Episode 343: The E-Men: Inside The NYPD’s Emergency Service Unit: Paul Kwicienski (Volume 49)

Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:04):
You're listening to the Bike Did you even podcast hosted
by media personality and consultant Mike Glow.

Speaker 2 (00:44):
Oh yeah, we got all the.

Speaker 3 (01:00):
You're listening to the team.

Speaker 1 (01:02):
Inside the NYPD's Emergency Service Unit. Welcome, Welcome, Welcome, Monday
night edition of Then Like the New Day Podcast, Episode
three hundred and forty three.

Speaker 3 (01:11):
Good to have you with.

Speaker 1 (01:11):
Us for what will be another volume of the event
Inside the NYPD's Emergency Service Unit. Welcome to everyone tuning
in from YouTube, LinkedIn and Facebook. Quick editors note, I
know we were supposed to have episode three hundred and
forty three actually on Friday with Joe Kanaski, a rescue
one who's going to be volume sixty three of the
best of the previous stuff Interviews with the fan to
lead so Joel, as you know for those of you

(01:32):
that watch him Like a Salty, he lives abroad and
they had a pretty bad storm over there where he's
on air, and unfortunately a lightning strike of all things
messed up the guys Router. He was looking forward to
coming on the email me the day before to mention them.
Unfortunately a signal went down which led to the cancelation
of that episode. I'm working to reschedule that. The hope
is to get him on the next couple of weeks.

(01:53):
That way we can finally get him on the air,
because you guys know how long I've been wanting him
as a guest in this program.

Speaker 3 (01:58):
He's got a lot of great stories.

Speaker 1 (01:59):
Was a rescue one sixteen years, so we know that
he'd be a great interview and we look forward to
eventually slopp him in and finally get a chance to
profile him on the show. Speaking of profiling people, the
previous episode was also a really good one interesting one.
Mike Silejo, former NYPD Aviation pilot, started out as New
York City transit cop Lateral in nineteen ninety two to
the NYPD worked in Brooklyn the ninety four for thirteen

(02:21):
years before aviation.

Speaker 3 (02:22):
And that was a really really interesting episode because.

Speaker 1 (02:25):
Obviously with this mini series and esc we chronicle a
lot of what NYPD Special Operations Division does. We know
of emergency service, we chronicle guys from school, but a
little bit of Harbor too, and a little bit of Highway,
although I should get more Highway guys on, but we'd
never really profiled aviation until that episode. You know, we
had to move bay On previously too, so it was
good to go into what they did and the important

(02:46):
mission they have from the air while the rest of
the department make sure things are on the up and
up on the.

Speaker 3 (02:50):
Ground before we get to tonight's guest.

Speaker 1 (02:52):
With this volume forty nine, the e man a couple
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Speaker 3 (02:56):
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Speaker 1 (02:58):
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Well Bill, Bill's good guy, and a real quick note
before we begin the program. You saw my email at
the end of the MC Media Editing Services at for
my NYPD friends working on the second book. As I
announced on Facebook and LinkedIn, my second book will be

(04:49):
titled police Don't Move The NYPD Investigations you Should know about.
If you have a taste that you can think of
that you worked or you know somebody who worked and
you think should make the book, email that to me
or message me on LinkedIn, messaged me on Facebook and
give me the details on it. That way I can
put it together and making it into a chapter in
the book we're targeting and release early next year. For

(05:10):
that second book, again, police Don't Move the NPD Investigations
you should know about. Stay tuned for when I dropped that.
My next guest is a seized professional with a distinguished
career spanning over four decades in law enforcement, counter terrorism,
and homeland security. He began his journey in nineteen eighty
one as a patrol officer with the NPD, quickly making
its marks across various units, including anti crime and later

(05:31):
on the Emergency Service Unit, which he was in from
nineteen eighty five until nineteen ninety. Rising through the ranks,
he became a detective and was promptly promoted along the
way to detective second grade. After serving in the Major
Case Squad and later joining the FBI NYPD Joint Terrorism
Task Force. Investigated multiple incidents, most notably the egypt There
nineteen nine to ninety crash, I should say, and the

(05:51):
nineteen ninety eight US embassy bombings in Kenya and Tanzania.
Also did some work with the FBI's New York Field
Office as an investigative specialist focusing on counterintelligence, and that
for this volume forty nine at the event inside the
NYPD's Emergency Service with former Truck one alumni once a
Man Always Demn Paul Patchinski, Paul, welcome, how are.

Speaker 2 (06:11):
You, Good morning, good evening, Mike, Thanks for having me.

Speaker 3 (06:14):
Thanks for being here.

Speaker 1 (06:15):
So before we get into everything involving your career, first
things first, tell me where did you grow up and
did you have any family on the job.

Speaker 3 (06:23):
What attracted you to the job early on?

Speaker 2 (06:25):
Yeah, sure, I grew up in Brooklyn, born and raised
there in Sunset Park. My dad was on a job.
He came in in nineteen fifty five and stayed till
nineteen seventy five where he passed away. But I was
the third. We myself and my two brothers were the
first three brothers to come on a job at once
in our class. In nineteen eighty two. We came in

(06:48):
with three thousand guys. So yeah, we were the first
one's first set of brothers of three to come on
a job. So I listen, I was around my whole life,
and uh, I remember going to the station house. Uh
my father pick us up, bring us there. That wasn't
the old line. There was a lot of cops kids

(07:08):
there and would be like hunt in the day room.
And uh, I'll never forget the serge's name, John Stacks
in the seventh two precincts. He was an old timer
back then, and you know how high the deaths are.
He had those half glasses. He made sure all the
kids did their homework, had milk and cookies, and at
the end of the tour, all the cops. You know,
it was a real family. It was a real family

(07:30):
back then. You know. It was. It was really good,
really good time and that's that's why I became on
the job because of my dad. His name wasn't Teddy Twazinsky.
I'm sorry about that.

Speaker 3 (07:41):
I can't even picture that. It's amazing that they actually
have a little spot for the kids.

Speaker 2 (07:44):
Yeah, it was. It was truly a family setting. Uh
and and all the cops they all knew us, you
know what I mean, you know it would I can't
say nobody ever feared a cop. It was they were
our family, you know, they were our family. That's that's
the way it was. You know, it was a good time.
And you know they had the old green, black and

(08:05):
white radio cause back then, you know, yeah.

Speaker 1 (08:09):
Yeah, they didn't switch over to the blue and white
suntil I think the oh no, that's bringing it back
with that.

Speaker 3 (08:16):
I love it.

Speaker 2 (08:16):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, good stuff, good stuff. Absolutely.

Speaker 1 (08:19):
For those of you in the chat that I have
a question football, make sure you put it in the
chat and I'll make sure I highlight it and time
is appropriate. So you get on the job in eighty one,
and you know, back then, of course it's become a
four pre merger. You could go anywhere. It's you're kind
of at the mercy of where they send you. So
you could go a city, you could go house, and
you could go trans that you ended up going city
in this instance. But just after the academy, back then
we had the NSUS, they were in full effect.

Speaker 3 (08:41):
Where did you first get a signed after you graduated?

Speaker 2 (08:44):
Well, you know, and people on the podcast and I'm
sure the chat room will left what I say it is,
but I didn't have a rabbi. So I went to
Brooklyn North, where you know they punished you because you
don't have any hooks. So I went to NSU thirteen,
which was in Brownsville, East, New York, and Benvervett Steivesant
covered the eight one to seven three and the seven

(09:06):
five precincts, all busy, busy shops, you know, and it
was it was a great experience. Uh, you know, everybody
wanted to get out of Brooklyn North and and you
know a lot for traveling purposes and everything. But once
I got there, I was with my partner, Bobby Kennevan,
who I didn't know at the time, but we wound
up going through the rest of our career a little

(09:27):
bit together, and we went to NSU and became partners
there and everything. Uh So we worked the eight one
seven five together. So when we got out, so it
was busy place, but I once I was there, I
absolutely loved Brooklyn North. Nothing like it.

Speaker 1 (09:44):
Nothing like it, absolutely because you know what, and we
covered it before, and it doesn't matter where you're working,
if you're in the fireside, if you're on the police side,
if you're in busy houses like that, that's how you
learn the guys that this is no knocking anybody else,
which is saying, listen, the guys that ended up making
it through the ranks that come from houses like that,
those are the ones that you want in charge of things.
As they've been through it. They've seen so many different scenarios.

(10:07):
They're battle tested, for lack of a better word, And
back then, I mean nothing against the eight one either.

Speaker 4 (10:12):
You know it.

Speaker 1 (10:13):
We'll give you two, you give us twenty two minutes,
we'll give you a homae.

Speaker 3 (10:17):
They were jumping back.

Speaker 2 (10:18):
It was a busy place. Even on the foot past.
You could not run into a hamside. I'll yeah, I'll
tell you a real quick story. We get detailed to
Thanksgiving Day parade. Actually one day meet me and another
detective from the seven to five who had back then
probably twenty five years on a job. Two combat for

(10:41):
uses Bene Lavala, good solid guy, Jery Abrahamson net forget.
So it turns out we're staying on the corner. Maybe
you know our uniforms warning as crisp as the guys
have been hat me. You know where Oz was a
little soiled. And I remember Chief Hale. I don't know
if you guys remember him from back in the day,
but he was the command of Manhattan. That We're up

(11:01):
at fifty ninth Street by the jewelry store and we're
standing there and he's coming past us, and he makes
a beeline for us. And I'm a young kid on
a job. I don't always think. I said with Dad,
he's coming after us. So he comes off. He goes,
what do you guys doing here? And Jerry says, so
he says, Chief, just a couple of ghetto cops here

(11:24):
trying to enjoy the parade. So he took a close
look like this on a collar brass and he saw
seven five on. He goes, carry on, man, and he
didn't bother us the rest of the day. It was good.
It was good people.

Speaker 1 (11:39):
And we talk about gaining experience and places like that,
and I know it all probably blends together because there
were so many of them. When you look back at
those early years of control, what are the holy crap moments?

Speaker 3 (11:49):
That was quite the call. That was a text that
you can think back on.

Speaker 2 (11:53):
Oh my god, it's it's there's so many jobs, especially
in East New York. I mean, just backing up even
the other precincts. When you got you got on a
Friday night, you're turning out fourteen cars, two anti crimes,
a sergeant North, sergeants South, and a duty captain one command.
That's more than most people have any commands. And that's

(12:16):
just covering the four to twelve We would sometimes get,
you know, get into the car. They're holding forty jobs
and you go you seven three, seventy five eight one,
you go to a shots fired, You got shots fired,
there's no maybe you know, they either missed them or
you got a body there. That's how it was. It's
no joke. It was a busy, busy shot. Did you

(12:39):
know just the calls, the volume of calls you got
in Brooklyn North backing up to seven nine they would
jump in and back us up, eight three would back
us up. H It was it was a true brotherhood
out there in Brooklyn, North you were. Let me tell you,
it was us against them, that's no lie. The bad
guys were bad guys there, and that's when crack was

(12:59):
come and then the crack was whack. You know.

Speaker 1 (13:02):
Yeah, I was gonna say that was right around that
time because you had dealers.

Speaker 3 (13:06):
I don't I mean, I know the mafia was pretty
prevalent around this time.

Speaker 1 (13:09):
I don't know how act if they were around that time,
but they really weren't on the street like the dealers were.
I'm not giving the mafia credit. They're back guys too,
but there was a little bit of a not class
of this that's.

Speaker 3 (13:18):
Too strong a word, but decorum.

Speaker 1 (13:19):
I guess with them that they weren't really shriek thugs
in the way that these dealers would actually run against them.
And then the addicts were off this stuff. But this
is more sad than anything, you know, it's just being
shipped out. They're acting out and you got you gotta
deal with them as well. So it was a lot, man,
I don't know what you did.

Speaker 2 (13:32):
Yeah, it's it seemed like every time you had a
barricade with an EEDP or something, they were on crack. Yeah,
and let me tell you they were strong. It was
low no babies that and that's one of the reasons
I wanted to go to es U. I saw, I
saw the guys that they fuck and the guys at
six truck or sometime we call extra rips to the barricade,

(13:54):
and I'm like, man, these guys, these guys are here
to take care of business. And we lost you.

Speaker 3 (13:59):
We still got the screens frozen, but we can hear you.

Speaker 2 (14:03):
Is that me?

Speaker 3 (14:04):
Yeah's a little frozen, but we can still hear you.
We still got you.

Speaker 2 (14:10):
Paul.

Speaker 1 (14:10):
Let's say Paul's having a little bit of technical difficulties.
Producer Vic, you might want to put him in the
back screen. Will work that out. We'll wait for Paul
to come back. This is volume forty nine of the
EMAI inside the NYPD's Emergency Service Unit. You know again,
we adjust, we don't we don't panic, We just pivot.
So while Paul storks out those technical difficulties, we saying
helllo to all of you.

Speaker 3 (14:29):
In the chat.

Speaker 1 (14:30):
We mentioned John Costello earlier. He's here as he always is. John,
every loyal viewer. We got Christian Williams, we got Steve
Birado a ka pee wee. We got Matt Shirley here.
Donthan Zalez said, Joe Malik is better half. Goober Pile,
you're first. Good to see you in the chat. Maybe
a little play on ober Pile and Garrett Lingering formerly
a rested three or four We gets the show. Kenny
Bowen is also here as well.

Speaker 3 (14:53):
We got Paul back.

Speaker 1 (14:53):
Now, good to see you Kenny and I we'll bring
Paul back into the show.

Speaker 3 (14:57):
There you go, Paul, you're back.

Speaker 2 (14:58):
Who does that me? Or you?

Speaker 3 (15:00):
That was you? But you're both now Okay, you left
off talking.

Speaker 1 (15:05):
About how it was either well we mentioned the crack,
you're dealing with the eedps, you're dealing with the barricades.

