit Police pre merged with
the NYPD, he lateraled before the merger went over to
the NYPD in nineteen ninety two and for thirteen years
he was on patrol as a Brooklyn cop in the

(04:17):
Greenpoint section of the borough with a nine to four
precinct before his two thousand and five transfer to the
Aviation Unit, where he would spend the next thirteen years
until he retired in twenty eighteen, and along the way
was promoted to Detective third grade and detective second grade
and received the NYPD's Medal of Valor, one of the
highest awards a member of the service can receive, for
a twenty twelve rescue. He'll detail tonight with me, and

(04:40):
that is retired NYPD detective and former member of the
NYPD Aviation Unit, Mike Sileo. Mike, great to have you
finally welcome.

Speaker 3 (04:47):
How are you, hey, Mike, thanks for having me. I
appreciate it.

Speaker 2 (04:50):
Oh, no problem.

Speaker 1 (04:51):
Like I said off the air to you before we
got on, I first saw you with our friend Bill
Cannon many years ago on police off the cuff thoughts
to myself, I gotta get that guy. So it took
me a few years. Me long enough, But finally you're
here and we'll hear your stories tonight. So as I
ask every guest of a civil service background, well first
and foremost, where did you grow up A secondly, did
you always want to go into this field or was

(05:12):
it something you discovered you'd be interested in a little
bit later on.

Speaker 3 (05:15):
So I grew up in Queen's Ridgewood Glendale area, and
my dad was a cop, so you know, I was
always fascinated. He used to have the on the rare
occasion he would work in like the Brooklyn North area,
and we lived at Queens and occasionally he would come
home and get gas in the one o four prison
and when he did that, he would stop at the

(05:36):
house at times, you know, and every time I came
in I saw the uniform, I just kind of admired
it more and more, and you know, it was just
something that I just I was just fascinated by it.
I always wanted to do it. I always wanted to
help people, and you know, my dad would come home
and tell certain stories and I was like, that's what
I want to do, That's what I want to be,
you know, and there I was. You know, It's just

(05:59):
it was there's a passion that.

Speaker 1 (06:00):
I had, and it showed in the career that you
wound up having as well. And as always for those
of you in the chat. If you want to ask
a question either via LinkedIn, Facebook or YouTube, feel free
to throw it in there, I should say, and we'll
highlight it at the appropriate time, myself and producer Vic.

Speaker 2 (06:15):
So trans it is interesting because it's not a bad time.

Speaker 1 (06:17):
To be there in ninety one, in that Bratton's there,
Maple's there, and the agency is on the come up.
They got new vehicles around this time. They're getting better
equipment around this time, and crime is going down on
the subway. Even though above ground's not looking too pretty
in nineteen ninety one ninety two, below ground is starting
to improve a lot. So getting there, especially where you
were first assigned, which was you were telling me off

(06:38):
air was District thirty three.

Speaker 2 (06:40):
What was it like.

Speaker 1 (06:41):
Trying to learn the subway and were you a kid
that took the subway a lot in Queen's or did
you have to get familiarized with it as a transit
cup No, I was familiar.

Speaker 3 (06:49):
With the subway. I mean living in New York City,
we took the subway a lot of friends and I
would go to Manhattan or you know wherever. So I
had the M train close to my house and it
would be a frequent thing for me to get on
the train, so I wasn't no strain to the subway system. However,
when I took the exam, I didn't expect to be
a transit police officer. I was thrown into the lottery,
and in fact, I went down to find out what

(07:09):
agency I was assigned, you know, prior to hiring. My
dad came with me, and you know there's this old
print out, this green bar paper just on the top matrix,
you know, with the holes on the side, and right
next to everybody's name was just a T C or
an H, you know for transit, city or housing. So
I got transit. And I can't say I was disappointed,

(07:29):
because I was just ecstatic that I was getting hired.
But I was kind of wanted, you know, I wanted
to be a city cop. That was my dream. But
you know, I went in and the one of the
guys there who was talking to us and gave us
nice pep talk. You guys are gonna be the first
class with nine milimeters weapons. You know, you got these
nice sweaters. They were changing the uniforms. Bratton had just
taken over the police department, the Transit Police Department, at

(07:51):
the time, so they really gave us a nice pep
speech about what was coming forth in the future, and
it kind of made me excited for it.

Speaker 1 (07:58):
So you know, I was on board at that, you know,
of course, and in District thirty three we're talking East
New York, so it's a tough place to start as
a cop, and it doesn't matter how much experience you have.

Speaker 2 (08:09):
I mean, especially back then.

Speaker 1 (08:11):
Transit was dangerous and trans it's not easy now, but
transit was dangerous then. I mean, because this is the
conversation I've had with a few transit alumni, it's quite literally,
I think, across the country, not just in the City
of New York, the most unique beat a cop could
have because your community is transient, quite literally, at least
if you're a housing cop. Back then you know where

(08:32):
the people are going to be. There's a set place
where they're going to be, and you know, even if
they're out all day working or doing whatever, they're going
to be there at some point because that's where they live.

Speaker 2 (08:40):
Unless it's a homeless person.

Speaker 1 (08:41):
The subway system, people are coming and going and maybe
you recognize certain faces because that's their everyday commute.

Speaker 2 (08:46):
But you don't get the chance to really mingle with.

Speaker 1 (08:48):
Them as much unless there's calls going out and you're
riding the train, just learning, you know, not even with
the call standpoint or dealing with criminals, just learning how
to deal with people in a district as busy as
that one.

Speaker 2 (08:58):
What was that like for you?

Speaker 3 (09:00):
Yeah, I mean I was always around people, you know,
growing up, so that wasn't the big challenge. I think
the bigger challenge was working alone and not having back
up pretty close to you. And you know, I was
signed to TPF, which didn't at the time prior to
me joining it turned out of forty second Street and
eighth Avenue in the hat. However, they started handing it

(09:21):
off to the districts, so I did a TPF stint
in District thirty three, which started at seven o'clock at night.
I think we ended up like four in the morning,
you know. And now I'm right in the subways as
a twenty year old kid by myself in bad neighborhoods,
you know, high crime neighborhoods where we were. Our biggest
challenge was the radio reception in the subways, so you
had to learn how to adapt to that environment. And

(09:43):
you had to know where the other guy was at,
what station they were. We didn't have cell phones then,
so you know, it was just it was eye opening
in the sense that you always had to watch you back.
You always had to look over your shoulder and have
you back to the wall at all times, you know.

Speaker 1 (09:59):
Yeah, and that's something that you know, guides any cop
throughout their careers. Chris ved in a form remember in
New York City EMS and the chat says the wooly
police sweaters as he coins them, we're pretty nice. EMS
actually followed transit and allowing us to wear them.

Speaker 3 (10:12):
Yeah, yeah, they were. They were. We got a lot
of laugh when they first came out, and then some
guys started to say those are pretty cool looking, you know.

Speaker 2 (10:19):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (10:20):
No, of course, of course, so there was a story
you were gonna tell me. I just wanted to hear
it on the air so that the listeners can enjoy
it too. Late night through the morning in transit.

Speaker 3 (10:28):
Yeah, so you know, we would ride these trains late
at night and and they were single posts and I
remember one night I had I was on the J
line and I think we had my My posts probably
went from like Laura the Street on the Jay all
the way over the Williamsburg Bridge into Marcy Avenue I'm sorry,
beyond Marcy Avenue into Essex Street. So when you got

(10:49):
on the train at Marcy Avenue or if you continued,
that's like a seven minute or nine minute ride over
the Williamsburg Bridge. So now if you get into to
something on the bridge on the train that's moving, your
help is not. There's nowhere nobody's gonna get to you
because you're You're on this train for a nine minute stretch.
So I remember getting on the train Marcy Avenue and

(11:11):
there was this big guy. You know, I was a young,
twenty year old, skinny kid. I probably weighed about one
hundred and thirty pounds, and he was probably about six
feet eight. I mean, he was tall guy, and he
was drunk. I could tell he was, and he wanted
to fight. So I'm in the car and he's in
the other car behind me, and he starts walking through
the train and he starts giving me these motions that

(11:31):
he wants to fight. You know, he's putting his hands
like this, and I'm like, Okay, what am I gonna
do here? Am I gonna call in eighty five? But
if I do call in eighty five, how long is
it gonna take him to get here? They're not gonna
get here on the bridge. So I started, you know,
to tactically and mindfully think, all right, let me just
give myself some time here, and I started walking through
the train. As I'm walking through the train, I'm probably
in the fifth or sixth car. He's following me. Now

(11:55):
when I get to the first car, we're probably halfway
across the bridge. And then my mind said to myself,
we've got keys for these trains. So I locked the door,
you know that. And he's in the middle of the
two trains trying to get in and he's punching his
fists and like, all right, let me call it eighty five.
So I called it eighty five, and I said, you know,

(12:16):
probably four minutes out of Essex Street. And then we
rolled into the station and there's the cavalry waiting, you know,
and they're like, who's the guy on my point? I go,
that's to him. And it turned it turned out it
was probably just a disc on collar. But I avoided
any type of interaction at that point, specifically on that
long stretch, and I'll never forget that moment, you know,

(12:36):
it was it was something to be you know, as
a young rookie cop, it's the last thing you want
to be involved in.

Speaker 2 (12:43):
Right right, and really any cop, And that was smart.
You used your head. Yeah, that was very clever to.

