Episode 372: The E-Men: Inside The NYPD’s Emergency Service Unit: Mike Granton (Volume 52)

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

(00:59):
the listening to them inside the NYPD's an emergency service unit.
I think, by the way, we're fashionably late. That's okay.
You know, sometimes tech issues get in the way. It's
not the first time that's happened to us, it won't
be the last. Sorry about that. We were working through
those issues, but not a moment too soon, and we'll
be off and running with our guests momentarily. But I
believe the first, no not, I believe he was the

(01:21):
first transit EMRU guy had. I was Frankolveraducci, and then
I think that same week I had John Bushing. Not
too long after that was Anita Rosato, and not too
long after Anita was Ken Schetzler. So EMRU has had
a nice imprint on this show. We've gotten guys from
em RU, even even though they weren't around too long
before the merger kicked in. With the NYPD Emergency Service,

(01:41):
you know, we've also had guys from Housing Rescue, with
which EMRU had a hand in training those guys when
they were getting ready to get going out. Tonight's guest
will introduce it a bit. I think he reached out
through my website, Mike colonemedia dot com. We knew a
lot of the same people and he was telling me
his background. I'm like, well, you got to come on
the show. So we've been about a date for a
while now, and finally he's here tonight for this volume

(02:04):
fifty two of a mini series that I have not
done since July. The Men inside the NYPD's Emergency Service
Unit with Manholo not in the NYPDESU was in the
NYPD eventually and had a seven year stint in transit rescue.
Hello to everybody, tune again, Donald Weaver, I see you.
I still got to listen to your voice messages. I
didn't forget. Good to see all you tuning in tonight,
Chris Ebden, Terry Murnaine, John Costello, and just briefly before

(02:28):
we run the ads, I posted about it. I won't
mention the individual's name out of respect for them and
their family, but we had a tragic loss yesterday in
the NYPD family. Retired member of the service who posted
something yesterday that alluded to them being in a significant
emotional distress. You know, we tried to get that individual
help and tried to get in touch with that individual,

(02:50):
and unfortunately, despite the best efforts of all involved who
saw that post, we were too late and we weren't
able to say that individual in time. And just a reminder, listen,
everybody gets down. We all have moments where we struggle.
We all have moments where we're not feeling in tiptop
shape mentally, and it's natural, it's part of life. But
you know, it's not okay suffer in silence. And if

(03:11):
you've got something like that going on, it doesn't matter
who it is, reach out to somebody. It's easier said
than done, but it's the strongest thing you can do
because it's never the outcome that we want. And I
wish that individual had done that. And my thoughts and
prayers are with that individual's family tonight who we couldn't
save yesterday. So just a little reminder for those of
you that know you know, and I'll just leave it

(03:32):
at that, so I a happier note. We're on a
couple ads get things going. First things first, Producer Victor
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(03:53):
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(04:16):
because in Braves Country, there's always room at the chop Seat.
Only one more week until the New York Yankees disappoint
me again. Now, before we get to our guest, to'll
introduce to the moment you know who won't disappoint you,
Bill Ryan. The mic Thing New Haven podcast is proudly
sponsored and supported by the Ryan Investigative Group. If you

(04:36):
need an elite PI, look no further than the elite
Ryan Investigative Group, which is run by retired NYP Detective
Bill Ryan, a twenty year veteran of the department who
served a majority of his career in the detective Bureau,
most notably in the Arson explosion squad. So if you
need a PI to handle anything from fraud, legal services,
and anything else that you might require, contact Bill at

(04:56):
three four seven four one seven sixteen ten again four
seven four sixteen ten. Reached him at his website or
the email that you see here. Again, if you need
a PI, look no further than Bill Ryan and the
Ryan Investigative. Through a proud supporter and sponsor of the
Mike de Newhaven podcast, and unlike the New York Yankees,
Tonight's guest Dan, Bill Ryan both know how to come

(05:18):
in in the clutch. My next guest worked the streets
of New York City and not one, but two capacities.
He was first to medic with New York City EMS
pre FDNY merger, of course, and later as a member
of both the New York City Transit Police and the
New York City Police Department when those two agencies merged
in the spring of nineteen ninety five. Among his many
stops include the Deputy Commissioner of Training his office, and
of course that's why he's under the ESU banner for tonight.