Speaker 3 (15:11):
That where we left off.

Speaker 2 (15:12):
Okay, Yeah, so you would see emergency service show up,
and you know, you get to know the guys because
the squads all worked together. It didn't matter if they
were to specialized unit or not. The squads were all
all the same. But you know, here come these guys.
Many they come and get you out of jail. They're
gonna take care of some business here, and this thing
is gonna be over one way or another, you know.

(15:33):
And they most times, most times, these guys really use
their mouth more than they used force. You know, they
just had that knock down. And no matter how violent,
unless you know, they were really whacked out, the issue,
guys were pretty much able to to make people walk out.
You know. Sometimes listen, they had to do what they
had to do, but you know, most times they you know,

(15:55):
you just watched how they handle themselves. Big difference. It
was a big difference. And that's what I said.

Speaker 1 (16:00):
I wanted to do that before we get to that though,
there's another component to your police and career. By the way,
Kenny Bowen to the chat, so's Billy Kennedy. They both said,
all right, guys, how you doing. You can see you both.
Always a pleasure to see you both in the chat,
both former guests of this show as well. Anti Crime
is and I love Chronicle Net Unit. I love Chronicling
Street Crime too, which is Bygon Unit now. But back then,

(16:22):
as I've said before, and I know to the audience,
I sound like a broken record, anti crime was anti
crime and that's no knock on what the guys are
doing now. What they're doing now, it's just as important,
but back then, not as many resources the city was
really jumping with crime, and you had to blend in
and you were functioning at a preseick level. City wid
street crime is a little bit different. They could go anywhere,
but you guys had that area. You knew that area.

(16:44):
But here's the tricky part, and this is what I
want to ask you about the purpse know yet the
smart ones do they pay attention to who's who?

Speaker 3 (16:50):
They remember faces from patrol. So tell me about blending in.

Speaker 1 (16:53):
And like I asked Bobby Boyce when he was not
a couple of weeks ago, patience because you're not listening
to the radio. The only way you're going on the
radio call is if it's a ten third correct.

Speaker 2 (17:01):
Correct? So why was an anti crime when I got
to the seven zero command? That's an east flatworsh That
was when I finally got to Brooklyn South there after
several years, I was an anti crime with my partner
Bobby Kennevin, who I was when I'm up partnering up
with in e Su. But it was it was tough
to blend in very mixed neighborhood. You had Jewish Orthodox Jewish,

(17:25):
Conservative Jewish Irish at one end, uh solid black and
Puerto Rican. It was just a mixed diverse community. Uh
so it was it was tough to blend in in
the northern end of the command. But uh, you know,
that's when guys were growing beards and you know, just
kind of like letting himself go, you know, along with

(17:46):
the CEO. He's you know, he said, listen, I need
gun collars, I need this, I need that. So our
boss was good, he says, listen, my guy's got to
blend in. So that's what we did. You know, we
kind of dressed unconventionally. We didn't use a police car,
you know, playing clothes car. You're authorized to use an
old vehicle that we we attained. Uh but you know

(18:08):
you had to be careful, like you said, because the perps.
You know, I made a lot of collars, and so
did the guys in the team. You didn't get into
anti crime unless you made a lot of collars. You know,
you got to be an active copy. If you're a
Summons guy, don't they don't even look at you, you know,
And I've seen guys put in for that. And the
CEO said, you gotta be kidding me, you know what
up stakes? Uh So, yeah, we uh We did a

(18:30):
lot of good stuff and a lot of it was observation,
and you didn't want to break your cover unless it
was a ten thirteen and that was over the air,
you know, the nine eleven ones. We really didn't jump
into them too much because a lot of times they
were a tool by the perps to get the cops
to another location. UH and having the other area the
preasing open and you know, do you know robbery or

(18:52):
something like that. You know, so you had to be
a little little smart, not that I'm a genius, but
you had to have a little bit of each smart
how to work this thing. And we worked in teams
at three usually UH usually had three teams working minimum
of two teams working on a four to twelve. We're
doing north and the south, you know type of thing.
But we always let the patrol guys know we're working.

Speaker 5 (19:16):
UH.

Speaker 2 (19:16):
We had the color it to day. We make sure
even with the new people, we make sure they saw
us at roll call, so there's no blue on blue
And there was an accident and PAULI gets a bullet
because this guy doesn't know what I am, you know, right,
So it was always happened one hundred percent it's happened.
It was a very uh, very trying time uh in

(19:38):
anti crime. And again, crack was really really uh uh
active at that point, you know, and they would get
a gun, these these crackheads, and they shoot up a place,
to a stick up at a bodega. It was it
was common practice. You know, that was happening all over
the city.

Speaker 1 (19:56):
Yeah, and I mean all over the country too, because
look at what it is New York, look at it
to La.

Speaker 3 (20:00):
I mean, it was taking a stranglehold.

Speaker 1 (20:03):
In the eighties across the board, and you know, the
wrong people were making money. A lot of people were
getting into civilians, junkies, destroying their own lives, destroying their
families in the process. It left so much devastation, both
physically and mentally in its wake. And you know, we've
never seen anything like it before. We haven't seen anything
like it since, although fetanol's getting pretty damn close, and
I don't like that very much. But you know, with

(20:27):
that being said, you know, in anti crime, there's a
lot of rewarding moments too. You make a lot Because
you mentioned something earlier, we'll touch on that observation. Is
everything in a unit like that besides blending in a
little bulge in the pocket, could be some money, could
be some house keys. Nine times out of ten, if
it's a guy that's there at a certain hour the night,
it's a gun, you know. And not only do you

(20:47):
know it's a gun, but now you have to approach
it correctly because he could get jumping, he could get scared,
he could pull it out and all of a sudden,
it's the okay, Keral, nobody wants that. It's a fast
way to get yourself there, you know, to an early grade.
If not in the hospital. Then so tell me about observing,
making sure you're certain because you got three sets of
eyes there, and then making sure you moved in without
giving any tricks in the trade away to make sure

(21:09):
you corner the guy, and you got the guy and
you pulled this piece from him before he could pulled
his piece.

Speaker 2 (21:14):
Yeah, it was you know, you knew who the players
were in the precincts, most most guys in anti crime,
Like I said, they were all gun guys anyway. Uh
So it was a matter of know who the players were.
And then you know, you get the young bucks that
come in out of nowhere and they think they're it
you know, but like you said, we had two other
guys in the car. Uh so it was a matter

(21:35):
of you know, really scoping this guy, get a game
plan before you jump them. You know. You know, at
two o'clock in the morning, that's a gun. That's a gun.
You know, you watch, you watch the area, you watch
the traffic that's coming up. You know, his hand, their hands.
And then there's other guys and then there's a security
team for the drug dealers. You know, those are the

(21:55):
guys with the bulge of their waistband. You know. That's
why street crime was so good back in the day
when when they were allowed to be streat crime, those
guys were excellent out at what they did, you know.
So yeah, it was definitely your team effort. And sometimes,
you know what, a radio call would pass by, or
would ask for a radio car to pass by, just

(22:16):
to get their attention, and it maybe maybe would jump
out at just the right moment when they get focusing
on that radio car, not so much us right out.

Speaker 3 (22:25):
That's the time, that's the time, that's the.

Speaker 2 (22:26):
Time to do it. It's safe everybody, right, you know what.

Speaker 1 (22:30):
And street crime was one of those units that they
paid in blood sweat and tears because the things I
was thinking about. You got to anti crime not too
long after Bobby Biladeau was killed. I mean that nineteen eighties,
him and his partner and Bobby buildel one more decorated
cops and ny people. The only I think he's the
only guy to get two metal of hotters, one of
them possibly you know. Yeah, him and his partner spot

(22:50):
six guys. A couple of them were carrying guns. One
of them turned around, fired.

Speaker 3 (22:53):
And killed by far unfortunately back in eighty.

Speaker 1 (22:55):
So it's important to know this stuff because again and again,
I'm not justifying what these guys as you're doing, but
they're involved in drugs and they're involved in gangs. Sometimes
they may thank your cops and they know that. Sometimes
they may think your purpse. So either way, cornering them
and then sorting it out later through paperwork and cups
as opposed to bullets flying, that's what a smart cop does.
Because you know, any smart cop does not have a

(23:18):
hair trigger. You don't want to go to your gun
unless you absolutely have to.

Speaker 2 (23:21):
No nobody, nobody wakes up in the morning, puts on
the blue suit or we're playing clothest. Yeah, I think
I gotta go out and shoot somebody tonight.

Speaker 3 (23:29):
Yeah, that's just.

Speaker 2 (23:30):
Not in the realm of reality. Nobody, nobody I knew
my entire career to this day ever wanted to shoot anybody,
right if they were putting that position, They were put
in that position by the perps own actions.

Speaker 3 (23:45):
You know, no place.

Speaker 2 (23:46):
That's just the way it is. You win, stupid price,
You go home at the end of the night. That's
the that's the name of the game, right, you know.

Speaker 1 (23:52):
And like I said before, and I said it a
million times and I'll say it a million and one,
this job is serious.

Speaker 2 (23:57):
You know.

Speaker 3 (23:58):
You go down to one.

Speaker 1 (23:59):
Police flo there's a lot of names on that wall
of people that never got the chance to make that
walk to the pension section.

Speaker 3 (24:05):
So they got killed.

Speaker 1 (24:06):
Yes, different reasons, different scenarios. But the point is, you
gotta go home. You gotta do what you gotta do
to make sure you walk. You walk out the door
in the morning, you walk back into it at night.

Speaker 2 (24:15):
That's any game. You sign out, Yeah, you sign out,
that really goes Yeah, we you know, I'll tell you
later on about Frank Osala. Frank didn't sign out one
night and you think about them all the time. At
least I know the guys who want truck.

Speaker 3 (24:30):
Do Yeah, he's not forgotten. He's not forgotten.

Speaker 1 (24:32):
And that brings us actually too emergency in eighty five,
you know, as you mentioned earlier, seeing them on jobs
when you were in Brooklyn. One truck in nineteen eighty
five is a heck of a place. We were talking about
some of the names off the air. Getting into ESU
is not easy. You know, you got to have at
least five years on and a lot of these units
helps to do someone that's not me knocking the unit.

Speaker 3 (24:50):
That's just the name of the game. If you know
someone does go along the way and you have.

Speaker 1 (24:54):
To have a specific background. Are you an active cop?
Do you have maybe a trade that you come from
in construction? Yes, it look for things like so tell
me about the process to try and get into s
U and then the moment that you got to call, hey,
you're going to STS.

Speaker 2 (25:06):
So it's it's it's funny because you know, I was
in the seven o way at that crime. My partner,
Bobby Kennevan had already gotten into e ISSU, I think
probably a class or two ahead of me, and he
wound up going to six Truck in Brooklyn. So I says, Bobby,
you know I need some help. Yeah, of course. You know. Hey, listen,
anybody who says they they got into any specialized unit

(25:29):
without a phone call, I'll just call on an absolute liar.
It's not true. You have to have a rabbi. But
also you got to give him something to fight with them,
fight for you with heavy Kyle a guy you know,
you know, just just good. You know. So I'm I'm
I'm into seven ozer and my desk sergeant happened to
have the I'm sorry death sergeant happened to be my

(25:51):
old squad supervisor. He comes down. He goes, hey, Paulie,
He goes, h your order? Is it true? You're out
of here? I'm like, what are you talking about? He goes,
you just got transferred to ESU. I want to get
out of here. You know it's now you When a
couple of other guys from the seven oh went so,
I was like, I couldn't tell you how acstatic I
was because that was my dream on his job. They

(26:16):
just had a professionalism about them, and I wanted to
be part of that. So, you know, we had to
go to Stu. You know, you go through the whole
procedure and everything. So I remember Captain Heller was my
one of my guys that interviewed me when I was
going through the process, and I remember putting down on
my application that I was a lasher on a pis

(26:38):
and as a kid, I was My uncle was a longshoreman.
So you know, at the end of the day in
high school, you know, I jumped on the bus, went
down the first ambient by the factories, and we used
to you know, tie the sage bags up, the coffee
bags up. You know, you used to have to make
notts and everything. Captain Heller was a marine. So I'm
sitting at his desk and we're in office and I'm

(27:00):
getting interviewed. He goes into his back pocket and he
throws a piece of rope on the on the desk
in front of him. He goes, make me this, make
me and I made it. I made it. I did
like three knots and then he says, Okay, you know
your stuff, so he put it back in his pocket.
I got to tell you, Mike, if he asked me
for a fourth not I probably wouldn't have known it.

(27:25):
But I got away with three that I knew, you know,
so you got to STS. It's not like it is now.
I think STS for us was I think six weeks total,
and I think two of them was was EMT stuff,
you know, and then there's a week at the range. Uh,
and then they squeezed everything else. Now now I think
it's like nine months long something like that. But you know,

(27:49):
you graduate from there. That's where I met all the
guys any other trucks, and that's how you major connections.
And I could tell the brotherhood there. It was like,
this is this is for me, this is for me,
this is what I wanted to do, you know. Right,
he went to the truck, you went to the Hollywood truck.
So well, here's another story. It was kind of funny.

(28:13):
So I was supposed to go to six Truck in
Brooklyn with my partner, right, So Jack Casey may rest
in peace. What a great boss. He was my mentor
in one truck. He found out that I went to
culin every school in Manhattan, so he did the old
land around and he out hoooked my partner's hook. And

(28:34):
that's how I wound up in one truck in Manhattan
because I went to culin every school there, so they
wanted to get all the good eats and everything. So
it worked out really, really really well. Once I got
to Manhattan, I was like, oh, man, now I know
why guys work in Manhattan. It's it's open twenty four
to seven. There's always something going on. I mean, you know,

(28:54):
in Brooklyn, so now they just you know, certain commands,
they just roll up the Red Corp at the end
of the night and there's nothing to do. Manhattan is
always something going on, you know. So that's that's how
I got the one truck.