Speaker 1 (12:48):
Think about that on the fly. In a situation like that,
some people panic. I mean it's just a natural human instinct.
You slowed down, you analyzed the situation, you found a
solution to where you didn't get hurt.

Speaker 2 (12:58):
You didn't get hurt.

Speaker 1 (12:59):
You isolated, as Paul Manicone, retired NYPD lieutenant in the
jet put you moved, he isolated, and you contained it.

Speaker 2 (13:05):
That's a good job.

Speaker 3 (13:06):
Yeah, Yeah, that's what you have to do. You have
to think on your feet and you know, always be
prepared for something to happen like that. Because it's three
o'clock in the morning, people are drinking, they're coming out
of clubs, and a lot of people when they drink,
they either want to sleep or they want to fight.
So this guy wanted to fight, and I would have lost.
You would have lost.

Speaker 1 (13:24):
I mean, I think unless you're his size, anybody in
that situation, even if you know martial arts whatever, a
six to eight drunk guy. Not the kind of person
you want to be getting exactly, even when he's sober,
let alone, when he's influence of something. Sure, Lieutenant Mannico
and ads very smart. They should teach that the academy,
and they should. They should, because that's a great move
for all parties involved. Last note on trans before I
get to you lattering to the NYPD. Besides that moment,

(13:47):
was there ever a holy crap that could have gone
really bad moment that you had in transit?

Speaker 3 (13:53):
I mean, I can't I can't tell you how many
times you'd see people And I'll get to the intoxication
part of it, but like people on the train that
are drunk and they're walking on these platforms at night
and they're coming to the edge. And I couldn't tell
you how many times I've seen people that almost fell
on the tracks. You know, that was the big I
had one guy fall on the tracks I just prior

(14:16):
to my arrival into the station, and luckily he landed
in the middle. You know that well there and there
was no doubt. He just kind of split his head open.
He was a drunk guy. But the last thing you
want to see is somebody to get chopped up by
a train, and luckily I've never I never had it
as a transit cop, although I did have it when
I was a street cop.

Speaker 1 (14:36):
Yeah, its aeratica. You didn't have it in trance, but
you had it above ground. And that brings us to
the tail end of nineteen ninety two. Granted you did
always want to be an NYPD cop, as you said earlier.

Speaker 2 (14:46):
Yeah, so it's fitting.

Speaker 1 (14:47):
It's just, especially with your family legacy, your father having
been on the job, the opportunity to lateral presented itself.
What I find interesting is that, and I don't know
if this was annoying to some cops or if you
didn't mind it. He had just done the academy the
year before, so you know, you would think in some
places are different. In other places, if you have gone
to school recently, they won't send you back. You just

(15:08):
you know, you maybe get a little in house orientation
and you're off and running.

Speaker 2 (15:11):
Here. I think you had to go back to the academy, right, Yeah.

Speaker 3 (15:14):
We had to go back. I think it was about
six weeks. And the worst part about it was they
disarmed us. So now you know we're active police officers.
At the time, I was I think probably on the job,
maybe eighteen months or so. And then there was some
contention there that they're going to take away our weapons.
And the reason why was because as a transit cop
we had nine millimeters and the NYPD hadn't adapted to

(15:37):
the nine milli readers yet. So there was some ambiguity
there of what are they going to do with us.
So what they did was they said, you know, our
first few days in the academy there they had to
hand it at the new NYPD shield and you know,
we had to turn over all the other transit stuff
and they took our nine millimeters weapons. They were vouchered.
And then we had some representative there from the PVA

(16:00):
and the academy. They said, you can't put these guys
on the subway. You know, we were coming in with uniform.
We were in NYPD of uniforms, but we were unarmed.
So you know we're riding the trains in uniform unarmed.
I mean, that was you know, going to the police guy.
So what they did was they pulled us all into
Robin's deck and they got us qualified really fast. In
the thirty eights. At least the transit guys because the

(16:20):
housing guys had thirty eighth at the time, but we
had to go back and do a whole firearms of
course again and relinquish our nine milimeters now go backwards
to a thirty eight weapon. So that was pretty unique.

Speaker 1 (16:32):
Yeah, And it took a couple of years until Bratton
got to the NYPD in ninety four to where they
got the nine millimeters again, which they've had ever since.
Because and this was and it's sad that it took
this long. This was almost a decade long battle between
the unions and the department itself. It all started when
Scot Godell got killed back in eighty six. You know,
he is the speedloaders. He couldn't load it enough time.
Not his faults. Some animal walked up behind him like

(16:53):
a tower and shot him in the back of the head. Yeah,
but you would think it would have happened soon after
his murder in eighty six eighty seven, didn't. You know,
didn't really take full effect for the NYPD until much
much later in nineteen ninety four. So getting to the
nine to four out of the Academy again for the
second time. For those not familiar with the Green Point

(17:13):
section of Brooklyn, tell me about the demographics. High crime area,
low crime area.

Speaker 3 (17:17):
Right in the middle, na, I would say, really low
crime area, especially for Brooklyn North. I mean they used
to call it the oasis of Brooklyn North, you know,
because it really wasn't you know. You had predominantly Polish neighborhood,
maybe some Hispanic, a little black in the projects, but
predominantly Polish and a lot of hardworking, you know, blue
collar people. That's what the nine four consisted of. And

(17:37):
we had not only did we have a lot of
great restaurants to eat, we had a lot of good
looking women you know that would would would would walk
the streets. So a lot of outside commands would come
there and get their meal or you know, just come
to get gas occasionally, just to kind of you know,
be in the oasis of Brooklyn North. So yeah, it
was a great command. Low crime. You know, I think

(18:00):
any any command, even if it's low crime, has a
propensity of something big happening there. But the nine four
kind of held up pretty well. And to this day,
I think it's less of the blue collar and more
of like the kind of beat nicked or the you know,
the I don't know what kind of to group that,
but it's kind of a melting pot of people. Let's

(18:21):
let's call it that because I think that's what they
identify it as now, so right, yeah, right. I think
it's a trendy you know, it's a trendy neighborhood. It's
kind of like the Soho in some sense.

Speaker 2 (18:30):
A little bit of a lot of gentrification.

Speaker 1 (18:32):
Yeah, there's a lot of gentification, yes, and and Brooklyn's
kind of been I don't want to say hardest hick
because sometimes you know, when you hear gentrification, it has
a negative context in some aspects, it can be but
not in others. If a neighborhood's going to advance forward
and be a lot better than what it was before,
especially if it used to be a high crime area,
that's a good thing. That means the police are doing
their job to where they can get the neighborhood to
that point where it can be gentrified. But you know,

(18:53):
it does change a lot to the city, especially when
you have transplants coming in from outside, which is a
different story for a different day. But it's it's always
interesting to see Devil, especially when people post online photos.

Speaker 2 (19:02):
Here's what it was in nineteen ninety three. Here's what
it is now.

Speaker 1 (19:05):
Sure again, NYPD's at the forefront of that, so I
mean policing above ground versus policing below ground. Granted you
weren't in transit very long, but you know, habits do
come into play, especially with what they were teaching you
in the academy. Did it take a while to adjust
that or is it transition seamless?

Speaker 3 (19:24):
No. I think I had a little growing pains in
the beginning because I you know, I come to the
command and now, you know, here I am. I'm thinking
of some big hair bag on the job. I have
eighteen months on the job, and you know, and they
stuck me with a graduating police academy class in an
FTO unit, in an FTU unit, you know. So I
was kind of like the younger guy that just literally
out on the street the first day and I'm arriving

(19:45):
with them. It's just, you know, we both arrived at
the same day. So here I am. I'm thinking, I'm
this big hair bag, you know, and this season veteran
coming into the nine to four precinct. But surrounding me
are veterans in the nine four percent that are looking
down at me like I'm the New Oh yeah, so
you know it had its growing pains. I kind of
knew my role. I kept my mouth shut when I

(20:06):
was there and learning until I got out of the
FTO role and that FTU role, and then I got
myself into a sector car with a steady partner who
happened to also lateral transfer with me, and we worked
together in District thirty three. So we worked together for
almost all of our careers until I left for aviation.

Speaker 2 (20:24):
Right. Well, that's actually and that's pretty cool.

Speaker 1 (20:26):
I mean again, full circle and at least there's a
comfort level there because listen, eventually, even if you do
form a great partnership with someone in the beginning, like
you said, there is growing pains.

Speaker 2 (20:34):
They don't know you don't know that you didn't have
that story.

Speaker 1 (20:36):
So at least it's one less thing to where you
could say, okay, at least you know that's off the board.
One less worry I have is I try to get
used to the NYPD.

Speaker 3 (20:44):
Yeah, exactly, exactly.

Speaker 2 (20:47):
Pendulum swinging.

Speaker 1 (20:48):
At this time, Ray Kelly is in his first and
as commissioner, and as I said before in the program,
people remember him more for his second stint as commissioner.
Because I was obviously the longest, but he did a
lot of good things in that short term that he
was there ninety two to ninety four, got the crime down.
You know, things were beginning to swing in the right direction.
Bratton comes in, the crime decline which is already starting

(21:08):
and nudging downward, really takes the nose dive and a
broken windows changed a lot because, unfortunately, because of the
corruption scandals in the seventies and eighties, cop snow pun
intended were handcuffed, they couldn't really be proactive.