(05:40):
The Emergency Medical Rescue Unit which was in existence since
the fall of nineteen seventy seven, when Sergeant Joe said,
a former guest of this show as well, helped start it,
and of course a distinguished career with the Transit Police
along the way as well. On that for this volume
fifty two of the email inside the NYPD's Emergency Service Unit,
former New City EMS medic and former transity man Mike Grant, Mike, welcome,

(06:03):
how are you?

Speaker 2 (06:04):
Thank you, Mike, thanks for having me, Thanks.

Speaker 1 (06:07):
For being here. So just tell me about those early years.
Where'd you grow up?

Speaker 2 (06:11):
All right? So I grew up in Brooklyn, New York.
It was the absolutely best place in the country you
can grow up, believe it or not. I live in
South Carolina now for the last almost twenty eight nineteen years,
and I have to tell you people, New York has
a very bad reputation around the country, and I think
it's because we're so blunked. But I have to tell

(06:31):
you I've never met moro, honest people, more open people
in New York City. So when I see people down here,
in South Carolina who are all Bible belters, and they're
all like, oh, bless your heart. Basically they're telling you
where to go. And you know that doesn't go over
well with us New york Is and I think we
now outnumber the amount of Native Southerners down here, so

(06:54):
it's har Yeah. Yeah, they're running for the hills with
all of us Damn Yankees.

Speaker 1 (07:01):
Yeah. I mean, that's a good way to put it.
You go down to Carolina, it's that way. You go
down to Florida, it's that way, right. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (07:08):
Well, you know, growing up at Brooklyn was again I
was exposed. You know. I think at the time there
were eight million people in New York City and I
believe two or three million of them are in Brooklyn,
and you were exposed to everything and everybody, you know.
I was in basically Gravesend Home Crest area of Brooklyn,
which is just above Coney Island, north of Coney Island,

(07:30):
and it was a fabulous place to grow up. I
loved it. I mean, I never wanted my childhood to end.
I don't think it ever did end. I've been blessed
my whole life and it's been totally.

Speaker 1 (07:40):
Fabulous, absolutely as we'll talk about tonight. So I mean
back then, before we get to the course the trans
police and everything that involved that, did you have an
inclination towards civil service? Because there's kids of a certain
area that grow up they grew up in New York.
Where are you're shaking your head? No, So I lets
you answer for well, yeah, yes and no.

Speaker 2 (07:58):
So technically all through I mean as a kid, all
through school and high school and most of high school.
I actually told my guidance counsel I wanted to be
an airline pilot. That was my thing. I wanted to
be a pilot my whole life. However, also as a kid,
my parents growing up in New York City used to
rent the summer house in Rocky Point Long Island. Which

(08:21):
is the amazing thing that one of my partners actually
lives in Rocky Point Long Island. Tony Romano a Truck
seven guy. He was a transit rescue guy and then
he moved on after the merge to Truck seven the
whole rest of his career in ESU. And we grew
up in Brooklyn, right across the street from each other,

(08:41):
I mean one number away. I was eight thirteen. He
was eight twelve off houses faced each other the first
eleven years of life. We were like best buddies. We
did everything together. I had a brother three years I'm
the youngest of five kids. I had a brother three
years older, and I had two cousins won the same
age and one year, all in the same house. And

(09:02):
then Rocky across the street. We called him Red at
the time, and that was kind of like the gang
for Avenue W and Brooklyn, and we had a great time.
And his father was a city fireman. He was a
show for Engine two thirty nine in Brooklyn also, And
when he was about eleven or twelve years old, I'm

(09:23):
going to say that like fourth fifth grade somewhere around there,
his father decided to move to greener pastures and moved
out to Massapko Park, Long Island, and we kind of
totally lost touch. And it's an amazing story because fifteen
years later, when I finally leave EMS and I go

(09:43):
to the police department and I show up on a job,
Guess who comes down the stairs with transit EMRU was
Tony Romano. And I have to tell you, man, I
almost lost it. But it was amazing and I'm still
friends with him to this day. As a matter of fact,
he called me this say, afternoon, because his father just
had back surgery, but he called. We're still in touch
today and we've been friends since we were embryos.