Speaker 3 (29:09):
And it's a great place.

Speaker 1 (29:09):
I remember, you know, I was watching something on Michael
Strahan years ago, the Great Giants Defensive End to where
you know, his his rookie year nineteen ninety two. I
think he's living in Manhattan. Time he opens his window,
it's two o'clock in the morning, and he says, there
are people walking around like it's five o'clock in the afternoon.
Oh yeah, he summarized it to a t. That's exactly
how it is. It doesn't matter if it's one pm,

(29:31):
eight am, two am, you know, whenever it's ten pm,
you're always going to have something going on there. Yeah,
You mentioned the commander, and we'll talk about him in
a moment. But there's a lot of legendary guys that
are working in one truck at the time, and they
still talked about to this day that you had the
chance to work alongside and learn from.

Speaker 3 (29:47):
I know it had to be intimating.

Speaker 1 (29:49):
It's all hacked in that first year, But tell me
about who these guys were and some of the biggest
lessons they left.

Speaker 3 (29:53):
You know, they were able to teach.

Speaker 2 (29:54):
Us, so we had we had George told the legend
in one truck. He oh my god, just he was
the nicest guy in the whole world. You wouldn't know
he had like thirty years on a job when I
got there. George was a wealth of knowledge. There's no
job that he didn't know how to do. There's no

(30:15):
job he didn't do. He had his own own set
of tools. That half of the stuff I think he
just put together because he worked on a job and
he kept it in his toolbox. It's not like today,
where you know, they have tools for the guys and everything.
We used to have all our own stuff. They Police Department,
do you give us anything, you know, Jesus Craig Hohen

(30:38):
in one truck. Another guy. He was electronics radio kind
of guy. He could put together radios, fix him. I mean, smart,
smart man. God. There's Ralph ERNOLDI from crime scene Ralphie.
I remember seeing him one day. He shook my hand.
It was like, you know, his hands like a baseball glove,
you know, you know, Ralph ERNOLDI like this like, oh man,

(31:01):
you know, I said this, this guy's a big guy here.
You know we're gonna, You're gonna. I want him on
my side. You know. There was so many guys in
one truck. Uh and Bobby Savori, Uh, John Harvey, oh,
really really solid, you know, Billy Kennedy. Well, good guys, Oh,
good guys. Man. These guys were the guys that we're
all on job. These guys, no, no, you know we

(31:22):
say this came up. These guys would have gave their
life up for you. That's these are good guys. My
fond of Bobby Kennevan. They used to call don't laugh
the guys laugh. Used to call us the Bouffop Brothers
because I'mike Now I had a hair like had a
hair like John Travolta, and so did Bobby. Bobby was
a really really good looking guy man, and uh, you

(31:42):
know it was the funny stuff there, forty stories, you know,
but they used to call us the Bufop Brothers. Uh yeah,
it was with some good stuff. Uh yeah. And then
Jack Casey, uh he he had our squad for a
while and he was just just one of those guys that,
you know, guys had an argument or something, they'd be

(32:03):
downstairs and they'd be fussing around a little bit. So
he says, so one day he gets his coffee, come
to the back. We hear a little noise downstairs, not
that big. He said, it's good for guys. I have
a fistfight above the men Bill's character, you know, close
the doors. And that was the end of that. You know,
it was the guys were all good guys. I miss

(32:23):
all of them, I really do. You're all good guys.
I don't know too many of the newer fellas, but
you know, it's just, you know, tradition passes on.

Speaker 3 (32:33):
You know, you had that in common no matter who's there,
you were there at one truck.

Speaker 6 (32:37):
You know.

Speaker 2 (32:37):
Yeah, yeah, I got I got my challenge going my
member coin, so uh I go when I can, But
I don't get there that often anymore, but uh, it's
one truck was great, and you know, guys used to
fly in and cover the truck and me and my
partner Bobby would tell him and listen, try not to
look like a tourist in Manhattan. You know, I know

(32:57):
you're working in the ghetto. This is a little more sophisticated. Oh,
there it was. There was some there was some good
band that bro.

Speaker 3 (33:05):
I can imagine, well, I'm sure you can't.

Speaker 1 (33:08):
Yeah, if time machines were real, I'd love to go
back to an era like that, just be on the fly,
on the wall for some of the jobs dads were working.
Bally Kennedy puts in the chat the Everly Brothers.

Speaker 2 (33:18):
The Everly Brothers. Yeah yeah, oh yeah, yeah, Well we
got we got interviewed one time from uh Harley Kahn's
on news radio eighty eight one time CBS. Uh. So
we just happened to be working and you know the
DCB I says, ah, the guy's gonna do a ride
along with you and everything. So you wind up riding
with us for like three days. And he's the one

(33:40):
who started the uh uh the phrase of the Everly Brothers.
You know, it was just just funny stuff. Man. Bobby
had a big can of oquing that halspready you buy
the old ladies. I mean it had to be a
foot and a half tall, so he'd be just like
John Travalta, who spray, they don't touch my hand, don't
touch my hair. You know, quaft, you know it perfectly

(34:03):
quaft perfect. Yeah, we got. We got jambed up a
few times for not wearing hats, believe me.

Speaker 3 (34:11):
Oh yeah, yeah, I think Dicky for that. Back then
the baseball cap for mandatory.

Speaker 2 (34:15):
Oh yeah, they were, yeah, they were.

Speaker 3 (34:16):
I had no idea.

Speaker 2 (34:18):
So there was a certain truck lieutenant I won't mention
his name, but it was from a Brooklyn truck. Then
we're working out a pin job in Midtown and he
happened to be covering. So you know, we're we're working
the door and everything, doing our thing. So he says,
where are your hats? So we turned around and respectfully
told him a word or two. He said, well, we'll

(34:39):
settle this back of quarters. So then he came after
us for the hats. But then you know, our truck
lieutenant rest in peace, Dougie Reid uh went right back
at him. Uh And it was like, it was, oh,
when you come after my guys, that come after you guys,
what do you want to do here? You know? So
it was good. We felt we didn't need to wear
hats at have to tick of a point.

Speaker 3 (35:02):
And as long as you get in the job done,
does it matter.

Speaker 2 (35:05):
It doesn't matter. That's that was all point. But you
didn't quite see it that way. Again, he was a marine, so.

Speaker 1 (35:11):
Many that's that's sad Welson, that's that military mentality carried
over to a paaramilitary organization. A book which institues volume
forty nine of the even it's had the NYPD's Emergency
Service Unit. Now, the thing about one truck again no
respect to the other trucks to get a lot of
variety of for different jobs too, especially given where they're located.
But one truck is located, of course, almost in the

(35:32):
heart of Manhattan, so there's a wider ray. There's never
one specific job set pattern that you're going to get
day to day. Could be something construction related, building collapse,
scaffolding issues that you can go to rescue workers. You
get your purp jobs, you get your accidents. Of course,
you could get gun runs, you could get just about
anything under the sun. A year into it, and you
guys got the Hudson River there, of course in Manhattan

(35:54):
as well. Is what the Chain Gordon acerate incident happens
now for you in the audience in a little bit,
younger don't know about this story. It's October of eighty six,
and Jane Dornacker was a really interesting lady.

Speaker 3 (36:04):
She was a singer, she was an actress.

Speaker 1 (36:05):
She was and one flew over to the Tucu's nest and
she was a traffic reporter for the oldest, the late
Great Don Iamis used to say, w a BC. And
she was over the Hudson River with the pilot one
day giving a traffic update. Something went wrong mechanically and
the helicopter went down, and you could hear her on
the air. I think she was on with Soupy Sales, yes,

(36:26):
giving the report. When it went down. Her last words,
tragically were hit the water. Hit the water. She didn't
want the helicopter crashed into the street. Now, before you
tell the story, it's worth noting she had been in
a helicopter crash six months prior to this, had survived it.
She'd be in a second one. And I let you
take it from there.

Speaker 2 (36:42):
Yeah. So I remember that day very vividly. It was
change of tour, so we had the daytour in and
we had the four to twelve in. So we had
a job confront the helicopter, you know, in the West
Side Highway. We jumped in the truck, packed the truck
with guys. Guys are putting on the gear and everything.
We went, you know what. I don't remember who was driving,

(37:06):
but Jack Casey, rest of Peace was the truck supervisor.
We went the wrong way on the West Side Highway
from twenty third Street all the way to the location
the crisis. Say all the way there, lights and sirens,
wrong way because traffic was just so backed up. He says,
go across, go the wrong way. So I just don't

(37:27):
remember who the show for the truck was, but we did.
We got there. We beat rescue one there by a
minute or two. So Jack Casey were out there, guys
starting to get their gear on and everything. Next thing
I know, he says, Paul, he get over there by
the ledge, that's what he needs. Sage boom. He pushes

(37:47):
me in water. Jack Casey right, So, unbeknown saw us
rescues already there, they got a diver in the water.
I'm pretty sure it was pul hash Haanging. I'm pretty
sure he was, and I think he covered uh Jane
thornaka uh and they brought her up and uh, you know,
they put her on the deck and they were doing
CPR on her. Uh she was she was from what

(38:11):
I could see, Uh, she was already dead. There was
there was no saving this this poor woman, you know,
and her crew. You know, there was no saving these people.
You know. It was it was a tough job, and
the water was was terrible and there was just a
lot of hazards in that water, and you know, and
you had the mechanics of navigating through the helicopter and everything.

(38:34):
It was. It was a dangerous job, no question about it.
But we all worked together on that job really well,
you know, so you know, it was one of the
combination response jobs. But we uh, we went the wrong
way in west on the West Side Highway. All the
way there lights, sirens and airhorns. It was unbelievable. And
guys in the back we didn't know, you know, because

(38:55):
you're in the back, you get dressed, you put me on. Yeah,
you can't see anything, you know, and before you know it,
and like, holy cow, we're on the other side of
the street.

Speaker 3 (39:05):
How that happened?

Speaker 2 (39:06):
How that happened? And Jack Casey and the guys that
guys in the channel see that. Jack gets out, he
lights up the cigarette. Nothing rattled Jack. Nothing, nothing, and
he says, get in the water. Next thing I know,
I was in the water. I was in the water.
I was it. There's nothing I could do for it
was a Scooba job for sure, you know. And that's

(39:27):
that's when Paul Hatschhager went down. H got her, you know,
because they were all dressed for schoolba and everything. We
didn't didn't have that at that time. Got know right now?

Speaker 1 (39:40):
Yeah, yeah, the pilot lived that they were able to
rescue he's still alive.

Speaker 2 (39:45):
Oh he is, Okay. I didn't know that he was.
Oh good, good, good, because uh, he wasn't looking good
when they brought him up.

Speaker 3 (39:52):
No, he critical, they were.

Speaker 1 (39:55):
He was in the hospital for quite a while, but
eventually he made a full recovery. I think he became
a lawyer. Paul was ment years ago. So yeah, he's
ended up living a full life and God blessed was
working at Rescue one he mentioned that every year around
the holidays, his family would send a.

Speaker 2 (40:08):
Card over to rescue one God bless.

Speaker 1 (40:10):
Him, continuing to think, yeah, but Jane, Jane unfortunately didn't
make it. And I think, if I remember, there was
something with the seat belt. She didn't want to wear
one because of the crash six months prior where she
almost didn't get a helicopter, then because of something with
the seatbelt. But the irony, the sad irony is, if
I remember correctly, is that had she warned it here,

(40:33):
she probably would have lived from you know, she her
seatbelt on when it went down, just because it gave
her fits when she was trying to get out of
the first crash back in April of eighty six. So yeah,
just a just a very sad story, but it had
something of an uplifting ending considering the fact that at
least someone in that job I wasn't and thankfully he

(40:55):
did great work by you guys there now in line
with the major jobs in that timeframe maybe to ninety
like I said, wide array, different variety of things that
you guys are going to much like I asked you
with the anti crime and control, what sticks out from
that time period because again anything.

Speaker 2 (41:09):
That happened in one truck. It was I remember a job.
We're up at two truck area and there was some
type of blackout and one truck was up there, two truck,
three truck. They just needed us to generators on everything
and all kinds of stuff. So I remember we're getting

(41:29):
out of there about I guess it's about midnight, maybe
a little after. We're coming down the West Side Highway.
Truck got a boy and Charlie Carr and we get
one of these signal ten seventy sevens over the air
from dispatch. So I'm like, central ten to five that
and it said it's a signal ten to seventy seven

(41:50):
in the ninth precinct. So I'm like, We're all looking
at each other and we're like, the hell is it
ten seventy seven. So we start dumbing Trudy that the
memo book that nobody ever looked, you know. So one
of the guys looks at it and says, oh, it's
a civil unrest. Oh my god, I can't do nothing.
And so we start heading down the West Side Highway

(42:10):
and I remember Jack Jack Casey was on a job too,
actually on that one too. He says, I don't worry, boys,
this will be over by the time we get there anyway,
you know. So we got down we're not killing ourselves. Well,
you know we're going down there, right, Brooklyn North task Force.
We hit him. Coming over the radio, Brooklyn South Task
Force is coming. That's a lot of people, you know.