Speaker 2 (21:20):
The way they wanted to be.

Speaker 1 (21:22):
Bratton comes in, takes the handcuffs off and says, no,
let's be the police. So being there, even if you
were in a low crime area, which thankfully green Point was,
as you said, it was the oasis being there when
the style shifted from what it was before apprehensive, reactive
to proactive and prevention. How is that as a young
cop in the city.

Speaker 3 (21:42):
Oh, it gave us a lot of flexibility and and
you know, I think we had an easier time, easy
ability to conduct the type of policing that should have
been done in the city rather than a reactive type
of policing. So we went from taking you know, complaint reports.
Sixty one's to actually proactively identify, find what the crime
patterns were, and then to be in those locations and

(22:03):
what to look for rather than just respond when I
complaining calls and take a report, throw it in the
one twenty four room and go back on a control. So,
you know, it definitely and we enjoyed that. I mean,
I think for the most part, I know I did
and my partner. We wanted to be cops. We wanted
to help people. We don't want to be report takers,
you know, and riding around in the sector, I got

(22:24):
to know people in my sector. I got to know
who the players were, who the bad guys were, you know,
who the good guys were, and who was looking out
for us, and you know, we used all of those
tools and it was so effective that it's sad to
watch the state of what the NYPD is and now
and the challenges they're facing, and I kind of feel

(22:46):
spoiled because I got to experience that. I wish the
newer generation got to experience what we did, you know.

Speaker 2 (22:53):
Yeah, and hopefully they can. Before I continue.

Speaker 1 (22:55):
Scott, I don't know his last name, but he's retired
from transit, He says, my Zach Mikey no shoulders.

Speaker 3 (23:01):
God, I know Scott, I know who that is. Yeah, yeah,
we have. We had a lot of names for each
other at the time, so and that was one of
my names.

Speaker 2 (23:09):
So you got to see Scott. Nice to see you, Scott.

Speaker 1 (23:12):
He tells me he's waiting until some of his last
friends who are still in the job retire and then
he can come on the show. So hopefully that's soon.
He did twenty five years and again I don't know
his last name. I only know his first name. But
with that said, I mean again, I asked you about
he says, this is butthead So you know, I asked
you about dicey calls earlier in transit, and even if

(23:32):
you're working in a low crime area, there is that
it doesn't necessarily have to be dicey. That okay, Wow,
that was something that was quite the rush. What are
some of the calls in that early period of patrol
and Green Point that stick out as man, Wow, that
was that was a good call.

Speaker 3 (23:46):
Hmm, Like, you mean, what kind of job would we
respond to that?

Speaker 1 (23:49):
We're any type of job doesn't have to be a
hairy job, just something where it's like, wow, you know what,
that was a good call.

Speaker 2 (23:53):
We did really well there.

Speaker 3 (23:55):
Uh, you know, I can't think of anything that comes
to mind right now, but I mean, you know, the
odds of some of the stuff, some of the pursuits
from other presints from the A three or from the
nine to zero, or even as far away as the
one O eight which boarded us, would come into our
precincts all the time for some reason. And I do
remember one time where they had a vehicle pursuit. It

(24:19):
was for GLA. It was for a stolen vehicle. They
were chasing the car. They kind of lost sight of
the car, and then moments later we got a job
of a fifty three. It was a car accident and
it was a car that collided would attract the trailer
and it was the stolen GLA. They went under the
tractor trailer, took the roof off, de capitated one of
the purpse and we got into a foot pursuit with

(24:44):
my partner and I. We caught one of the guys
and we threw him against fence. He had a hoodie
on and when my partner went to pull his hoodie off,
he pulled off the hoodie, and he also pulled off
the scalp of his head, so he was a clean
cut on his head, but it was still hanging on
the back and we would just all you see was

(25:05):
this shiny white skull, no blood or minimal amount of blood,
and we were just blown away by it, you know.
Is so he pushes the hood back up. He says,
we got that back on. We cut him up, and uh,
you know, we ride in the bus, we go to
the hospital. The hospital staples them up, irrigates it, and
back to the station house for processing. You know, so

(25:25):
like these are the standout type of jobs that I lived. Yeah,
he lived. He was fine. Yeah, it was fine. A
little irrigation and you know whatever else they did, and
they stapled them up and there he is, you know,
he's collared and back to the station house. Six hours later.
We're finger person who was sis It's crazy.

Speaker 2 (25:42):
Yeah, that's a good one. Uh. Scott's asking was that Joey.

Speaker 3 (25:46):
No, I was working with another guy that night though,
but Joey Guns was my partner, Yeah, that was it
was My old partner, was Joe Guns though we call
him Joey Guns.

Speaker 1 (25:55):
I think I heard you mentioned him before. If I'm
not mistaking, it might have been in the off the
cuff interview that you did. And those pursuits, man, especially
in New York City, they've always been dangerous. I was thinking,
and it wasn't in in Brooklyn. This happened in Queen's
Nick de Mutus in ninety four. You know, got called
when he was trying to block the block the stolen
car rammed him at seventy miles an hour. John Kelly
on Staten Island in two thousand, same thank chasing the motorcycle,

(26:15):
lost control of his car and unfortunately crashed it in
the middle of the pursuit, ended up dying of his injuries. So,
you know, pursuits anywhere are dangerous. I know, we look
at the lapd ones and they're very cool, as are
the Texas ones.

Speaker 2 (26:28):
But there's a danger factor. And especially in.

Speaker 1 (26:31):
New York City where everything is so on top of
each other, you got to be mindful of pedestrians. You
gotta be mindful of other vehicles. I don't know how
you guys do it. Man, it's scary.

Speaker 3 (26:39):
It is scary, and it's you know, and it's scary
when you're sitting in that car and you're chasing that car,
you know, but you got a guy that's next to
you that doesn't know how to stop or or slow
down when you tell him to slow down.

Speaker 4 (26:50):
It.

Speaker 3 (26:50):
You know, back in the nineties, cops weren't wearing seat belts.
It wasn't a thing. We never liked to wear seat belts.
But you know, when they started pushing it, and I
was like, right before I went to aviation, I think
around two thousand and one or so, you kind of
saw the value of the seatbelt, you know, when he said,
although it would catch on your gun when you get
out of the car. But you know, some of those pursuits,

(27:11):
they you look back and you go, oh my god,
what was I doing? You know, but you're in the moment.
You're in the moment, and you want to get the
bad guy.

Speaker 1 (27:19):
Well, of course that was the thing I heard that
they didn't like it because they would catch on to
the weapon, which would delay their response time and being
able to get out the vehicle, especially if it was
a foot pursuit.

Speaker 2 (27:27):
Well, you didn't understand.

Speaker 1 (27:28):
But at the same time, I mean another one just
popped into my head. Nineteen ninety five Dave Willis Dave
Willis got thrown through the windshield of the patrol vehicle. Unfortunately,
they were running to a SHOT's fire job, and unfortunately
they ended up getting into an accent on the way
and he was killed.

Speaker 2 (27:41):
And had he had a seat pen on, would he
still be here. Maybe?

Speaker 1 (27:44):
I don't know, but it's definitely something you know that
I'm glad that the NYPD has pushed officer safety.

Speaker 2 (27:49):
You want to get to the job.

Speaker 1 (27:50):
If you can't, you know, if you're hurt before you
can get to the job, you're not helping anybody.

Speaker 2 (27:53):
So it's good.

Speaker 1 (27:55):
Yeah, So I'll go Mike Salo here and the Mike
di Naven Podcast, episode three hundred and two. You know,
there comes a point in your career, maybe late nineties
heading into two thousand, where you look around. You got
almost a decade on the job, so you've gone from
being the guy that they're mentoring to now where you
could turn around and you could do a little mentorship
of your own. So when you saw newer cops coming
into the ninety four, tell me about mentoring them and

(28:17):
bringing them up to speed and trying to do the
same good by them as the older guys did by you.

Speaker 2 (28:21):
When you first got there.

Speaker 3 (28:23):
Yeah, I mean when when the guys came to the
presetst you know, we always identified who the guys were
that were going to be the resistant guys. And I mean,
I don't I don't I say that lightheartedly, but they
didn't want to adapt to the whole protocol, you know,
like when you come in, the first thing, the best
thing that your best advice you can givebout any new
cop is keep your eyes open, keep your ears open,

(28:44):
but keep your mouth shut, right, And there's always that
one or two guys that don't do that. So you know,
I knew plenty of cops that wouldn't talk to any rookies.
My partner was one of the guys that wouldn't talk
to any of the new guys, you know, and I
just couldn't. That wasn't that didn't just shit my mom.
So I would I would be friendly to these guys.
I wouldn't, you know, call them my best friends. But

(29:06):
you have to have an element of warmth to welcome
them in because if you give them if you you know,
if you lock them out, they're not gonna they're not
gonna become what you want them to be. You know,
they're not gonna be good cud, I don't think.

Speaker 5 (29:16):
So.

Speaker 3 (29:16):
You gotta humble them to a point, but you can't,
you know, you can't lock them out all the way.
So the way I would mentor a new guys, if
they wrote in the sector car with me, I would
just I would put them in the record seat. I
would drive and I'd say, you know, if there's anything
that you need help with taking the report sixty one,
any question you have, I want you to ask me
those questions because sometimes some guys are apprehensive to ask questions.

(29:40):
If you ask questions, you get good answers. So you know,
I I my mentorship was being being friendly to them,
not being overly friendly to them, and kind of tell
them what position, you know, thinking about when I was
a rookie what I did, and trying to model them
after that.

Speaker 1 (29:55):
You know, I'm sure they appreciated that, especially as their
career progress, they probably turn around and did the same
thing eventually. So it's a good model because you know, right,
it's tough in any job, but they never forget that
any kindness that's shown early on that always pays dividends.

Speaker 2 (30:10):
You were a police officer.

Speaker 1 (30:11):
To touch on briefly, you were a police officer of
course during the attacks of nine to eleven, So just
being a cop during that time, I don't know if
you went down to the site. I don't know if
you knew any of the guys that got killed of
the twenty three cops that did that day from the NYPD.
But just tell me about your late two thousand and one,
early two thousand and two.

Speaker 3 (30:25):
Yeah, so you know, I'll tell you about nine to
eleven in particular. I remember the you know, at the
time I was training to I was actually a private pilot,
so I was doing that on the side. Was you know,
I was working four to twelves and I was training
in the mornings, and I got my private pilot's license.
So you know, my partner and I in police cops
in general have dark humor all the time. So my

(30:46):
partner would always bust my chops about I'm flying these
small planes and they're dangerous and you know, and I
remember the morning of nine to eleven, I got I
got a call and it was Joe, my partner, and
he left on the answer machine, Hey man, what are
you stupid? Little pilots crashed into the world traits. I
had called me back or something. I jumped out and
I put the TV on. I'm like, that's not a
small plane, you know, so long and behold. I mean

(31:09):
what followed up after that is I go to the
station house, and you know, everybody's eager to get out
there and do something. They held us at the precinct
that night until like I think, like ten o'clock at night,
and then they threw us over to the eight to
four precinct and we just kind of stood on the
streets there, you know, protecting mosques, and I wanted to
go down to the site. Lo and behold. The weeks
following that, I did get down to the site, I

(31:30):
did get onto the pile, I did participate in the
bucket brigades. And then after that they sent us back
to the commands, probably right around Thanksgiving, and then we
were doing these twelve hour tours. I could get that
list or something what they would call them. But yeah,
I did get an opportunity to go down there, and
you know, it's it's a site that I'm sure from
all your guests have seen, it's it's mind blowing. It's

(31:54):
the magnitude of the damage, the magnitude of what took place.
That day's lasting and ingrained in your memory.

Speaker 1 (32:02):
Yeah, I'm glad we could touch on it. It's unfortunate
that I don't envy anybody that had to be down
at that site, especially now when all the guys are
getting sick from it. Yeah, but man, you know, thank
you for doing that, because it's not just about that day,
the days afterwards and that clean up effort. The fact
that it was cleaned up as quickly as it was
eight months as a testament to the hard work that

(32:23):
was being put in by everybody pd FD construction guys
coming down helping out iron workers, so great effort by
all involved under some very tragic circumstances. So I guess
I can segue because you mentioned being a private pilot
around this time into two thousand and five and getting
to aviation moving ahead, and before I get to leaving
the nine four itself, when did you start taking an

(32:45):
interest in flying as it were?

Speaker 3 (32:48):
You know, I've always had a passion to fly, and
I think most people who are fascinated by flying, you know,
it starts with a passion. So you know, I remember
one of the cops that I was working with was
telling me that he was taking flying lessons, and I'm like,
you know, I didn't think that I was able to
do that. I'm like, I thought you had to go
to some college and you had to you know, enroll

(33:10):
in a course. But you could find a flight school
on any smaller airport and participate and take flight lessons
as long as you have the money to do with it.
So I joined up right around ninety seven and I
started taking lessons, and probably around a year and a
half later, I got my private pilot's license. And then
it was taking everybody in the prison to go fly,

(33:31):
and hey, you want to go fly it? You know,
so I couldn't tell you if I look into my logbook.
I probably took about fifteen cops from my prisint and
just flying around, flying around Long Island, flying around the
mat talk going to Atlantic City, which was another whole entity.
But we did that a couple of times. We went
over to Foxwood's over in Connecticut, and I built flight time,
and in doing so, I just got so deep into

(33:53):
it that I started to I wanted to enhance it.
You know, private pilot's kind of like entry. It's a
recreational of license. You really can't get hired as a
commercial pilot. So I started to advance my ratings, like
an instrument rating, which gives you the authority to fly
in weather in the clouds, you know, blind, not looking
out the window. Then I got my commercial pilot's license,

(34:15):
and at that point I was like, all right, this
is a this could be a second career for me,
you know. And I remember my flight enstow Up telling
me around two thousand and one, you know, you should
apply for the aviation unit. I said, Man, if I
applied for the aviation unit, we've got like thirty five
thousand cops and there's twenty pilots in the unit. You
know what it's like to get into that unit, you know.
And I really didn't know anybody, you know. I didn't

(34:37):
I didn't have a rabbi, I didn't have a hook.
So I applied and I didn't hear anything, and then
it took about a year and a half. I got
an interview around two thousand and two, kind of didn't
hear from them again two thousand and three, two thousand
and four, I got another interview and then I got
picked up in August of five. So I believe two

(34:58):
interviews before I got picked up or three, No, it's
actually three interviews before I get picked up.

Speaker 1 (35:04):
Yeah, it makes sense because again this is a special
Operations division of the NYPD, and where the Aviation Unit
is housed. For those of you that are outside the
New York area may not know, it's down at Floyd Bennetfield,
I believe in Brooklyn. So they share that with the
Highway Unit, and they also share that with the Emergency
Service Unit, which you guys work very closely with, especially

(35:25):
ESU as well as Harbor as well on some of
these rescue missions that involved surveillance and of course sending
divers into the water under certain circumstances. So just the training,
I mean, given the fact that you had gotten your
commercials pilot license previously, that helps. But as far as
the NYPD aspect of training, especially in high intensity situations
rescues or pursuits on the ground, tell me about how

(35:48):
they train you if you can tell about that.

Speaker 3 (35:50):
Yeah, I mean, when you first get to the Aviation Unit,
you're considered a pit. A PIT is the pilot in
training and you start, you know it the prerequisite to
get the Aviation Unit. At least when I got there
was a commercial fix wing license. You didn't have to
have a helicopter license. You had to have a fixed
wing license, and they would train you in the rotocraft,
you know, because there's two different categories of pilot licenses,

(36:12):
fix wing and there's helicopters. So when I got there,
it was a pilot in training for about man nine
months or so. And it first starts out you get
assigned to a flight instructor and you go out in
a helicopter and they start teaching you how to fly
a helicopter as opposed to an airplane. I mean, some
of the stuff is similar, but the controls are totally different.

(36:33):
And it's probably better to mold a pilot when you
get them to the aviation unit as a as an
airplane guy as opposed to a helicopter guy, because some
helicopter guys might want you know, they may fly a
little bit different, and our profiles are a lot different.
In the aviation unit. We fly low, we fly slow,
you know, we do a lot of rescue, We do

(36:54):
a lot of stuff over the water, so a lot
of people aren't used to that stuff. So yeah, the
journey probably take from the day you get to the
aviation unit. So you get to what's called a checked
out pilot and you get the authority to fly that
helicopter somewhere between eighteen and twenty four months, well probably
the latter of that. Yeah, And during that period, while
you're training to be a pilot, you're also training to

(37:16):
be a tactical flight officer, which is the term TFO.
So you're flying in the left seat, you're looking out
the wind there, you're communicating with people on the ground
and you're relaying information. You're not necessarily flying the helicopter,
so you're an observer. So and that's the way the
training pretty much goes. And once you get to be
a checked out pilot, you could fly you have the
authority to fly the helicopter as the PIC, which is

(37:38):
the pilot in command or let's call it a captain.
And then if there's two of those type of people,
you could fly from either side of the helicopter.

Speaker 1 (37:47):
And again, once again makes sense that it would be
that intricate. And I like how they train you in
dual roads to be both an observer and also be
pilot in charge, because you're going to get thrown in
different scenarios where that's going to at some point in
your career that's going to be a possibility to prepare
for an advance.

Speaker 2 (38:01):
I think is a really smart move on their part.

Speaker 1 (38:03):
So I don't know if you remember your first really
interesting call, Darren, I see your question. I'll get to
momentarily as a member of the aviation unit. But is
there something from that early year, maybe it was a
pursuit of some sort of or rescue that sticks out
to you before we talk about twenty twelve.

Speaker 3 (38:20):
You know, there was so many times. I mean, when
you first start out there, you're not really in the
role of an air sea rescue pilot, so you're really
staying away from the larger aircraft, which is the Bell
four twelve. That's kind of you know, later on down
the line, we'll get more senior role in the unit
and you'll start going into the air sea rescue asset.
So you start most of your career starts in the

(38:41):
patrol unit, the patrol helicopters, and it's assisting the patrol
units on the ground and participating in searches, and also
it's also doubling the asset of the airc rescue as
an observant platform. So what I could tell you is
I there was endless suits, there was endless purp searches,

(39:04):
and there was endless what I would call like missing persons.
A lot of times the priest would call us to
do a missing person search, and it's just to check
the box on the forty nine. You know, at five
hundred feet in a helicopter, looking for a missing person,
unless you're in an open field, the congested area of
New York City, the concentrated area of like Brooklyn or

(39:25):
Manhattan even is even worse to look for a missing person.
It's kind of just you're making some noise, you're looking out,
you're looking on your camera, and you maybe looking on
the shoreline at it's water. But you really can't go
further than that, you know, for a missing person search
with just a clothing description. However, a purp search, you've
get the element or the psychological element of the helicopter

(39:47):
noise helps believe it or not. You're low and you're
and you're making a lot of noise. The purp doesn't
know where you, if you see them, or if they or
not so and when you're putting the night sun which
is the search light out in different areas, sometimes it
has a propensity to push the perpetrator at you know,
and you could be like, oh, he's out, and then
we got him. We get him on infrared or we

(40:07):
get him on you know, on the camera, and then
we direct the ground units to lock him up. So yeah,
so you start out in the patrol role in the helicopter.
The air sea rescue asset comes later.