(42:30):
So I remember we get off at Houston Street and
we're in the truck, me and my partner in the truck,
Dandy Masison and Kevin rest in Peace in the Adam
car and we're going across Houston Street and I'll never forget.
I see this this human being with this purple hair,
shaved hair on the side and like spiked hair, and

(42:53):
he's throwing it looks like something at the mounted guys.
So it turned out to be those who were marbles.
He was trying to make the You know, that's one
thing you don't do with the mountain guy. You don't
do anything to his horse. So turns out he jumps
off his horse and calls this guy right. So we're
going down to a Tompkins Square park. This is where

(43:14):
it was. This was the original Tompkins Square Park. We
get down there and Captain mc namara was there, a
good solid cat. He was, I think the XO of
the night breasing, a good solid guy. And we get
down there and he waves us over. He sees emergency
come away. All right, it comes over. We put the
truck and he had the car. I forget where it was,

(43:38):
but it was right near the park and there was
a bar right across the street and they would throw
in all kinds of nonsense at us and everything. So
he come over to us. He goes, boys, he says,
I need you to clear that corner. I said, yeah, sure, Capta.
There's only a couple of us. He says, I need
you to clear that corner. No problem, cap will do that.
Going back of the truck, we had the big riot

(43:59):
batons back there, which I don't think ever came out
in probably twenty years. You know. We get we get
over there and they're throwing all kinds of stuff at us.
So listen, we tell you got to get out of here.
Bom they're throwing stuff. We go over there. We cleared
it the old fashioned way. No lie, the old fashioned way.
They got out of there quicker, and you could shake
his stick, you know. They listen, they put their hands up,

(44:22):
they had a problem. You know, people left afterwards. So
we're staying there, were secure in the corner and Captain
mac and Maverick comes up to us and he says, hey, guys,
I knew mergency could clear this corner. He says, I
had a bunch of cops here, they couldn't do it.
I knew you guys could. Well, Okay, cap what he
wants to just stand by and he says, hey, the
dudey chief wants to know how many collars you made.

(44:44):
So I said, hey, k you say clear the corner.
You didn't say nothing about making any collars. So that's
how that ended. And we held the corner till Brooklyn
North task for us came over to Brooklyn Bridge and
those guys back in the day, they were non life,
nonsense guys. They're all Vietnam vets. They came over and
they secured Tompkins Square Park. After that, that's with Manat's

(45:08):
out there for us. But the Brooklyn North guys came
once again and they took care of some business. We
held that corner for about six hours. Uh then we
had to go to another location and it was I
think there's a famous video you see out there with it.
There's this young cop, uh, and there's some some guy
on top of the van and he's waving his nightstick,

(45:31):
you know, to try to get this guy off there.
So what the public did not see at that particular
incident was that's where these bottles were coming from. At
the cops. This this poor foot cop was going over.
They try to get this guy off the top of
the van. So eventually he was encouraged to get off

(45:52):
the top of that van, and he wound up coming
off the top of the van, so encourage he was.

Speaker 3 (46:01):
He was gently helped off.

Speaker 2 (46:03):
Me.

Speaker 3 (46:03):
Yes, he was of the police fan.

Speaker 2 (46:07):
But that's that was. That was an interesting Uh. That
was an interesting day. And then we had we had
another one, uh in the seventh priesting. This time, Uh,
we get a barricade and you know, we're talking whatever
they call for H and T and all that stuff,
and uh, you know it's coming to a time we

(46:29):
got to do one thing or another. We we got
to get in there. Uh supposedly had a knife and
everything like this. We're just about gonna take the door
and we're ready to go in. We're like seconds from
taking the door. All of a sudden, we heard his
voice from a flight of stairs below, and it's a
voice you'll never forget when you talk to him. I
don't know if you guys, I know the guys in

(46:51):
the chattel, No Monsigniakowski. He was the police department chaplain,
an absolutely wonderful man and Vietnam combat veteran. For for
a chaplain, he went down in a helicopter. His whole
crew was killed in the hell in that helicopter crash,
and he kept the vietcom from killing him by shooting

(47:12):
a fifty caliber at the enemy. Uh, that's an unknown
story that that he told us several times in quarters.
But getting back to my other story. He's coming up
the stairs. He goes, hold on, fellas, hold on it,
Monsini Cowski, what are you doing? We're gonna take the No. No,
no fellows, no fellows. Please wait a minute. I said, okay,
we'll wait. So he says, I says, monsignor, what do

(47:34):
you want? So he goes, I need to give you
guys absolution. So whoa monsignor? Do you know something that
we don't know behind that door and we're not supposed
to go in there. He goes, no, no, no, fellas,
this one. I want Absolvius, but you can keep it
in your back pocket for another day. I said, okay.
We all waited a minute. That he gave us absolution

(47:57):
and we took the door without incident. She had a
huge and him much like Illino Bumpers was, but she
gave us no resistance and everything. But that that was
a funny story about sini Kowski. He would show up
on all kinds of jobs, and he packed the thirty
eight with him all the time. He was packing heat
with him all the time. He was a good man,

(48:17):
good man. Uh and uh, well loved in our truck
and I know throughout the police department. Just an absolute gentleman. Yeah.

Speaker 3 (48:25):
I heard a lot about him.

Speaker 2 (48:26):
Yeah, real nice man.

Speaker 3 (48:28):
I didn't know that story though about him in Vietnam.

Speaker 2 (48:31):
Oh yeah, yeah, his whole crew was killed. Wow. Yeah,
he was a lieutenant colonel. Yeah, he was a lieutenant colonel.
And we often would you. He says, I was shooting
to keep them back, and if I killed them, I
didn't care. He told us that it was a fifty
caliber machine. And then another air crew came by and
they got my senior out there and they and they

(48:52):
took the bodies with him his crew and he went
the whole way with his crew back to the firebase.

Speaker 1 (49:00):
Uh.

Speaker 2 (49:00):
Yeah, it's an unknown story about Matsi Mikowski.

Speaker 1 (49:04):
You know that's tough, but I did. We talked about
him early. We'll bring him up now, Franklin salad. So
I'll set the stage again for this one truck one
prior to Brian McDonald making the opening sacrifice on nine
to eleven, a month to fourteen su cops, I did
they have another tragic loss with Frank where I believe
it as in the chat. You can of course refill

(49:27):
my memory on this too. There was a fire nearby. Now,
one truck has a doorbell and they encourage you to
ring that and not pound on the door. But people
that lived in the area were pounding on the door.
So they went to the door and they were alerted
to a fire nearby a few of the guys got
their air packs on and went to that fire.

Speaker 3 (49:47):
And I believe you mentioned were you there at that job.

Speaker 2 (49:49):
Yes, taking it? Yeah, it was I remember that that
day vividly. Also, we were all sitting around a great table.
We're just having dinner. Actually, I think Frank made Macaroni's
If I'm not mistaken, he was Frank Lesla Rest of
Peace was what we call the irm that night. He
was the equipment repair man. He was just like the

(50:10):
extra guy on tour. For some reason or another, it
had to switch his tour or something, so they left
him in quarters as the extra guy, which always came
in handy if you needed him. So I remember the
truck went out on a job. I was in the
Adam car. We went out on a job, and a
boy car went out on a job also, so about

(50:33):
I think we went on an elevator job, me on
a bobby. So we're probably ten blocks away and we
hear it ten thirteen over the air at our truck
one quarters, So I'm like, holy crap, what could be
Frank stare by himself and I know everybody's on his
way there. We came down twenty street the runway, and

(50:56):
we see flames coming out of this building right next
to the two doors over I think from thirteen preecing right.
We see our garage door open, So I said, where's
the continent? The cop went in the building. Somebody told
the cop went in the building. So that was That
was frankl Salam. So we get to the scene as fire.
We called for FD right away, So me and my

(51:19):
partner grabbed a pack. We put a pack on some
of the guys who were already pulling up. Some of
the guys already did went in. They they're taking people
off the fire escape and everything. We went in. We
we got to the first floor. We cleared as many
people out as we could. Then the fire started to
spread pretty bad.

Speaker 5 (51:38):
Uh.

Speaker 2 (51:38):
And and you know, I tell the story all the time. Uh,
it seemed like a FD did a hell of a job.
I got to tell you this. It seemed like it
took them forever to get there, but in reality it did.
They were there probably in less than two minutes. I
think there was a truck company a couple of blocks away.
They were right there. Rescue one came. If I'm not mistaken,

(52:00):
they did the search. They were the ones who found
Frank that the occupant of that apartment opened the roof
door which caused the back draft. Frank had his pack
on and it actually burned off of him, and they
found Frank in the hallway. Rescue one brought him out.

(52:21):
And I remember this because they had an ambulance was there,
and they said, I think this is one of your guys.
It's one of your guys. So they brought him over
here and we saw Frank by his emergency service belt
buckle that he had on. And you know what, it
didn't dawn on us at the time because we all
had partners at the time. You know, I had my

(52:43):
partner with me and the other guys and it's Frank,
you know. So I remember they put him in the
ambulance and he talked for about thirty seconds, he's don't worry,
I fether I'm gonna be okay. But his head was
and this is one of the parts of being burned.
It was horrible. His head got so big, it was

(53:05):
it was like a basketball. I'll never forget it, and uh,
it was. It was. It was just a horrible night.
You know, you think of him all the time, at
least I do, especially the anniversary is January fourteenth. I
never forget him. It was like a candle for him
when you know what I remember. And uh, it was
a horrible night, and and all the guys felt terrible

(53:26):
because it was not well. We didn't have bunker gear,
you know, we had those the nylon shirts, and yeah,
we had an air pack, but we don't put air
packs on like f He uses them twenty four hours
a day. They use them every single day. We don't
use them that often, you know. And uh, they did
a hell of a job. Hell of a job. Frank

(53:46):
rest in peace. Uh, just a good man he was.
He was a lot of laughs. And we just had
dinner with him not five minutes before he died. You know,
there was a bunch of us there, Mark DeMarco, Johnny Jorgan's,
all of the guys.

Speaker 1 (54:00):
You know, I say, Frank, you know, it's a testament
to his warrior spirit to the end. He didn't die
right away. He hung on for five days follows January fifth.
He didn't die till January. He hung on like a trooper.

Speaker 5 (54:12):
He hung on.

Speaker 2 (54:14):
They took him up to the Burns Center and uh,
they told us he's probably not going to survive. But
they didn't think he was going to survive that night.
So as time was going on, but thinking to jeesus,
you know, maybe, you know, maybe though there's a shot
he'll survive. But then we were getting reports Jack Casey

(54:34):
probably didn't go home for five days. He stood at
that hospital and a lot of guys went up there,
but uh, and he was saying, Frank's not gonna make it,
and and he just he just passed. But you know,
I'm hoping, you know, he was sedated enough where he
didn't feel anything because he had horrible burns. I remember
seeing his shirt. It's Polyesta's shirt, so you can imagine

(54:57):
what happens to that in the fire and his pants. Everything.
Uh just it just was not good, you know, just
not good. But he was he had a pair of
brass ones to go in there. Frank, he didn't wait
for anybody. He you know, he put the job over
to and uh yeah and Frank, Uh he gave his
life up to try to save those people, you know.

(55:19):
And then uh, like I said, FD came and they
did a hell of a job. They they found Frank,
They knocked that fire down, and they you know, they
and I'll tell you what, this was the one time
that I know of uh we you know, after you
have a minded debt, they injury in your command. They
closed one truck, so uh, Jack Casey invited the entire

(55:41):
rescue rescue one dark quarters. I don't think that's ever
happened to my knowledge in e s U and I
got to tell you they were they were very good guys,
and he was, Uh, it was a little comforting, if
you know what I'm saying, because they go through it too.
They they lose a lot of firefighters too. But I

(56:02):
never lost somebody in a lie to due that I
personally knew, except Frank.

Speaker 1 (56:07):
You know, well, I never Yeah, I mean, I kid
you and I can feel it right now. The hair's
the backup. The next I never knew rescue one came
to busy guys after that.

Speaker 2 (56:15):
Oh yeah, they came to our quarters. And I'll tell
you they didn't comment the handed I'll tell you that
right now. They did the right thing that I was.
It was men amongst men, you know what I'm saying.

Speaker 1 (56:27):
Yeah, thank you for sharing that because I knew of course,
stut I didn't know the background behind it. And it's
you know, I think Frank until Dennis Garrett died he
was a patrol cop trying to save people into Brooklyn
fire in twenty fourteen, Frank was the last NYPD cop
to get killed at a fire. Yes, so it's very

(56:47):
naturally because as we said, police officers, I mean, they'll
go in. They'll rescue people before the fire department gets there.
But they're not trained in firefighting techniques per se. They
don't carry the same things firefighters do. So it's very
rare that you know, and see a cop die in
a fire. But it's it happened to Frankfortually, it happened
to Garret.

Speaker 2 (57:04):
But again, yeah, Frank, before guy opened up that roof,
that roof, though it might have been a different outcome,
Frank may have survived. That caused the back draft, you know.

Speaker 3 (57:14):
And here's the thing to remember, Frank was only thirty three, yes,
but he squeezed a lot into those thirty three years.

Speaker 1 (57:21):
It's worth mentioned. Very young, thirty three. So you know,
we've got the anniversary coming up. It'll be thirty eight
years in January. You know, if you don't know Frank,
read about his story and take a moment to think
about him when January fifth through tenth comes around in
twenty twenty five.

Speaker 2 (57:36):
Yeah, you know, moving.

Speaker 3 (57:37):
Ahead a little bit to eighty nine ninety. I always
ask this to guys.

Speaker 1 (57:40):
I know you left the ninety We'll talk about the
rest of your career in the moment, because we got
to hit out a few things, of course, including your
time in JTTF.

Speaker 3 (57:47):
But there's always a time when you begin not that
you know everything.

Speaker 1 (57:50):
Nobody ever knows everything, and if you feel that way,
you better check yourself really quick. But you get to
a comfortable point where it's like, all right, I feel
confident in my abilities to perform, especially with the guys
that you were working under. When did that start for
you where you felt that you could really because there's
always that little doubt in our heads that even the
most confident people half the time of time. When did
that begin to dissipate where you felt that you could

(58:11):
hang with these guys that perform up to snuff as
you needed to.

Speaker 2 (58:15):
Well, I went into emergency, and you know, like those
guys did. There was a lot of guys in all
the other trucks too, two three six trucks, seven truck,
eight truck. There was some old timers there that when
you flew to cover, you know, like me, you know,
I just I was like a sponge. I wanted to
absorb everything I knew what I didn't know, you know,

(58:39):
and I wanted to learn what they knew so I
would be confident when I had a job when they
weren't there. I could do this job because I will
tell you this, and I think I'll speak for every
email we want to walk up. We never walked away
from a job that we've responded to one way or another.
We were going to get that job resolved, you know.
So it was just a matter of knowing what I

(59:02):
didn't know and asking a lot of questions, why are
you doing it this way? Couldn't you do this? Could
you use this? You know? And that's how you learned.
That's how you learned to do it, you know. I
was not afraid to ask questions.

Speaker 3 (59:18):
That's what you learn and I and I think it
was it was Sean Lampkin.

Speaker 2 (59:21):
Actually I mentioned that another good man, another good man yep.

Speaker 1 (59:24):
Who had the benefit of both being a police officer
and search in the unit, primarily in one truck, although
I think he did a little bit of working two
truck as well, where he mentioned, Yeah, you would sit
around the table and it was not pounding.

Speaker 3 (59:35):
On someone saying, oh you did this wrong, you did
that wrong. No, it's just commonly kind of like you
would like an athlete goes to a film.

Speaker 1 (59:40):
Okay, here's what we did, well, here's what we could
have done a little bit better, So the next game
there's a different result. You break it down, that's how
you learned. And you had a lot of guys there,
like you said, I love that you mentioned Mark DeMarco.
I think his sons in the unit.

Speaker 2 (59:51):
Now, yes, Mark Marco's son is in the unit. Yep.

Speaker 1 (59:54):
So you know, there's a lot of good stuff to
go around in terms of technique, things to remember, points
to of course keep in mind for future jobs. And
even if you hear about jobs happen and this is
the other good thing the MIYPD does. The job may
not even have happened in New York City, yet it
may have happened in a different part of the country,
a different part of the world. You guys break it
down to see how you would handle it in New York.

Speaker 3 (01:00:15):
And if it does happen in New York.

Speaker 2 (01:00:16):
You know what to do. Yeah, we used to. We
used to get a lot of out of town visitors
because we were tactically oriented, uh emergency service, So we
would get cops from one to Germany, France or LAPD.
I mean they would just come to our quarters and
we welcome with their brothers. It doesn't matter they don't

(01:00:38):
work yet, did brothers, you know, so they would come
and visit us, and again you pick up knowledge from
them on jobs they had, you know, or if they
had a bad job, pick up the phone. Hey, I'm
so and so, uh, you know, what can you tell
me about that job? You know, they took a little
bit to vet who everybody was and everything, but not

(01:00:58):
a big deal once we got past that. Yeah, it
was clear talking on the phones or you know, whatever
we had to do and yeah, this is how we
handle it. This is what we did wrong. We should
have did it this way. Maybe you guys you've got
the same type of buildings, might want to do it
this way, you know. And again that's how you learned.
You talk to other guys that made mistakes, and that's

(01:01:20):
how you improve. You know.

Speaker 1 (01:01:22):
I know it was in your choice to leave emergency
in nineteen ninety. There's an interesting story behind that that
involved Jack Casey and then then chief department.

Speaker 3 (01:01:31):
Why did you tell me?

Speaker 2 (01:01:32):
Yes? Yeah, sure, so I came here from A four
to twelve. My partner Bobby's there, and you know, we
caught pulled together and I forget who it was, might
have been Marco or Johnny I'm not sure, but they said, hey,
you got transferred. I said, what are you talking about.
I started get dressed and I said, no, no, you
got transferred. And I says, okay, let's go look in

(01:01:55):
the book. So I, you know, as much as we
clown around and we don't fool around with log books
and stuff like that because you get jammed up for that.
So I'm looking in the telephone message book and there
I Police Officer Kazinski. He issue one is d transferred
to B I I U Chief of Department's office. And
I'm like, oh my gosh, and like, why did you

(01:02:18):
want a guys said I didn't want to. I didn't
even know. So next thing I found out it was
Jack Casey May Rest the Peace. He was already up
in the Chief's office as his confidential aid. So Chief Johnson, Uh,
Jack was asked to bring somebody up that he could trust.
So he thought of me, and like I said, Jack
was my mentor on the job. Uh, So he brought

(01:02:41):
me up there. So I remember going up there. It
was the worst unit I ever worked in in my life.
It wasn't the people, it was just the you know cases.

Speaker 3 (01:02:51):
But I really feel.

Speaker 2 (01:02:54):
So like like the like the idiot, I was. I.
I go in to see Jack. I said, Jack, I
want to go back to the truck. I don't think
I was up there in two weeks. And he says
he's not going to let you go back to the truck,
but you could go talk to him. I said, yea,
I could go talk to the chief. But yeah, yeah,
take your death. He walks me to the door of

(01:03:15):
Chief Johnson's office and knock on the door. I says, Chief,
work waszinski. Can I you have a minute? Chief? Sure?
Sit down like this, he said, Chief. I said, Chief, listen,
I appreciate coming up here in the opportunity to work
for you and everything. But I says, I'm an e man.
I don't belong up here. I says, I'd like to

(01:03:36):
like to go back to the truck. So he says, no,
you can't go back to the truck. I said, Chief,
I really would like to go back to the truck.
He says, tell you what, police officer. He says, you
pick a seven with any odd number. I will have
you there at three o'clock. How's that sound, I said, Chief,
Thanks for the opportunity. I'm gonna love it up here.
And I walked out the door. Jack was on the

(01:03:56):
other side of the door with a cigarette, he says,
I told Yeah, says all right. So that's and that's
how it ended for me being in Eland. That's how
it ended for me. I hated it. I hated it
up there, but I did what I had to doing,
and actually it turned out well for me for the
rest of my career because I got promoted and that's

(01:04:17):
set the doors opening other doors for me. When when
Jack went up to the JTTF and everything, so I
was able to get up there with Jack and Pat
Pogan at my core GOETA.

Speaker 3 (01:04:29):
Yeah, so we'll touch on that momentarily.

Speaker 1 (01:04:31):
But I did want to ask you, even though it
wasn't fun being there for the reasons you mentioned, just
two things. One, Chief Johnston, legend of the NYPD. He's
still with us actually, as I mentioned to you, in
his early nineties.

Speaker 3 (01:04:42):
Now, what was it like? This is a two part question.

Speaker 1 (01:04:45):
What was it like working under him, both on a
personal level and for a professional level. And the second
one is Ariy Halberstrom. I think it was in nineteen
ninety four.

Speaker 3 (01:04:52):
Did you have that case?

Speaker 2 (01:04:55):
No, I did not. I did not. Then yes, all
right Johnson. He used to come to our quarters quite
often unannounced, but he always bought bangles or or something. Uh.
He was he was always welcoming our quarters.

Speaker 5 (01:05:10):
Uh.

Speaker 2 (01:05:11):
His his bark was worse than his bite. He was
an absolute gentleman. When I worked for him up in
the Chief's office. He he loved the emergency service. We
could do no wrong in his eyes. He protected us
when there was other agencies coming after us.

Speaker 5 (01:05:29):
Uh.

Speaker 2 (01:05:29):
But he was uh, he was an e man deep
in his heart. UH. We used to we used to
affectually call him patent because you know that that's what
he looked like. Uh, George S. Patton. But he was
an absolute gentleman to work for. Uh. And and then afterwards,
after that time I went to see him. I remember
we went into the coffee room up in the Chief's office.

(01:05:49):
He happened to come in. He says, listen, kid, He says,
I understand where you feel, but I need you on
the team. That's chief. I understand that. I says, I
didn't mean to pitch you off or anything like I
go see, didn't I Jack told me you were gonna
probably came in and it has to be transferred back.
But I couldn't let you go, and so I understand you.
There's no argue with the guy. I came from Brooklyn

(01:06:10):
North at that stage of the game, I didn't want
to go back.

Speaker 1 (01:06:14):
You had fun there, But what's in the passes in
the Yeah, yeah, hundred ninety four is really ninety four.
Really until you retired in no one is quite the
seven years that you had because first it started off
with major case, high profile cases. You got any armed
robbery of over a certain amount of money, and you'll
tell me which the amount of money is. I think

(01:06:35):
it's a certain amount that then major case would get
involved and the police officer homicides. This is now, this
is what I wanted to ask about. I know it's tough,
but from ninety four to ninety seven, trying to think
of all the line of duty bests that involved the
pham fasault usually gunfire.

Speaker 3 (01:06:49):
Ray cannon.

Speaker 1 (01:06:49):
In ninety four ninety six you had Kevin Gillespie, Bennie Judaicce,
Federico Narbaias, and Brian Jones. Ninety seven is Tony Sanchez.
There were others, but those were car accidents, the tax
things like that. But the ones I just mentioned where
they were violent means involved Vine's case, he got pushed
into a mirror for crying out loud and Ary got
cut his leg.

Speaker 3 (01:07:10):
Which are the ones? Which are those cases? Did you
have that?

Speaker 4 (01:07:12):
You have all of them?

Speaker 2 (01:07:14):
No? I didn't have. I actually I didn't have any
of those. There was a particular one I got assigned
to Brooklyn involved Russian organized crime. So as I got
to the major case, that was kind of a holding
point for me for the j T t F. So
uh Uh Chief A. Lee was chief of detectives at

(01:07:36):
the time. Wow, yeah he was. Now I can say
he was my rabbi to get me into that. Uh.
He was a good man. So he said, I'm gonna
put you in major case for now. And I had
Buddy Mannane was my sergeant. Buddy was an excellent boss.
Uh so we we Uh the bank robberies we did
were bank robberies. Would a gun if there was no

(01:07:57):
gun involved? Uh uh you know it went to a
different agency. Uh so uh we uh we had this
Russian organized crime caper.

Speaker 6 (01:08:10):
Uh.

Speaker 2 (01:08:11):
I feel terrible. I can't think of the police officer's
name right now. My mind's blank. But I know there
was a big case and we worked it for a while.
In fact, the whole time I was there, we worked
this case because we're up on some wires with it
and everything like this. Uh. And there was there was
some big guys devon Russian organized crime that connected to

(01:08:35):
the other side of the world that were involved in
this whole thing.

Speaker 3 (01:08:39):
Uh.

Speaker 2 (01:08:40):
And it really the police officer shouldn't have been killed,
but he was. There was women involved. Yeah, yeah, it
was women involved.

Speaker 6 (01:08:50):
Uh.

Speaker 2 (01:08:50):
Stuff like that. It pains me. I just can't think
of his name right now. That's it. That's it. Yeah,
that's it.

Speaker 3 (01:08:57):
That's it, shot off studioside, shot the dry.

Speaker 2 (01:09:00):
Yeah, yes, yes, yes, it was quite an involved case,
quite an involved case. We had some really good detectives
on it, and and Buddy was Buddy was leading to
charge on that.

Speaker 4 (01:09:14):
Uh.

Speaker 2 (01:09:15):
And we did a lot of surveillance on his But again,
you're dealing with uh an organization. That's that's that's pretty
squared away. You're not going to get them on a
wire on a lot of things. You know.

Speaker 3 (01:09:26):
I got to ask before you could do so.

Speaker 1 (01:09:28):
If I remember correctly, Ralph was dating the ex wife
of a former mob boss.

Speaker 2 (01:09:35):
Correct correct, ye, yes, yes, And what the guy who
they wound up collaring for it. I believe after it
was after I left, but I think, uh, one of
the detectives that I worked with, this guy, Ralph, wound
up Kyle. I know we went and interviewed in. This
guy was a Russian Special Forces soldier. Uh so you know,

(01:09:58):
we weren't going to scare this let's just put it
that way. And he looked like the boxer and was
a rocky three or four that's what he looked like.
The guy was huge, and we weren't going to scan
this guy. We just talked and let him know that
we know, you know, so we kept him under surveillance.

(01:10:20):
The wires were up for a long long time. The
Bureau got involved in it and everything. But yeah, it
was it consume my time in major case, you know.

Speaker 1 (01:10:33):
Yeah, worth noting as I had the article here in
front of me, the New York Post that as he
was dying, this happened on August twenty fifth, nineteen ninety seven.
The ambushed him in his striveway. He asked what's up? Innocently,
he didn't know what was going on. He wasn't involved
in any kind of organized crime. Cop right out loud
and they shot him and he was trying to ide

(01:10:53):
him before he died.

Speaker 3 (01:10:54):
He was still alive at the time.

Speaker 1 (01:10:55):
They had oxygen on him and whatnot, but he was
still live on the way to the hospital. I never
and I know it's above both of our pay grades.
And sometimes a lot of times when cops get killed
off duty, usually depending on the circus, they will classify
it as a line of duty death. I think Danny
shall take it. In two thousand and five, for example,
they never classified him as a line of duty death.
I mean, he was ambushed and murdered in this driveway.

Speaker 3 (01:11:16):
Why is that not a line of duty?

Speaker 2 (01:11:17):
Uh? There was, there was some of the stuff involved.
I can't go in.

Speaker 3 (01:11:22):
That's fine. Yeah, that's fine. But he's not forgotten. I'm
glad you brought it.

Speaker 2 (01:11:26):
Yeah, yeah, it's good. It was happenstance. Believe it or not.
It was happenstance. You know, just got involved in stuff
that you shouldn't have. You know. It's unfortunates.

Speaker 1 (01:11:39):
Yeah, very sad, very sad for all involved. And but
I will say in major case, and I know it's
not realistic.

Speaker 2 (01:11:46):
Although it was a.

Speaker 1 (01:11:47):
Pretty good shot, so it was kinder. My exposure. Major
Case was law and Daughter criminal intent. Now TV is
not one hundred accurate, but I'm like, oh, I me
as a little kid. I'm like, I didn't know they
had a unit like that. So obviously there's no Gore
and there's no Eaves, there's no mic logan. But a
day to day a major case in terms of what
you're picking up in the process to investigating these cases again,

(01:12:08):
not giving tricks to trade away. Tell me about that,
because that was interesting three years.