Speaker 1 (40:21):
That makes sense as well, And patrol has to be
quite interesting because I again, there could be days where
there's a lot going on that you have to be
cognizant of, but there's also days where you could just
admire the sites of the city. But even then, being
in the aviation unit after nine to eleven took on
a greater meeting because there's also the possibility of hostile aircraft.
Was that something they trained you on as well?

Speaker 3 (40:41):
Yeah, I mean, you know, we we did have, at
least by the latter years of my career in the
aviation unit, we had an aircraft that was assigned as
QRF aircraft, which was a quick response for us basically
signs or any type of high rise rescue or some
sort of active shooter. And with that, there was a
fifty caliber weapon on that aircraft that our crew chiefs

(41:04):
were you know, trained to utilize. So I've never had
any type of rogue aircraft. I did follow a helicopter
once that wasn't responding to air traffic control and there,
you know, their squawk identify a code which is basically
a beacon that tells the air traffic who they are,
where they are and generally what they're doing wasn't responsive.
So we followed that helicopter, landed at the heliport, identified

(41:27):
who the pilot was, and then handed it off to
the FAA because it's out of our hands at that point.
So yeah, after nine to eleven, there was a lot
of you know, counter terrorism missions that we did fly.

Speaker 1 (41:40):
Yeah, and Ray Kelly at the time as police Commissioner,
definitely put a lot of an emphasis on that. Let's
touch in the cross training real quick, Darren de Freeze
before I get to the NYPD aspect of it. His
question is if we can highlight that, how did you
guys work with the FD and Y because I know
sometimes for certain situations they come down to Floyd bend
it too.

Speaker 3 (41:56):
Yeah, so they would come down I think it was
on a monthly basis. I don't remember how often they did.
But we did have a fd person FDNY personnel in
the helicopter when there was a fire that required an oversight,
you know, an air asset. I forgot what they what
their terminology was, but we would fly over the fire
and they would be able to communicate with their people

(42:18):
on the ground and utilize our IR which is infrared technology,
and our cameras so they could direct personnel to where,
you know, where they needed them with the firefighting, and
I forget what they called it, but we would have
a fire chief come down with his chauffeur and he
would air that's what it was. It was the air
recon chief and that's what that's what it was. Yep.

(42:40):
So we would train with them and go on these
missions a lot of times, and if they got a
larger fire, they'd tell us they'd give us ten minute call.
We'd have the helicopter spinning and we'd have them set
up in the back and we'd fly off to the
fire with them.

Speaker 2 (42:52):
We've had a lot of large ones lately.

Speaker 1 (42:53):
In the sixth Alarm in Manhattan, they had a couple
of brush fires that went to second and third Alarmed, respectively,
So they've.

Speaker 2 (42:58):
Been needing that a lot lately.

Speaker 1 (43:00):
I'm not sure how often they do it now because
they have drones for a lot of situations, but it's
still good to have those human eyes in the situation too,
So they still do Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Speaker 3 (43:09):
I was going to say that. I think there's a
there's a large increase in drone utilization now with the
FDN Y.

Speaker 1 (43:16):
Yeah, they've used it a building collapses in certain fires
as well. I think they even had it at a
crane collapse. So good technology, but you know, as long
as there's a balance, no issues with that one, gentleman,
I did want to ask you about before I get
to cross training with the NYPD units I mentioned earlier.
I know his brother's brother was an e man both
on Suffolk and and the NYPD, Jimmy Cohne. His brother
Danny Cohen has been on this show. What was it

(43:36):
like working for Jimmy.

Speaker 3 (43:38):
Jimmy Cohne was my commanding officer from I'm going to
say from twenty nine to eighteenth, or for about nine years.
Jimmy Cohne transformed the aviation Unit Jimmy Cone. Although most
people have different opinions, I think he brought a lot
of good to the unit. You know, we'll call it

(43:59):
MAGA and we'll call it make Aviation great again. Because
that's what Jimmy did. Although he didn't have a fan
club with some people, he brought a lot to that unit.
And I'll tell you one of the biggest things he
did for that unit. Prior to Jimmy Cohne arriving to
the NYPD Aviation Unit, we had single engine helicopters now
single engine helicopters as our patrol fleet. If you lose

(44:22):
an engine with a single engine helicopter, you're coming down
at a vertical profile at about maybe fifteen hundred to
two thousand feet per minute, and you got to find
a landing spot. You have no outs. If you lose
your engine over a congested area. You're landing in the
middle of Fifth Avenue or you're landing in the middle
of Eastern Parkway. That's that's it. Now, the chances of

(44:42):
you successfully landing that helicopter with that engine loss or
that engine failure is probably pretty low because you have obstacles,
you have light posts, you have signs, you have vehicles.
So Jimmy transformed the unit and he put together a
committee to change the troll helicopter to a twin engine helicopter.
Twin engine variant helicopter gives us the ability to lose

(45:05):
an engine and fly away with the other engine, so
that in itself increased the safety margin of our mission
set in the aviation unit. In addition to that, Jimmy
Cone brought an aeroplane asset to the NYPD Aviation Unit
as well, and I participated in that for a little
little bit of time right before I retired. So he
enhanced the mission set of the aviation unit, got us

(45:27):
really good equipment, got us a lot of overtime, and
he brought us to the forefront of aviation, you know,
of law enforcement and aviation. Jimmy Cone was a major
contributor to the.

Speaker 1 (45:40):
Aviation unit, Oh for sure. He retired recently. I gotta
get him on the show. Like I said, I know
his brother very well. His brother's been ASU Mini series.
But I love to have Jimmy on. I gotta shoo
him message on Facebook one of these days. Hopefully he'd
be willing to do it. I think he's been retired. Well,
he left around the same time you did.

Speaker 3 (45:56):
Right, Yeah, I left in twenty eighteen. He left in
twenty nineteen.

Speaker 1 (45:59):
Yeah, not about the same time. Yeah, you guys overlapped.
I'm glad you opened up about him. Thank you very much.
I did want to ask about him. As far as
the cross training with ESU getting into the air Sea
Rescue component and Harbor is concerned, sometimes it's Harbor's own divers,
sometimes it's esu's divers, because they're cross trained in just
about everything under the sun. What was it like working
with those two units.

Speaker 3 (46:20):
Well, Scuba was assigned exclusively. Scuba always had two scuba
divers assigned.

Speaker 2 (46:25):
To the aviation forget about that.

Speaker 3 (46:27):
At all times they had they had a little office
in the in the hangar as well, and they were
mission ready at any given time, just as the AIRCA
Rescue pilots and crew chief were. So we had five
people assigned to that helicopter. So yes, scuba was always
assigned to the aviation unit assigned to the airc Rescue office.
As far as e s U, we cross trained with

(46:50):
the SU for the special training school, you know, repelling,
fast roping, assortment of different things. And we also added,
prior to me leaving was kind of high rise rescue,
some hoist training, and we didn't have to, we would
utilize the ESU to do that. So if it was
over land, we would utilize the ESU, if it was
over water, Scuba was with us exclusively all the time

(47:13):
because they were professionals. They knew what they were doing,
and they were phenomenal at what they did. And I
know you had George Sickler on here. George is a
great friend of mine. We had a lot of laughs together.
But I can't speak enough about the scuba guys. I
mean tremendous professional guys, and they were excellent at their
craft and they were very knowledgeable. I mean really a

(47:34):
lot of fun with those guys too, A lot of fun.

Speaker 2 (47:36):
Absolutely.

Speaker 1 (47:37):
And then you apologize to George and to Oscar Smith
because I forgot when I.

Speaker 3 (47:41):
Was another good friend of mine.

Speaker 1 (47:42):
Yeah, yep, another former guests of this show. When I
was talking about Harbor and s you, I forgot about Scooba.
Shout out to school of course, as you said, they
do great work. Yeah, really difficult circumstances. Don't know how
they do it. Not to gloss over Garrett Lingren's comment
from earlier and talking about assisting the FD and Y
did you guys have Bambi buckets he wants to know
or no, Yeah.

Speaker 3 (48:01):
We do have we as far as I know, they
still have Bambie buckets. So we did do Bambi bucket training,
but it was very very rare that we utilize them
in an actual mission, if at all. But we did
train with them. It was part of the pilot's currency.
They had a train initially for it, get checked out

(48:22):
on it, and then also train recurrent training for the
Bambi bucket in case it was some sort of brushfire
I'm going to use it for.

Speaker 2 (48:29):
So, yeah, we do have them, good to know. Sorry
to cut you off, didn't mean to do that.