Speaker 4 (01:12:11):
You had there.

Speaker 2 (01:12:13):
Yeah, Major Major Case. Again, good detectives and the real
solid guys who really uh, detectives are a different breed
than say, emergency guys. Emergency guys didn't want to be detectives,
and detectives don't want to be emergency guys. You know,
it's that kind of thing. But the guys that were
in Major Case and guys in the detective squads are

(01:12:34):
really good guys, but they just don't, you know, that's
what they want to do. They want to make collars
and and and put cuffs on people at that stage
of the game. But uh, with Major Case, we would
do a lot of the counterfeiting stuff. With Buddy there
was millions, but I'm not just talking. You know, a

(01:12:55):
couple of thousand dollar millions and millions of dollars work
to counterfeit TORU organized crime.

Speaker 6 (01:13:02):
Uh.

Speaker 2 (01:13:02):
That was one particular part of it that we had
in fact in the housing p s A. I think
it was ps A one in Coney Island.

Speaker 6 (01:13:10):
Uh.

Speaker 2 (01:13:11):
They had I think six or seven cells. So Buddy,
we would get the stuff. We had all that stuff.
It was all there, but that was all supposed to
be vouched in putting you know, the evidence locker in
one pp or you know down in evidence. Buddy had
everything locked up in his cells. There was no room
for prisoners in in that particular ps A, you know.

(01:13:36):
But we would uh we would handle the bank robberies. Uh,
you know, a joint Bank Robbery Task Force. I'm sorry.
We would take the uh uh the the robberies would
a gun. We took uh, we took anything over. I
think it was one hundred, one hundred thousand dollars. Uh.
And I'll tell you a funny story uh with that.

(01:13:57):
When when I was retired my last day that you know,
I was up at JTTF and I was with Jim
Murray who wound up being the secret service director at
some point in the last eight years, he's, you know,
he had to go out on something. I said, hey,
jim it's my last day. I'll go out with you
another big deal, you know. So we're coming up to

(01:14:20):
like twenty sixth Street and sixth Avenue and we're waiting
at the light, and all of a sudden, I see
this guy coming at it, backing out of the bank.
He's got a gun in his hand, and he's guy
a die pack that's like blowing right now. People are screaming.
He's got a gun. He's got a gun. So he
takes off down twenty ninth Street and Jimmy, Jimmy and

(01:14:43):
I make the turn down there. It's a funny thing
because Jimmy and I were good friends, and I said
to him, I said, hey, jim, I said, then he's
shooting you do it. It's my last day. I can't
get involved in this like this. The guy jumps out,
he ditches the gun in the dumps that it was
a little construction work going on, and he leaves the

(01:15:05):
money in the diepack on the on the floor. So
Jimmy catches the guy that caught from everything. So what
I did, like an idiot was I picked up the money,
so I threw it back in the radio car. It
was still smoking with his red dye, which was so
stupid of me. But that's another story. The sergeant patrol

(01:15:25):
sergeant comes up and he says, hey, you want the collar.
I said, sergeant, I'm retiring in six hours. I don't
care who takes the collar. An anti crime comes up, Hey,
we want the collar. I said, listen, Sergeant just wanted
to call. I'm retired. Guys a couple of hours hit up.
So Jim Murray ain't taking the collar. That's sure, Secret Service.
He ain't taking a collar. Right. Turns out we get

(01:15:47):
to the thirteenth precinct. I called Jack Casey. He's up
in the JTTF. I says, hey, Jack, I says, listen,
I'm over in the thirteen preciator. What are you doing there?
I said, Believe it or not? I said, we ran
into a bank robbery out of Collie goes, you can't
take a Collie retiring today. I said, Jack, I know
that there's a whole bunch of people coming here. He goes,
let me make a phone call. He makes a phone call,

(01:16:10):
and it turned out this guy had robbed fourteen banks.
It was a pattern robbery. So what happened was because
he had a gun, joint bank robbery cask was came
down and took the collar from everybody. You should have
seen that bootell when that was going on. Oh my god,
Oh my god. I were boys. I'm out of here

(01:16:30):
four hours enjoy and I left and come out. M
let's get out of here. And that's how I ended
that my last day on the job. You believe it.

Speaker 3 (01:16:40):
It worked that well.

Speaker 2 (01:16:41):
Though don't work well. I got no call. Yeah, the
old think of carts stunk like hell. Man, it was unbelievable.
Had all that port, you know, got tear gas and
see gas to there. I was horrible. I figured I
preserved the evidence. That was stupid to me.

Speaker 3 (01:16:56):
You know, nobody got hurt.

Speaker 2 (01:16:59):
A little car.

Speaker 3 (01:17:00):
You know, we can live at that.

Speaker 1 (01:17:02):
But I never asked about JTTF going just to track
at a second in nineteen ninety seven, because there's two
investigations there. Now, I always pointed this time when I'm
talking with my bombs block guys. After nineteen ninety three,
I think a lot of guys fell, especially those in
JTTF in the bomb squad.

Speaker 3 (01:17:20):
Certainly in the su what's gonna happen.

Speaker 1 (01:17:23):
I don't think they thought it would be to level
that it was in two thousand and one, but something
because ninety three was so big.

Speaker 3 (01:17:28):
You're seeing stuff happening around the world.

Speaker 1 (01:17:30):
I think about the year before you went to JTTF
gold Ward Towers in nineteen ninety six, uh beIN loaded
and shot down at helicopter in Somalia in nineteen ninety three,
in addition to ordering the bombing in the first place
at the trade center with usef Usef gets captured ninety five,
but he had the Jinka plot going on with Khaleie
Chick Muhammad, which got toward the last possible second.

Speaker 3 (01:17:49):
Then the year after you get.

Speaker 1 (01:17:51):
There in ninety we get there ninety seven, with a
year later in ninety eight we get Kenya and Tanzania
the embassy bombies which killed two hundred and twenty four
people in Crean, I believe. So with that being said,
I've heard the FBI component of that investigation, but I've
never heard the nyp D side.

Speaker 3 (01:18:10):
Now I'll hear it tonight again. Brands Bank and new JDTF.

Speaker 1 (01:18:13):
Task Force member, you have a crime abroad but it's
not really abroad, if you know what I mean, it
is not American soil. You're involved in the nineteen ninety
eight us EMBc probits and investigation.

Speaker 2 (01:18:23):
Yeah, So it turns out like, is that a brand
new up there. I don't know. I don't know much
about how this whole thing operates and everything. You know.
So New York FBI at the time, John O'Neill was
the boss, rest in peace. What a solid guy. Solid.
I can't say enough good things about that guy. He

(01:18:45):
when I first got up there, he he you know,
he gave the new guys a good brief himself personally
in his office. Riley's smoking is the guys, his things
are gonna get busy, boys, he says, strap and he says,
I got good guys here, and we're gonna be busy.
He says, where for the entire world? So I said, John,
what does o mean? He goes, we're office of origin

(01:19:06):
for any terrorism in the entire world. I said, okay,
you know, I'm thinking I don't know that he's talking about.
You know. Turns out both the bombings happened. So, uh,
I was in I think it was I forty four
with Pat Pogan and Mike core So they just tell us, hey, listen, uh,

(01:19:27):
pack your bags, We're going to Africa. I says, uh,
you're going to have I ain't going to Africa. He
was no, no, no, We're going to Africa. So I didn't.
They had passports for us and everything. I didn't know
how to bureau worked. You know, I'm not up there,
you know. So we did. We had we had the
official red passports and everything. We go over there, Uh

(01:19:49):
and I got to tie. The agents were really good guys.
John O'Neill uh was there and he was the lynchpin
of all this coordination and everything because he was the
sac so he's the equivalent of like a three star general.
He picked up a phone, he got aircraft for us,
made it as comfortable as you possibly could be in

(01:20:12):
a foreign country. The devastation that these bombings took was
nothing like I've ever seen it. Just life meant nothing
over there. It probably still doesn't today. You know. It's
it's just a bad area and there was a lot

(01:20:33):
of work to do. The bomb squad guys and and
the FBI bomb text talk about a post last event.
You have a huge area that you're trying to gather
evidence on and then you know you're trying to locate
witnesses and parts. They do things a little different over there.
You know, it's like there's there's no constitution, is there's nothing.

(01:20:56):
You know, they just snapped people up and you know
that's that. It's you and you're gonna take the weight
on this, you know. Uh, they did a lot of
good forensic work on that stuff, but there was there
was a lot of bodies. Uh. It was a pretty devastating,
uh time to to see how how this whole thing
is started and what terrorism really is, you know what

(01:21:19):
I'm saying, Yeah, it's it was. It was very interesting,
a big learning curve for me personally because I didn't
know what the Bureau could do. What what I could
do was the New York City detective there. But you know,
your you're task or task force officer, so you know,
you become federalized US martial status all that stuff.

Speaker 1 (01:21:42):
Uh.

Speaker 2 (01:21:42):
But yeah, you you weren't hand in hand with the agents.

Speaker 3 (01:21:45):
Uh.

Speaker 2 (01:21:45):
And they were all good. All the agents were really
really good people, you know.

Speaker 1 (01:21:50):
Uh.

Speaker 2 (01:21:50):
And then you know we rotate back, another crew would
rotate in, and you know, we'd be up in the
OPPS Center in the FBI, New York, and you know,
we're taking the phone calls h at two o'clock in
the morning, but it's eight o'clock in the morning, at
two o'clock in the morning our place, but eight o'clock
in the morning in uh Tanzania or Kenya, you know

(01:22:11):
what I mean? Uh so, and it just to get
any resources and he requests processing. It was. It was
a huge learning curve, I got to tell you, you know,
and then you know, we we we had you know,
planes started, golf light eight hundred, Egypt there, all of them.
It just started, and you know, and everything kept telling
me John O'Neil was right. He said it's going to

(01:22:31):
get busy, and he's right. Nobody wanted to listen to John.
Nobody wanted to listen to that guy. You know, they
just didn't.

Speaker 1 (01:22:40):
You know, John O'Neill was on to some mod really
before anybody evenknew was you know, the introduction for most
of America if you were in the intelligence community during
the nineties, he knew who the guy was.

Speaker 3 (01:22:53):
The introduction for most of America came when.

Speaker 1 (01:22:55):
John Miller sat down with him in nineteen ninety eight
Nightline and before that too, I think ourn NFCNN in
nine ninety seven. So those two interviews right there, respectively,
gave proof to America that there is an exexstential threat.
He may not exist within the fifty States, he may
not be a Tim McVay, but he's out there. But
he's intent on doing arm and he has the resources

(01:23:16):
to do so. Somebody said they hated America in nineteen
ninety eight and had these blocks commit terrorists. Actually, you
think to yourself, Okay, yeah, sure, but you're in a cave.
Join a club. However, different looks on September twelfth, two
thousand and one for the rest of the country. But
before that, John O'Neil took him at his work and
it's it's just And there was the USS coal bombing
in two thousand as well.

Speaker 2 (01:23:37):
Oh my god, what a mess that was.

Speaker 1 (01:23:39):
It's just it's where you were well before I let
you talk about that. It's just sad and again sad irony.
Much like is the case with Jane Dornacker earlier. John
O'Neil was so on top of this. John O'Neill retires
from the FBI in the summer of two thousand and
one becomes director of security for the World Trade Center
dies in the World Trades.

Speaker 3 (01:23:56):
I'm just like, ah God. And again I highly recommend
for anybody in the chat that has not seen it.
It's on YouTube. PBS themselves uploaded the man who knew
his name of the documentary. You gotta watch it.

Speaker 1 (01:24:09):
You will be angry, you will cry maybe, but you
will be educated because John really knew. But the Coal
two thousand small ship pulls up next to the coal
larger vessel, suicide bombing conducted. I think seventeen sailors were
killed there.

Speaker 2 (01:24:23):
Seventeen sailors were killed, yep.

Speaker 1 (01:24:24):
And I remember John Miller describing it might not have
been John, but it might have been Ted Copple. But
somebody described it in that Nightline interview a lot in
an Idea post segment as the FBI being a forensic
bull in an air of China shop, because such was
the tension at that time. This was another example that
your experience with that investigation.

Speaker 2 (01:24:45):
Sure again, John O'Neill, I get my march in orders.
I relieved Kenny Heeb at the at the coal so
we get there. Going to through the airport in Yemen
was quite the experience, because their customs is equivalent to

(01:25:07):
two guys with the card table with AK forty seven's.
That's their customs and their bad guys. And I went
with another person. I won't mention names, but that person
was carrying the dip bag. They wanted to open a
dip bag and it got it got a little touchy
there for a while. So I had a whisper in

(01:25:29):
this person's ears. We're eighteen thousand miles from anybody who's
gonna find us if they ever do give them the bag.
You know, there's nothing in it but nonsense administrative stuff,
you know. So they wound up not taking a bag.
But anyway, Then then we get to the hotel and
I meet this young Marine Corps captain. It was let's

(01:25:51):
see first Platoon, six fast Marine Corps guys, really solid,
solid young guys. So he meets us. We get thereing, uh,
he's Annapolis graduate. I'll never forget the guy. I think
it was twenty nine or thirty years old. I forget
what it was, but he was a real young guy.
And you know, I said, uh, you know, what's the

(01:26:12):
story here? So he says, we got enough hammo form
about fifteen meda firefight. I said, okay, we got anything heavy,
any grenades and everything, and he goes, no, that's at
the airport. That's when John was having that beef with
Ambassador Boudine at the time. Uh it was, it was bad.
So turned out we got a good brief on everything,

(01:26:32):
so we knew where we stood as far as defending
the hotel and everything. Uh So one of the young marines,
I remember, I had a wish list of stuff I
had to bring bring with me Kenny. He told me
what to bring. They wanted hot sauce, you know, uh,
all kinds of stuff, and I had some Jack Daniels

(01:26:53):
in the air and everything like this. So I was like,
I'm smuggling stuff into a country and it just turned
out that okay. But they were solid, solid guys. But
as we're doing the investigation, we have everything all set up.
We're supposed to go to the town that a tunnel
was one way in, one way out of where our

(01:27:13):
hotel was, and that was guarded by the Yemen E'SE
police for our protection. We had the squad of marines,
God bless them. Two of them got killed later on
in Iraq, but they were up twenty four to seven
heavy vests. It was one hundred and twenty five degrees
in Yemen, and these guys were up. They had counter

(01:27:34):
sniper positions. I mean, they did their homemark. These guys
were no nonsense. Their responsibility was to take embassies. So
I felt very comfortable with them. I had another guy
with me from ncis actually from Bayonne, New Jersey. Here
another solid guy. But we go to the port director

(01:27:56):
and the Yemen's police superintendent. We go to his office
and we're not allowed to have our guards. We had
the FBI New York Swat team with us, just so
happens they will with us that particular rotation. Good solid guys.
So we go to the tunnel and you know, it's
just like if they trap us in the tunnel, we're dead.

(01:28:18):
You know. It's just one of those things. So we
wound up getting to the police station and we're supposed
to interview the port captain, so they make us do
that drive like two and a half hours. We get there,
go upstairs to see this superintendent whatever he was. He
had the only air conditioning I think in the entire country.

(01:28:40):
And he yeah, he says, no, there's no interview today,
come back tomorrow. So I said this. This was a
game that went on and on and on to several days,
even actually several weeks. So finally we decide to go
into town and we find doing some investigative work, we
find the location where the the suicide bombers stayed. Uh,

(01:29:04):
and I just can't think of the name of the
movie right now, but uh, they had a very just
some some holes dug in for you know, going to
the bathroom. Uh, and the uh, the port, the window
that they had had a direct view of the fueling
ports where the USS coal was gonna pull in, and

(01:29:26):
they uh, they were supposed to film the entire explosion
from there. That was the plan. So uh, it didn't happen.
We came downstairs and now we're outside and there's a
lot of people out there, a lot of people, and
they don't have our best interests in their mind, you know.

(01:29:47):
So the the FBI SWAT guys, they they were good guys. Uh.
To me, Galliano was the SWAT team leader, really solid guy,
finished last and uh West Point class and he proud
of it. But if Jinny Gaggs was a good guy.
So we we did this game with the mic probably

(01:30:08):
for four or five weeks, you know, and we got
absolutely nowhere with them.

Speaker 5 (01:30:15):
Uh.

Speaker 2 (01:30:15):
And then when you finally got to them, we we
we got there. We sat down and it was a
myriad of four or five interpreters on the YM and
east side. I would say what's your name? And it
would say, you know, different dialects, what's you're name? Then
and he'd say Mike Cologne and they would go, Michael, michaelone, michaelone,
get back to me in English in Mike Cologne. It

(01:30:37):
was a big game that went on. They had a
guy standing and sitting next to him with a gun
pointed at him. So what kind of answer is what
he what he was going to give us? You know.
It was just a big game that went on with
all of this stuff. And that's how that's how the
whole thing went. But anybody we tried to witness, uh,

(01:30:58):
you know, any anybody we tried to interview that the
holding cells that they were non existing. It was like
that John Wayne movie with is no no no cell
doors or anything. Because they're outside with guns. Nobody's gonna
escape unless they let you get out, you know. And
that's that's how it was. With all the interviews we

(01:31:18):
did with these people, at least the ones I did,
you know, Uh, and they, you know, we tried to
you know, we showed them pictures of the sales that
they killed and everything they could care less. They had
shark eyes. They weren't giving up anything. And it was
nothing I was gonna do to scare them. Darvin Yemen

(01:31:38):
with these guys pointing a gun at them, what what
was How was I going to scare them, you know
what I mean? And they weren't gonna give him to
us anyway. You know. It was just just one of
those things, you know, and we uh, I wound up
rotating back. Uh. But I I later ps to the story.
A few months ago, Uh, the USS Coal came into

(01:32:02):
Naval Weapons Station Earl here in New Jersey. There was
a nuclear sub that was was getting refitted with a
few things and going out to sea. So I just
started to go down there because I'm the military liaison
with the New Jersey Homeland Security. So I went out there,
and turns out the XO on the USS Coal currently

(01:32:27):
was like a petty officer at the time of the
attack back then, so he was, you know, I told
him who I was. We exchanged coins, and I says,
I still have the captain's coin from the USS coal
when we were their and those young sailors, uh, they
saved that ship. So he told me we actually went
back on the coal and showed me the area that

(01:32:49):
was blown up. It's it's it's all been refitted. The
whole area is all got the seventeen stars on it
and a picture of each one of the sailors and
a little bio about the sailors, and then the stars
are all done in bronze. That's that's maintained. No one

(01:33:11):
is allowed to step on those stars ever. And they
actually post somebody there every single day, every single day.
And so it was funny because the XO didn't know
the investigative side of it, and I won. I was
interested in how the hell did these young sailors save
this ship, because that thing should have sunk by any

(01:33:32):
stretch of the imagination. They just knew damage control and
they did a hell of a job on it. And
then you know, some of the youngest sailors were gathered
around and you know, we wound up, you know, just
bsing a little bit about the you know, the whole
thing and everything. But these again, these were young sailors.
These weren't thirty five year old John Wayne guys that

(01:33:52):
were putting tops down. These are nineteen twenty year old kids,
you know. But they did damage control the way they
were taught in the Navy, and they saved that ship.
And then you know, we had some more assets, were
able to get it to a condition where it really
wasn't gonna sink. But the initial part of it was bad.
You know, it was bad. It was just not a

(01:34:15):
good day, not a good day.

Speaker 3 (01:34:17):
Yeah, twenty five years next year too, which is crazy.

Speaker 2 (01:34:19):
Yeah, twenty five.

Speaker 3 (01:34:20):
Quarter century since that attack.

Speaker 1 (01:34:23):
I didn't and again I'm a huge baseball fan, so
I didn't know about this until the number of years ago.
I just I think it was during COVID time. I
was watching old baseball games and two thousand World Series.
I think it was Game three, Yankees Mets at shape.
Mets took Game three, four to two. In the front
row MLB. It actually invited some of the sailors who

(01:34:44):
were on that ship, gave them free taste of the game,
and they were.

Speaker 3 (01:34:47):
Watched the game, and I'm like, oh, what happened here?
And then I went into that.

Speaker 1 (01:34:50):
Of course, that's what lem Di didn learn a little
bit more about John O'Neill and so on and so forth.
Just another one of those, and it gets lost because
of what happened on nine to eleven. But it's another
one of those. It's where it's like when you look
at the leader to the attack, that was another big one.
People didn't pay attention because I mean people every day
living in America, that.

Speaker 3 (01:35:07):
Is, because it was abroad.

Speaker 1 (01:35:09):
It didn't really affect them until well, you know what
happened the following year. And I was gonna ask you
to You retired June of two thousand and one, right
before and when you look at what would happened three
months later, what happened to John O'Neill, what happened to
John Delara who you worked with in THESU, and so
many other guys you knew, between the NYPD and of

(01:35:31):
course the FBI and I'm sure the Fire Department too. A.
How did you feel that day? And B did party
you feel fortunate? Because who knows if you were still
working when that went down, maybe you might have been there.

Speaker 2 (01:35:44):
Well, here's what happened. I'll tell you exactly what happened.
I retired six weeks prior to the attack on a
World Trade Center. I set up the interview for John
O'Neill with my boss, Jeff Wharton for Silverstein Properties. He
was the managing director and absolute gentleman. So he said

(01:36:07):
to me, he says, look, I'm I think I'm going
to be asked to take over the managing director spot.
He says, I need somebody for security. So I said
to him, Jeff, you need an FBI guy for this.
This is not an NYPD thing like Rockefeller sent that
we had great powers, who was a gentleman too. I said,
you need somebody with international skills here because I knew

(01:36:31):
from being in the JTTF here was a lot of
stuff in those buildings, a lot of different companies, a
lot of stuff, you know. So I recommended John O'Neill.
I said, just understand. I says, John's a good guy,
but he's you know, he there's some baggage with him,
but he's I don't care. I want to I want
to meet him. So I set up a meeting with

(01:36:51):
John O'Neill at the Bras area on fifty fifth Street
one morning, and you know, I shook his hand, and
when he was there, he said, John, you know, typical John.
You didn't see me. I wasn't here, So I said, okay, John,
I said, this is Jeff, and is John. They went inside.
They weren sorry for about three hours, you know. So
he come out and I remember he gave me a

(01:37:14):
slap in the face. He says, I'll see in a
few weeks. So I knew the deal was done. I
knew the deal was done, you know. So Jeff, you know,
said they came to an agreement about a lot of things.
And I says, he's a good, solid guy. You're not
going to regret doing this. So it turns out on
that morning, I picked up Jeff around six thirty morning.

(01:37:36):
I was his executive protection for both him and his wife.
So we got to the trade center around six thirty
in the morning, maybe maybe quarter to seven. Jeff was
an early riser. He liked to get meetings out of
the way and everything like this. So I was actually
on the thirty eighth floor when the plane's hit. I

(01:37:59):
was just lucky. I was just lucky. And there's a
million stories like mine. Uh So I'm sitting with a
couple other retired guys, and uh, Jeff's wife called me
and said, hey, listen, he forgot his his portfolio briefing
for a meeting later on that day. He says, she goes,

(01:38:20):
can you come up and get it? And I said, yeah, sure,
you know, it's no problem. So, you know, cops being cops,
you know, they tell me, I sid, I have another
cup of coffee that could wait like this, I said not,
you know, I want to get up there before traffic
and everything like this, and then you know, they start.
I said, you're a brown nose. You know, you're trying
to look good for the boss's wife and everything like this.

(01:38:40):
I said, you know, you guys, you know I told
a few choice where it's just you know, chuckling around
with each other like cops do. Yeah, just bust the tops.
That's all it was. I say, I see you guys, lady,
Yeah yeah, yeah yeah, go up, down, go uptown. So
I get to the first floor actually uh, actually the
basement rather, and I hear this boom and you know,

(01:39:04):
working in Manhattan, you hear these, you know, like in
the big trucks hit those meatal plates all the time,
the dump trucks, and that loud bang well to me,
that's what it sounded like to me, you know. So
I get I get in the car and I'm pulling out.
I make the turn on the FDR drive and you know,

(01:39:25):
I come out actually and I see all the smoke
and all those louver laws that were falling down and everything,
and I'm like, what the hell is that? So I
pull over and I'm looking at my Holy craps, something
hit the building. It looks like a plane or something
like this. I try to call John O'Neill. No answer

(01:39:46):
from John O'Neill. So I tried to call my boss.
No answer from my boss. He went upstairs. I didn't
notice till later on in the day when I finally
hooked up with him again because I thought he was dead.
He went up to the one hundred and first floor.
He had a meeting that was the cantor Fitzgerald guys.
He had a separate meeting with some other people scheduled.

(01:40:08):
And there was a girl that was going to be
doing like the Christmas decorations for the trade cent on
the first floor, and she had the times mixed up
eight thirty. She had eight thirty instead of three thirty.
So I called Jeff before I left, I said, hey,
there's a girl downstairs. So he says, okay, I won't

(01:40:29):
make a hangar round. I'll come down. It's only gonna
take five minutes. So, unbeknownst to me, that was the
last time he took the last elevated down from one
hundred and first floor. Otherwise he would have been killed
up there. He absolutely would have been killed.

Speaker 3 (01:40:45):
The impact.

Speaker 2 (01:40:46):
Nobody survived. Nobody survived. Wow. So oh man, Yeah, I
didn't find Jeff and I couldn't get the other guy.
So I went towards the bill and uh I saw
you know, guys will tell you it was a mess.
There was bodies falling down. It was an emergency service

(01:41:09):
people fired apartment em anybody you could think it was coming.
But there was bodies coming down all over the place.
And I know Marco and all those guys they were
they were up close and personal with it. But I says, look,
I'm gonna be no good here. Uh. So I went
up to two ninety Broadway on foot and I, uh,

(01:41:31):
I went up there and Malie Maria Delize was our
SPAA at the time. I still had my card still
worked up there and everything, and they never deactivated it yet.
So I said, where is is there? They all went
down to the explosion. I says, all right. I says, uh,
there's nothing I could do up here, you know. So
I wound up coming back down and I'm just about

(01:41:56):
getting to the to my car and all of a sudden,
I hate a run and the buildings start to I
get in the car. Mike, I ain't kidding you. I
was the quickest I ever gotten the car in my life.
I threw that baby drive and I'm northbound on the drive,
northbound on the drive, and I'm telling you, I'm probably

(01:42:16):
thirty seconds ahead of his cloud, you know. And I'm
going and I'm I'm thinking, how am I going to
tell Susan that her husband's dead? That's all that was
on my mind, you know. So I get up there.
She's hysterical. We took the elevator right to her apartment.
She lived on seventy fourth Street, Fifth Avenue, both of

(01:42:37):
them at the time. And I says, how am I
going to tell her husband's dead? You know? So she
gets here, she's hysterical, understandably, and I said, look, I
tried to find him. I couldn't find him.

Speaker 1 (01:42:50):
You know.