Speaker 1 (48:33):
We're talking with Mike Silo here the Mike did we
have a podcast episode three hundred and forty two. Happy
to have them this evening a personal accolade at all
of this too. Not too long after you get to
Aviation Detective specialist in March two thousand and seven. I
know the bomb squad does this where and I'm maybe
it's the same for aviation. You can tell me you
have to be in the unit for eighteen months to
get your shield. Is that how aviation works?

Speaker 3 (48:55):
Actually, there was no career path in aviation. Luckily, I
just what happened was and I may tell this story wrong,
and I apologize if I'm wrong with this, but when
there was a large amount of SOD personnel, not just Aviation,
it was ESU, it was Scuba, it was Harbor that
were issued detective specialist shield and I think it was

(49:16):
in response to something that the FDNY had ratified in
their contract, and I forgot what it was. It might
have been for the first responder deal that they had
set up. And you know, one day I'd come into
work and I've been the unit eighteen months and then
like you even get promoted a detective. I'm like, wow,
I didn't know that we're sending your package up and
I'm like, wow, that's great. And I think it was
like nineteen of us that got promoted on the same

(49:37):
day alongside Harbor. It was a really big SOD promotion.
And from what I understand till this day, there's no
career path in the Aviation year. There are still guys
there that are just white shields and been there for
a long time, which is a shame because it is
a specialty unit, you know, and I really wish that
there was a career path there.

Speaker 1 (49:57):
Yeah, I mean, especially if you got guys in there.
I mean, I TRANS that used to do this back
in the day. Kenny Schnetzler who was in the rescue
unit for TRANS that he had police officers special assignment.
Even if you're not going to give him the gold Shield,
which you should, by the way, at least make them
police officer special assignment if such a thing exists, and
ratify the contract because.

Speaker 2 (50:12):
What they're doing, it doesn't get much more special operations
than that.

Speaker 3 (50:16):
Yeah, yeah, yeah. My big thing is, you know, if
you're doing something outside the scope of the normal police officer,
especially flying, scuba or issue, I think there should be
some sort of you know, meritocracy for that. You know,
it's it's it's it's well rewarded.

Speaker 1 (50:33):
I think I agree it should apply for the whole
SOD Division as a whole.

Speaker 2 (50:37):
It does.

Speaker 1 (50:37):
I know it's certain units within SOD, which is good,
but it should be around the board as well.

Speaker 2 (50:43):
Christian Williams is asking this.

Speaker 1 (50:44):
The name Green sound familiar to you, No worries if not,
Thank you for being here.

Speaker 3 (50:48):
We had a we had a Green in the unit,
a sergeant Green. Yeah, right before I left, he was
there A couple of years. Didn't know him too well
personally other than he was a sergeant in the unit.
But yes, famillionaire, absolutely.

Speaker 1 (51:00):
Thanks for the question, Christian. So we'll talk about this
in twenty twelve. You got a Medial of Valor, which
I think is the second highest award an NYPD member
can get, Medal of Honors the highest. Nobody wants to
win that because it usually means you died in the
line of duties series five times out of ten. Getting
it posthumously Medal of Valor not so much the case,
which is good. You want our members alive to receive
these awards.

Speaker 2 (51:19):
It's June of.

Speaker 1 (51:20):
Twenty twelve, and this is a rescue in the West
Point section of New York. You've told this story on
off the cuff, but the listeners of Mike new Avi
and we'll hear this for the first time here go
into it June of twenty twelve.

Speaker 3 (51:31):
What happened to well, June of twenty twelve was when
I was awarded the Medal of Valor. The actual rescue
took place in February of twenty eleven, so it took
a little, I guess a little long before the whole
metal got submitted. But so what happened was, you know,
I was not supposed to work that night. It was
a midnight and I think I did a tour swap
in somebody else and I was supposed to do it

(51:52):
four to twelve. So we're sitting, you know, it's one
of those days which we're a reactive unit. When you're
as signed to answer your rescue in the aviation unit,
you're a reactive unit. You're waiting for some job to
come in, whether it's a boat in distress or some
other anomalies taking place over the war. That night, probably
around one o'clock in the morning. It was a windy night.

(52:14):
It was probably we weren't flying. I don't think we
were flying that night. I believe the unit had our
status was we were. We were not operational because it wins. However,
Jimmy Cohne was working that night and Jimmy Cone I
think had the duty that night, and they took a
call at operations and it was from the New York
State Police, and the New York State Police said, hey,

(52:35):
we've got two hikers from the West Point Academy that
went lost up in storm King Mountain, which was about
fifty miles north of New York City. It's on the
west bank of the Hudson River, and they know where
they are, but they can't find their way out, and
they can't get them out. The Army doesn't have assets
to do it, and the New York State Police doesn't

(52:56):
have assets to do it. So we were wondering if
you can do it. Jimmy said, all right, let me
get back to you. He called us all in to
the hangar. We assembled our crew, crew chief, myself and
the other pilot, and we started talking about can we
do this now? The factors were the winds were blown
about fifty miles an hour. Now a helicopter. Winds are

(53:16):
friendly to a helicopter. You know, they're not favorable in
some circumstances, but sometimes they are favorable. But when they're gusting,
it can cause things to change with the helicopter. So
we kind of all together agreed that we're going to
do this mission. But we had to find how are
you going to do it, How are we going to
get up there, what do we need to get up there,

(53:37):
and what we're going to do it with. So we
came across. We got the NYPD helicopter, the Ansy rescue
the Bell four twelve, which is a larger of the
two helicopters that are signed to the fleet. And we
got two SU members to come in the back, which
was Chris Condon, Yeah, and Billy Stevens. Billy was the
other guy, and the crew chief was fern Almedia and

(54:00):
the other pilot was Steve Brownie. So wesembled this up.
And the whole thing about when you do one of
these missions is if somebody is uncomfortable and somebody says
they don't want to do it, we scrub. That's it,
you know. So everybody has to agree one hundred percent.
And we agreed we were gonna do it. We're gonna
go up there and we're going to assess what we
had and we were taken from there, so off we went.

(54:20):
We loaded up with a bag of gas because it
was going to take us a long time to get
up there because of that fifty knot headwind. The helicopter's
going fifty notts slower, you know, and it took us
a while to get up there, probably about fifty minutes
or so, which would probably only take about maybe twenty
five minutes. And we got out station, which means that
you're on the location where it is. And we had

(54:42):
another and why you know, New York State Trooper helicopter
pointing out with their spotlight where these guys were. We
still couldn't find them. Now, the thing that was great
that helped us was we had night vision goggles. So
with the night vision goggles, we were able to see
through the night and we were able to see certain things.
Now that one thing that we could see was one

(55:04):
of the guys had a cell phone. Now this is
twenty eleven. They weren't big iPhones. They were these small,
little flip flip phones with maybe a four inch screen.
But luckily when they brought it up, we could see
it through the night vision goddens because the night vision
god is what it does is it takes the surrounding
enlightenment and it ingests it to bring out that image.

(55:24):
And that's what it did, and we saw them. So
we at that point we had them. We knew where
they were, we pinpointed them, we marked it, and now
we had to figure out how we're going to get
them off for there because it was probably about five
hundred feet above the ground, we had really heavy winds
and the outcropping of the mountain, you know, the side

(55:44):
of the mountain was we would require us to tow
the helicopter in, meaning we had to put the skids
of the helicopter into the mountain and then drop the
hoist line and bring them out. So that was concerning
because of the wind. So we did, you know, we
went in and we did a couple of dry runs
and we said, all right, we could do this. We
got the hoist and the crew chief Fern was like,

(56:06):
I could drop the hook right to them, It's no problem.
So we did this. We put ourselves into a hover.
Steve Browning was the pilot. He was a military guy,
excellent guy. Flew that helicopter meticulously. I mean we were
twenty feet away from probably the edge of the side
of the mountain, and all I remember was as if
you're the copilot, you're managing two different things. You're managing

(56:29):
the outside of the helicopter, but you're also managing the
engines and you're managing the transmission, and you're managing temperatures
and torque levels. So I'm looking in, I'm watching the
torque making sure we don't, you know, overstress the helicopter
and then I'm also looking at the ends of the blades,
which is called the Tippath plane, to make sure we
don't strike any objects. With the night vision goggles, it

(56:50):
gives you a great, great visualization of the end of
the blades, which you won't see with the naked eye,
and that's what we did, so I kept my eyes
on there, and off we dropped Chris Condon down. Chris
went down unhooked, and we took up one of the
one of the hikers, put him on the helicopter, and
we were pretty heavy at that point. We couldn't really

(57:12):
put too many people. Too many more people onto the helicopter,
and we said, you know what, let's take the one.
We flew off, dropped him in a field somewhere, which
I think was called Soldiers Field, and then we flew back,
dropped the other, dropped the hook back down to Chris,
and we brought both of them up and then we
successfully got them both off the mountain. But we left
Chris out there, which was really concerning, just to leave

(57:35):
the guy and Ryannie. The temperatures were probably about I
don't have seventeen degrees and probably with the winds it
was probably with you know, the windshield factor was probably
about five degrees, so you know, performance for the helicopter
is great in cold weather, but not for the human body,
you know. So it was great that we pulled that off.
I mean, it was really really a rewarding moment after

(57:59):
we got our everybody often all was said and done.