Speaker 2 (01:42:50):
So she goes, well, well we'll hear from I said,
you know, I didn't want to tell her what I saw,
you know, I said, well, I'm hoping, you know, we'll
get hold of them. So a couple hours later, Jeff
turned out get dropped off by Portathoroerty police car up
at his residence because he said who he was and everything,
and then then the rest is all history. And yeah,

(01:43:13):
it was just I didn't get home till about eleven
thirty at night, and I'll never forget it. Silverstein Property's
headquarters was on forty third and fifth, and I remember
seeing the fighter planes going up and I couldn't get
in touch with anybody. I couldn't call my wife. My

(01:43:33):
wife thought I was dead, no question. She thought I
was dead. All my friends that knew I retired and
went up there thought I was dead because nobody could
get me, you know. So the weirdest thing was Mike,
I'm on the Tappenzy Bridge and I'm coming over to
as a New York Trooper. He's got a shotgun. He's
stopping me. So I tend him. I said, I'm just

(01:43:56):
trying to get to the other side of Jersey, said Okay,
you know, I understand, be carefully radio down to the
next guy. And then I remember it's a Jersey trooper
on the other side, and uh, he says, look, I'm
gonna radio in. He says, uh, let know you're coming.
So the way this thing was, Mike, I went southbound
on the New Jersey Turnpike. I was the only car

(01:44:18):
on the Jersey Turnpike back home to where I was,
and I remember passing by the Lincoln Tunnel and then
towards the Holland Tunnel. All the emergency vehicles, the fire trucks, police,
everybody was was inbound to the city and all you
saw was fine. I'll never forget it to the day
I died. I mean other you know, other guys walk

(01:44:39):
close and personal, but that that was my story on
nine to eleven.

Speaker 4 (01:44:44):
Uh.

Speaker 2 (01:44:44):
And I'll never forget that day the rest of my
life unless unless people over there, they will never understand it,
will never understand it. And the kids today that they
weren't even born, so they're not even teaching about any
of the if that happened, you know, just terrible and
everybody's everybody's sick. There's a lot of guys that are sick,

(01:45:06):
you know, from from all these different cancers and everything,
and they're still dying. Other than the people that that
died initially, you know, he was. It's not a good day.

Speaker 3 (01:45:16):
We got an alumni of this show that died.

Speaker 2 (01:45:19):
Richie.

Speaker 3 (01:45:19):
Yeah, you worked with in the s U Richie.

Speaker 2 (01:45:21):
Yes, Yes, Richie to solid guy. Yeah. And I know
I know Marco was up close and personal to this,
you know, and a lot of guys.

Speaker 3 (01:45:33):
He was with Mike Curtain, he was with my John V.

Speaker 5 (01:45:35):
Laira.

Speaker 1 (01:45:36):
He was with Denny Richards from the boat. I'm sure
you crossed pass with I did want to ask you to.
I mean, I'm sure you knew because a lot and
we could talk about that. I know you knew some
of the E s U guys. We could talk about them.
Lenny had FBI bomb tech. I don't know if you
crossed pass with him too much.

Speaker 2 (01:45:51):
You know. I didn't know him though, because on on
our squad I forty four, we had an m y
p D guy that the FBI to the bomb school, uh,
and he was he was the only guy I dealt with.
I didn't deal with the bomb text that often because
we had an NYPD guy that was a sign to him.
But it wasn't wasn't our bomb squad guys.

Speaker 3 (01:46:11):
Okay, you know I knew I knew Lenny work bank robbery,
and I think he was right.

Speaker 2 (01:46:16):
Yeah. I heard of him, and he had a great reputation.
I didn't know him. He's really Yeah, I heard a
lot of good things about him.

Speaker 3 (01:46:23):
Yeah on the FBI. Ah, he killed that day.

Speaker 1 (01:46:25):
But of the NYPD guys, I mean I know a
lot of them in emergency who specifically I mentioned Delira earlier?

Speaker 3 (01:46:30):
Who else did you know?

Speaker 2 (01:46:31):
Uh what? Uh? We had the girl next door to
Mora and the thirteen preacing Yeah, we saw her all
the time. What a sweet, sweet woman. And obviously what's
his name of the bomb squad, Yeah, we used to
deal with him all the time. Another gentleman, absolute gentleman.

(01:46:53):
I I I knew Mike just in passing. Uh, I
was already out of emergency, but I did meet him,
you know, yeah, just just really good guys. You know,
it was it was a horrible day. It was a
horrible day.

Speaker 1 (01:47:08):
You know, that's important we talk about it so that
it's not forgotten. I mean, I I'll admit not to
make you feel old and I'm not trying to be
when I say this is when it happened. I was
one years old, so I don't have a memory. I
don't have a memory of my own them that day.
But talking to you guys, certainly on the p D
side and the ft side, fills me in. It's important
to get those perspectives out there. You know it's been

(01:47:29):
You're still in. We won't get into it, but you're
still involved. Of course, you're not completely retired. Retired I
we'll get to that some other time, but when you can.
But it's been twenty three years before I get to
the rapid fire. Since you left the NYPD, A lot
of different hats you wore. Think about anti cryme besides patrol,
anti crime. You were an email for five years, you

(01:47:50):
know major case for a while. You know Chief Department's
office as well, Major Case JTTF. That's a lot to
squeeze into twenty years, my friend, when you look back
on it, all the years later, you've been out longer
than you were in. If you find it, how would
how would you well, how would you find looking back
at an nextllent career?

Speaker 2 (01:48:07):
Well, you know it's a cliche, but I'm gonna tell
you this, and I truly believe it. I was very,
very fortunate to work with really good guys, good bosses.
Uh my favorite time was emergency service bar none but
the point at all. Yeah, it was a ticket to
the greatest show on Earth. I wouldn't do anything different,

(01:48:30):
no matter what. I just wouldn't change a thing. Uh,
even from day one when I raised my hand. I
let me tell you something. I did not want to retire.
I really didn't. But I made so much overtime up
in the JTTF. It was, you know, it was one
of the things we do. The numbers do you wigh out?

(01:48:50):
You know, I could get another job, and who knew
I was gonna get this job for Mike A lot
of money being an executive protection, a lot of money
they would pay me. You know, I couldn't say no
to it. Had a family, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, But
I truly wanted to stay. I did not want to leave.

(01:49:12):
I did not want to. I'd worked with such good
guys up in the JTTF. Also Mikey koor and and
and pat Olgan, all of those guys. I mean, we
did nothing but break each other's shoes every single day.
Danny Callumine. I don't know if you ever interviewed. And
Danny's another another character Brooklyn guy. Oh he's a solid guy.

(01:49:32):
He can tell you Brooklyn stories. Yeah, he was a
detective up the in JTTF with us. Really good guy.
But I wouldn't change a thing at all. Uh, you know,
from day one working in East New York and Bedford Stevens,
I wouldn't change that at all, not at all. It
was the greatest place I learned again with solid guys

(01:49:54):
who would have no nonsense. We helped. We helped a
lot of good people. You know. We put a lot
of bag as a way, you know, but we did
it for the good people in the neighborhood, you know
that wanted us there. You know.

Speaker 1 (01:50:06):
That's what it's for.

Speaker 3 (01:50:07):
That's what it's all about. Yeac then and of course
still now to this day.

Speaker 1 (01:50:11):
Now, of course we go into the rapid fire five
hit and run questions for me, five hit and run
answers to you. I'm gonna have to switch it up
on the fly here because I'm looking at my questions
now you answered so many of them already. I'm gonna
have to flip the rapid fire format.

Speaker 2 (01:50:22):
Okay, I'll do my best. I'm not the bro.

Speaker 1 (01:50:28):
Save pass if you want. The first question is the
men fly around a lot even in your signed truck.
Of course you have your sign truck, but you get
moved around a lot if certain trucks are short handed.

Speaker 3 (01:50:38):
Favorite truck to fly to when you were an emergency.

Speaker 2 (01:50:45):
Uh six because it was restaurants to eating. I didn't
like going to the tree truck because I know the
area and I remember the Pello Me Me Bobby flew
one night on a midnight. If you passed the White Castle,
you went too far, and I passed the White Castle,
I went too far and got lost.

Speaker 3 (01:51:05):
That's all the guys six truck past and present.

Speaker 1 (01:51:07):
Second, besides emergency service, I know that was your favorite
assignment besides the emergency, favorite assignment in the NYPD in
your twenty year.

Speaker 2 (01:51:14):
Career, I had a lot of fun. I was into
one two detective squad. I worked with great detectives in there.
That was a fun place. I had a good boss,
Tommy Burke, marine Corps veteran Quisson survivor, good solid guy.
But I got to tell you j TTF was a hoop.
That was a hoop. No question about him. That was

(01:51:36):
a good place to go.

Speaker 1 (01:51:38):
Yeah, if not for the police department, what other career
could you have seen yourself pursuing and enjoying.

Speaker 2 (01:51:43):
I would have went to the fire department I got
I got called actually when I was in emergency, so
I like that was my dream. I could not go
to the fire department after that. And I remember the
investigator saying, are you crazy? You don't want this job.
I went, bro, I'm in the the sue, I'm at
the top of the game. I'm on the A team here.

(01:52:06):
You know, I can't take it. So he says, all right,
And that was that. My My wife would have killed me.
I had I had a number of number two vacation
pick you know, then I would have been back to
like February picks. You would have killed me. So I couldn't.
I couldn't do that. Yes, it did.

Speaker 1 (01:52:24):
Fourth And this is where you could say multiple I
always tell my guests, don't feel like you have to
pick one. Uh favorite bar of restaurants to eat in
the city throughout your career.

Speaker 2 (01:52:33):
Oh my god, Oh Manhattan was Oh god, the Rolfs
was good. Uh Uh what the hell is at Stake Place?
On the West Side. I was very good. They might
think there was a lot of places. Oh, I'll pass

(01:52:53):
on that one, multipeople. We were in midtown.

Speaker 3 (01:52:58):
That's true. There's a lot of great places.

Speaker 5 (01:53:00):
Yeah it was.

Speaker 1 (01:53:00):
We'll just we'll just say miscellaneous slash multiple on that
one and fifty. Finally, advice you would give young cops
coming on the job.

Speaker 2 (01:53:07):
Now, uh, do do come in do the right thing
for the right reasons. There are good people out there.
Don't let them media manipulate you. Uh, you're still in
an NYPD cop. You got your integrity and you do
the right thing for the right reasons, and don't worry
about uh, contracts and all this other stuff. It's still

(01:53:30):
the greatest job out of facing the Earth in my opinion.
There you go. I wouldn't change the thing.

Speaker 1 (01:53:37):
Greatest show on Earth. The NYPD's got the backstage pass.
All right, Well this is fantastic stick around. We'll talk
off their before I say the evening to the audience.
Any shout outs to anyone or anything, Paul that you got.

Speaker 2 (01:53:49):
Just all the email out there that I haven't seen
in ages. Listen, I'm glad we're still here to talk
to guys like Mike and tell our wars stories and traditions,
any show that that's important, that tradition caveries on. Uh,
it's just just really good. And uh, you should get
my partner Bobby kennavan On. Uh, you will. Oh, I'll

(01:54:12):
give it to you. He's a good guy. You will
absolutely have nothing but a hoop with him too.

Speaker 1 (01:54:18):
Yeah, hopefully I can get Bobby because I got a
lot of guys told me stories about him, so he's
definitely named. I've had in my good dude profile for
this mini series. But thank you very much, Paul. Like
I said, sticking around, we'll talk if I want to.
Thank everybody tuned in the night. As always, thanks to
all you that tuned in via YouTube, LinkedIn, and Facebook
and those he later on that'll watch the replayer listen
on the audio side. A quick note to the audience.

(01:54:39):
Producer Victor knows this, but you guys haven't heard it yet.
We got we don't have a show this Friday. I
gotta work overtime this Friday, so we're not gonna be
on the air. We got the motion ceremony for guys
getting the bump up to lieutenant. We'll congrats to them.
I'll congratulate him by name on the next show. We'll
wait till it's official, but next Monday we'll be right
back here Volume sixty three of the Best and the Bravest.

Speaker 3 (01:54:58):
He worked in OEM. He also did his time in.

Speaker 1 (01:55:01):
The Fday, eventually rising too the rank of Battalion Chief
and that is Phil Parr. So that'll be next Monday
night at six pm for the volume sixty three of
the Best of the Bravest. Interviews with the ftn wis
elite again, no show Friday. We're back on the air
next Monday. Thanks again to everybody who tubed right and
for those of you listening on the audio side, you're
in for a treat. Led Zeppelin makes their first appearance

(01:55:23):
on the Mike the New Even podcast from their nineteen
seventy three album Houses of the Holy. They come your
way with no Quarter in the meantime on behalf of
Paul Kotchinski and producer Victor. This has been the event
inside the NYPD's Emergency Service Unit, volume forty nine. We
will see you next time. A great act and as
the e men, like I said, anytime, maybe to take
care of.

Speaker 6 (01:56:37):
Speaks The Boers speaks the bab the boer steamers to speak.

Speaker 5 (01:56:59):
Back, closed door, pull out the line.

Speaker 4 (01:57:22):
No, they won't be home tonight. Snoofuls art, don't you know?

Speaker 2 (01:57:36):
The wingers a floor of blow and cool, the wear
and steel, it's bread and track.

Speaker 4 (01:57:50):
The Kevin gets the luskstrau it's just a man and

(01:59:27):
pats the both junest schmist sid side with the.

Speaker 2 (02:00:27):
Double mopstick. Every stemm hmmm.

Speaker 5 (02:00:34):
Snow drives by the foot.

Speaker 4 (02:00:36):
That's slow.

Speaker 5 (02:00:40):
The dogs of doom howl and move.

Speaker 2 (02:00:47):
The carring news and must get me.

Speaker 4 (02:00:50):
Round the bay. All dreams for me and thank you.

Speaker 2 (02:01:17):
Cool.

Speaker 5 (02:01:23):
It's so cool, so

Speaker 4 (02:02:02):
Contact

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Episode 343: The E-Men: Inside The NYPD’s Emergency Service Unit: Paul Kwicienski (Volume 49)

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