Speaker 1 (58:02):
You know, I'd well done, man, because I again I
was vaguely familiar with the story, and apologies forget my
dates crossed up, but you know, it's great to hear
it again now. And I've been trying to get Chris
on the show for a while. Him and I are
connected on LinkedIn and Facebook. I gotta get him on
because I knew how it was involved in that. He
says he left me there for like an hour negative five.

Speaker 3 (58:23):
Well there you go. See christ is tuned in. Yeah.
I remember talking to him on the radio and I
didn't realize it was that long. Wow, Thanks Chris.

Speaker 1 (58:34):
Good to see you, Chris, and come on the show, buddy.
Been trying to get Yeah, time now for the little
mini series, so you know, after something like that and
getting recognized for it a year and changed later. Granted
it was a team effort, but that had to feel
very good. So when they you know, listen, think of
the guys that I've gotten the Medal of Valor world
over the years. When they put that metal on, you
tell me about what your emotions were, you know.

Speaker 3 (58:55):
I was kind of humbled, I mean that, you know,
and there's a little dis appointment as well, because I
believe Fern, without crew chief, everybody in that helicopter should
have gotten that. I was a little disappointed because Fern,
who was out crew chief, did not get it. He
had retired, but I thought they should have did it posthumously,
you know, like after his retirement. They didn't do it.

(59:18):
But you know, I look at the whole medal for
Valor in a different sense than most doo you know,
was it warranted? I was like, this is just my
scope of what we do. You know, this is I don't.
I didn't not saying that I wasn't worthy for it.
I think we certainly were, But there are so many
other things that I saw on the police department that

(59:40):
were unjust where other people should have got the medal
for Vowlor. So, you know, Humboldt, for sure, it was
a it was an amazing moment to get that award.
But I just wish Ferne would have got it as well.
I mean, it didn't happen.

Speaker 4 (59:53):
But.

Speaker 3 (59:55):
You know, it's it's one of those things where it's
just you go to work, you do what you got
to do when you come home, and you don't really
think about getting an reward, you know, but certainly a
nice feeling for sure. Oh.

Speaker 1 (01:00:09):
Absolutely. Have you kept in touch with those that were
rescued that night or not?

Speaker 3 (01:00:12):
Really?

Speaker 5 (01:00:13):
No.

Speaker 3 (01:00:13):
I think we had like a conference call probably about
a week after in the CEO's office. They were on.
They thanked us personally, and then later on I believe
their general came down and gave us a civilian equivalent
of some sort of medal of honor or something. I
forgot what it was. I'd be honest with you because
it's been so long ago. But their general did fly

(01:00:36):
into the aviation base the bank us personally, which.

Speaker 2 (01:00:38):
Was really nice, very nice.

Speaker 1 (01:00:40):
You got second grade in June of twenty fifteen, another
bump up, and again not that for a unit that,
as you said earlier, may not have a career path.
I mean, getting the gold shield in and of itself
is an honor. It's one of the ones that's most
portraited in the movies, and that's no knock on the
other ranks. The other ranks are great too, But everyone
knows that gold shield. So many police departments across the
country have copied methods or iterations of the gold Shield

(01:01:02):
for their own. So getting second grade, you know, I imagine
again a career as long as yours have been by
that point ten years in aviation had to feel pretty
good too.

Speaker 2 (01:01:10):
And a bump and pay it that.

Speaker 3 (01:01:12):
Oh yeah, it was you know. I was waiting for
that for a while because you know, my role had
changed in the aviation unit, and it was it was
very surprising that I got the gold shield. But once
I got it now, I started to do more things
in the unit. I started, I became a flight instructor.
I was very instrumental in getting thirteen pilots checked out
into the new helicopter and getting them instrument ratings, which

(01:01:34):
again would allow them to fly into the clouds and
without any visual references. So that was a prerequisite, and
I had a good time doing that. I loved teaching guys.
I loved I really enjoyed getting into the helicopter now
and teaching the new guys how to do certain things
that I did. You know, I wouldn't say I didn't
enjoy the patrol of the airc Rescue asset aspect of it,

(01:01:56):
but I really enjoyed teaching and I did that for
a long time, you know, until the day I left.
I taught, so you know, it was it was really
nice to get the bump in second grade. And from
what I understand now, there's a couple of guys in
there that are getting the same and there's even some
shirt graders there, which is really nice to hear. That's good.

Speaker 1 (01:02:15):
Good as they should, as they should. You know, we
fast forward to April of twenty eighteen, twenty seven years
in the job. You know, there's always that moment where
you say, all right, you know, I've had my fun.
Time to go, And sometimes it's a series of things
that ultimately leads you to that conclusion. Family and injury,
whatever the case may be, just general, satisfactional what you accomplished.

(01:02:35):
What was it for you that made you say, all right,
you know what, this is a good time to go.
I got my second career waiting for me. I did
everything I wanted to do.

Speaker 3 (01:02:45):
Yeah, I mean, you know, you reach a point where
you start feeling like the old guy there. You know,
you start and the younger guys start busting your chops
and not saying that you take that seriously, but you
kind of know you've got to make room for other people.
And you know, I've reached my pinnacle there. I got
everything that I had to get out of the unit,
the training, the pilot ratings, the enjoyment of doing what

(01:03:10):
I did, and I you know, I was on the customer.
I was only forty seven years old, and I said,
you know, it's time to make a career move because
in the aviation industry, as you approach or if you're fifty,
your marketability goes down a lot. So I wanted to
capture that. And you know, it was a tug in war.
It was a real emotional tug of war in my
head to leave. But I had so much more that

(01:03:33):
I wanted to look forward to do in the future
and that I'm doing right now. And you know, I
look back and I'm thankful for the career I had.
The flying that we do, or that I did in
the aviation unit, is flying that you'll never experience in
any other type of organization, you know, unless you're doing
law force again, right, you know, and particularly in Manhattan.

(01:03:56):
I mean you could fly over the city at night
and just in awe every time, and even retired, you know,
as I fly now eight years or seven years later,
I'm still in awe of the site of Manhattan lit
up at night from the helicopter, from an airplane. It's
mind blowing. It's mind blowing. It really is beautiful.

Speaker 2 (01:04:15):
It's a heck of a view.

Speaker 1 (01:04:16):
And I was gonna ask you about that life in
the private sector now being a pilot, what are your
days like?

Speaker 3 (01:04:21):
Well, you know, I kind of I recently in the
last eighteen months and flying a jet airplane now for
a private owner corporate. I've kind of gone away from
the helicopter industry. The helicopter industry in New York City
is it's a dwindling industry because there's a lot of
environmental issues with it, a lot of noise issues with it. So,

(01:04:44):
you know, I had a pivot, and I was an
airplane pilot already when I first started. So now I'm
back to flying the airplanes again. I just recently, let's see, yeah,
about last year I stopped flying the helicopter and now
I'm full time exclusively in the airplane. I'm working for
a private owner who has a corporate jet and I
fly primarily on the weekends, a couple of maybe two

(01:05:08):
trips to Europe a year and some domestic stuff. So
it's really enjoyable. I get a lot of downtime, and
you know, a salaried employee, so that even sweetens the deal.

Speaker 1 (01:05:18):
Yeah, of course, get by to care of yourself, to
care of your family, you know, and then there's the
more you can ask for.

Speaker 2 (01:05:25):
And that's the thing that I always love to see
with guys.

Speaker 1 (01:05:27):
No matter what department they're retiring out of, the FD
or the PD, the second act, if you got the
second act going, because retirement's not easy, is you know,
my buddy Danny McNally said on the show several years ago,
retirement's a full time business. It's a tough thing to do.
And he was right then, he's right now. You know,
when guys are able to transition and see if there
is life after the job and do just as well
for themselves in the private sector as they did when

(01:05:48):
they were on the job, you always love to see that,
and hopefully that's a good thing for all the young
guys on the job.

Speaker 2 (01:05:52):
Now line it up. Now, get good at some things
outside the job. Now, that way, when the.

Speaker 1 (01:05:55):
Time comes, you got something you can transition to and
there's no void there. Yeah, it does seem like they're
avoid with you, which is good to see.

Speaker 3 (01:06:01):
Yeah. No, it's uh life is brand, you know, and
I'm blessed. I really feel that.

Speaker 1 (01:06:06):
Yeah, absolutely, before I get to the rapid fire. Chris
Ebdens in the chat is asking were you at Aviation
when Lou Saverro was the XO.

Speaker 3 (01:06:14):
Yes, louis a good guy, yep. And and when I
left and Jimmy Cole left, he became the CEO of Aviation.

Speaker 2 (01:06:21):
Okay, he's still there now or is he?

Speaker 3 (01:06:24):
No? Not, it's my understanding that he's not. I think
he's still on the job, but not at the Aviation unit.

Speaker 2 (01:06:30):
Okay.

Speaker 1 (01:06:31):
Well, shout out to everybody from Aviation that continues to
get it done.

Speaker 2 (01:06:34):
On patroller for the Special Cause.

Speaker 1 (01:06:36):
Uh, definitely another you know, unsung component of the NYPD
in a huge part of the Special Operations Division. It's
a regret of mine. So I went down to rima
day which the Emergency Service Unit holds at Floyd Bennett
Field every last Saturday of April Sergeant John Flynn.

Speaker 2 (01:06:51):
Who you probably know.

Speaker 3 (01:06:52):
I know John very well.

Speaker 1 (01:06:53):
Yeah, very good man, and a shout out to John.
He wanted he wanted to take me up in one
of the helicopters if the weather permitted. Unfortunately it was
a rainy day, really windy too, so we could and
they were grounded for that day understandablely. But hopefully if
I'm down there next year for Reba Day and six
months from now, I can tag along for that, assuming
it the weather's a lot better. Of course, the one
year I didn't go, which was this year, was a
beautiful day. So hopefully he out for me when I

(01:07:16):
go down to Floyd Bennett the next time around. But
again big shout out to Aviation. Thanks for all you did, Mike,
and thanks for telling your stories tonight. So you're not
off the hook yet. As you know you, here comes
to rapid fire and it's a pretty straightforward one. Five
hit and run questions from me, five hit run answers
from you. First one either on patrol or in aviation.
Funniest call you ever responded.

Speaker 3 (01:07:36):
To a peez What his call? I've ever responded to? Hm,
I'm trying to think about this. I have the on patrol.
I think it would have to be on patrol for sure. Yeah,
and this is dark. This is very dark.

Speaker 1 (01:07:54):
That's fine, Gallus humorous part of the Mike can New
Even podcast.

Speaker 3 (01:07:56):
We got a call for an explosion in a home
and we walk into the house and this is really dark.
But the guy, you know, we walk into the house,
I smell gunpowder and I see a blood trail and
I go up to the window. The window's open, but
there's a screen on the window, and on the window
in the sill is somebody's thumb detached from their hand.

(01:08:20):
So I followed the blood trail and we followed the
blood trail into the bathroom. There's a guy into the
sink and he's rolling, you know, he just has the
water running on his hand. And he's like, I blew
up my thumb, and I said, what happened? He goes.
I went to throw the m ad out the window
and it bounced off the screen because I thought the
screen was open, and I picked it up and he
blew up the thumb. Now again dark humor. But he

(01:08:43):
was fine. You know, he lost his thumb, but I
wouldn't say it was the funniest call, but it's the
most morble call for sure. Yeah.

Speaker 1 (01:08:51):
Well, hopefully he got a s thumb bag they got
out of ice. I'm seeing hopefully, And even then it's
sack of a story to tell. Lesson learn don't have
m ads in your house?

Speaker 3 (01:09:00):
Maybe, Oh no, and you have your screen open and have.

Speaker 1 (01:09:03):
Your screen open too, Yeah, screen open too. As far
as patrol is concerned, this one. I like asking the
guys lately on the PDNFT side, if you could pick
one little era from your career across the twenty seven
years to go back to, what is the sweet spot?
If you could go back to work tomorrow, what's the
sweet spot? You're hopping in the time machine traveling back
to oh.

Speaker 3 (01:09:22):
Man from nineteen ninety five through two thousand. Some of
the best times I had on patrol, the most laughs,
the greatest bunch of guys and gals, and it was
just the front row seat to the I think you've
said this from so many other guys out here, but

(01:09:43):
you have a front row seat to the biggest circus
in the world. And it was just it was just great.
And it's just the people I worked with. It was
just phenomenal.

Speaker 2 (01:09:49):
Phenomenal.

Speaker 1 (01:09:51):
And I'm going to borrow a line from a freddie Manzilila,
retired sergeant out of the Arts and Explosion Squad. Greatest
show on Earth, but the NYPD has the backstage pass.
That's right, and that's true. You got the SDN Y
as well. You guys both got stage pass. The greatest
should on Earth, and that's again iron clad, iron clad.
A lot of details you work between patroll and aviation.
I'm sure favorite detail you ever.

Speaker 3 (01:10:11):
Worked, by far. I would think the best detail I
ever got to work was New Year's Eve. I mean,
it's it's phenomenal. It's cold, but you know, it's just
if you get in there early, everybody you know, gets
into the pens, the thing happens, and then within twenty
minutes everybody's gone and that's it. But it's just nice

(01:10:34):
to be there. I mean, it's definitely a on a
lot of people buckets. You know, a lot of people
from outside the country, particularly on their buckets. But to
be a cop there, it's phenomenal.

Speaker 2 (01:10:43):
It's great, and you get paid for it. Ain't bad either,
and you get.

Speaker 3 (01:10:45):
Paid for it.

Speaker 2 (01:10:46):
That's the best part of it. Yeah.

Speaker 1 (01:10:48):
Fourth question of Rabbit fire, and you could say multiple
because again, different snapshots of your career. I'm sure you
went to different places. Favorite bar and if not bar
restaurant in the city, you could say multiple.

Speaker 3 (01:10:58):
Oh wow. Well, as a cop in the nine to
four precinct, we used to attend multiple bars. But I
think the best bar that we ever had, that we
had a lot of time was a call box in
the nine to four person. It was just a small
little bar and it was on Meeker Avenue i think
at the time. But a lot of good memories there,

(01:11:19):
a lot of good memories, got a lot of good
laughs and good people that hung out there.

Speaker 1 (01:11:24):
I love the name too, It's a clever name. And
the last question, the rabbit fire advice you would give
anyone coming on the job now.

Speaker 3 (01:11:33):
Eyes open, ears open, keep your mouth shut, watch your back,
and cover your ass.

Speaker 2 (01:11:39):
All of it, all of it, all of it.

Speaker 1 (01:11:42):
Yeah, as we said earlier, the pendulum is a little
bit different right now for New York City police officers.
But hopefully the pendulum does always swing, and hopefully it'll
swing back the way it used to go. Yeah, back
when you were working the nineties post Bratton of course.
And then they're into Kelly years as well. But to
all the guys and gals active now, especially those naviation
and on the street and patrol wherever you may be,
please continue to stay safe and heed that advice. It's

(01:12:04):
good advice, not just for the police department but for
any job. I want to thank everyone that tuned in
a night. I see all you in the chat, and
I appreciate all you in the chat before we say
goodbye to the audience, any shout outs to anyone or
anything like, yeah, I mean.

Speaker 3 (01:12:17):
A shout out to all the guys in aviation that
I spent so many years with, all my friends, most
of them are gone from there, but you know, fly safe,
be safe. And to all the guys in the nine
to four precint I mean that was the highlight of
my career. Those guys were just phenomenal.

Speaker 2 (01:12:33):
So absolutely yeah. Yeah, it's a great place to work.

Speaker 1 (01:12:36):
Thanks again, stick around, we'll talk off here, and again
thanks to everybody that tuned in a night. For those
of you that will tune in later, either watching the
replay of course, or listening on the audio side coming
up next on the Mike Didnwaven Podcast. He started his
career in Alexandria, Virginia, but he's originally a native of
New York. Came back to the FDN Y in nineteen
ninety four, got to Rescue One in nineteen ninety eight,
where he stayed until he retired in twenty fourteen, and

(01:12:58):
trying to get him for a while, saw him years
ago in the Still Writing documentary, which is still one
of my favorites of this day. Joel Kanaski will be
here for volume sixty three of the Best of the
Bravest Interviews with the FDN Wives Elite. That's this Friday,
six pm. Very much looking forward to that show, years
in the making, much like tonight's interview was years in
the making.

Speaker 2 (01:13:17):
We'll line up the week after that working on a few.

Speaker 1 (01:13:19):
Guests, so I'll keep you guys posted on social media
if we're able to book people for the ensuing week.
Now for tonight's outro song for those of you on
the audio side, fitting from his nineteen seventy six album
Fly Like an Eagle? Who else but Steve Miller Fly
Like an Eagle? In the meantime on behalf of retired
NYPD detective Mike Sileo and producer Victor and All of
you in the chat Mike Alan, We'll see you next

(01:13:40):
time and stay safe.

Speaker 6 (01:14:03):
Time gets on slipping, slipping, slipping into future. Time gets
on slipping, slipping seven into the future.

Speaker 5 (01:14:30):
Modified like an eagle to.

Speaker 4 (01:14:34):
The sea, like the Mystery every day. I want to
try like an e.

Speaker 5 (01:14:44):
To dream, show.

Speaker 3 (01:14:50):
The baby.

Speaker 5 (01:14:53):
You don't have enough to eat? Shoe children without shoes
on the feet. How people living in the street. But
there's a show.

Speaker 3 (01:15:10):
Too.

Speaker 4 (01:15:11):
I can eve to see, I can hear them. I'm
not staring, caring me. I want to to show.

Speaker 7 (01:15:30):
Keeps on sipping second sevens into the future. Time keeps
on slipping seven seven into the future. Time keeps on
slipping seven sevens into the future.

Speaker 5 (01:15:58):
Time keeps on slippings seven seven into jadd.

Speaker 3 (01:16:26):
To fly.

Speaker 4 (01:16:27):
I can go.

Speaker 1 (01:16:29):
To s.

Speaker 4 (01:16:33):
Start try a.

Speaker 5 (01:17:05):
Ti tut.

Speaker 4 (01:17:08):
Tutt tutt.

Speaker 5 (01:17:19):
Tutted do.

Speaker 4 (01:17:24):
Turn.

Speaker 5 (01:17:24):
It's a setting sentence into the future.

Speaker 3 (01:17:33):
And turn.

Speaker 4 (01:17:34):
It's a set and.

Speaker 5 (01:17:35):
Sad and setting into the future. You in

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.css-14f5ked{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:2;overflow:hidden;}Episode 342: NYPD Detective & Pilot Mike Sileo

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