Speaker 1 (10:06):
I guess I'd like to get Tony on the show
for the ESUN because I've heard the name before. He's
definitely well known on against a lot of John Bushing
was in Truck seven two, so I know John Bushing
knows them.

Speaker 2 (10:15):
So I left all everybody who name knows them. As
a matter of fact, he was married to Anita for
ten years. Yes, he probably told you don't ever put
Tony on the show.

Speaker 1 (10:23):
No, no, no, she did not. She did not.

Speaker 2 (10:26):
I'm decent. And when you went over your list of
em RU people you had on, I was about to
scream at you because you left out, Joe said.

Speaker 1 (10:33):
But then you yeah, I added, Joe said, yeah, how
could I forget you? As Anita said, Joe said, said,
you know that's the running joke.

Speaker 2 (10:39):
Right, Joe, Joe said, is the reason we're we're all
you know in the game, Because Joe said, you know,
the best part of getting into a unit like ESU
or EMRU is the training because the training. You know
who was at Patty Pogan I think said we drive
around with the Giant Craftsman tool box essentially, yeah, essentially, yes,
And but the only time you get to use everything

(11:01):
in that toolbox is during training, right, Well, sometimes some
things don't come out of that truck for a year,
two years, three years. I mean we had a plasma
cutting saw on that. I mean I never touched after
we got trained on it, but I would have loved
to have used it. You can cut like a flatbed
truck in half with it. But I mean, there wasn't

(11:21):
a lot of usage for it for us. But I'm
just saying during training, which was Joe said's forte right,
you got to use everything in the in the Giant
Craftsman toolbox.

Speaker 1 (11:31):
An EMS was a part of that, and I think
that segues perfectly getting into New York City EMS. And
I know I sound like a broken record high to
Dave Burns by the way, he's in the chat when
I mentioned this, and Mark Peck's watching too. But as
I told Mark, as I've told a lot of these
guys who on the fdm PD side who started out
with New York City EMS, you guys were a different
breed from the standpoint that you did so much more

(11:53):
with so much less. It's no secret. This is not
me making fun of other agencies, but you guys, unfortunately
with a bastard step child and while you were working
without a lot of valuable resources for quite a long time,
and forced you to step up, get creative and really
think on the fly, think on your feet. So starting
out in that time frame, I mean, your lifelong Brooklyn
died at least up until that point. You're like, did

(12:13):
you start your EMS career in Brooklyn tour? Were you elsewhere?

Speaker 3 (12:16):
No?

Speaker 2 (12:16):
I started my but you jumped over a big part
of my life. So yes, I did stop my EMS
career in Brooklyn. Also, I think Billy Gross, you had
just had on two weeks ago.

Speaker 1 (12:26):
He's in the chat. Yeah all right.

Speaker 2 (12:27):
So if it wasn't for Billy Gross, I may have
never got involved in any of this. Because Billy Gross,
he said I was a year younger than him. I
believe it's more like three or four years younger than him,
even though it may not look that way. I noticed
he got dark here. I think he's dying it. But
he was three or four years older than me. Because
he was able to drive and I wasn't able to
drive at the time, and he had called. We both

(12:49):
went at radio shock. He had called from the Kanasi
store to the Midwood store and he needed something something that, uh,
I don't know, And of course he called and I
answered the phone and we were talking about something he needed.
He sold there. We may have had in stock here.
But he heard the scanner going in the background and
he said, is that Brooklyn fire? And I was like, yeah,
I listened to Brooklyn fire all day every day. And

(13:12):
the next thing, you know, me and Billy hooked up.
And I know, like Billy just brushed over it. But
a big part of my life. For the next four years.
All I did three or four or five nights a week.
If my parents knew, they would have killed me. But
I would meet Billy after work. We would close the
store at like seven six or seven o'clock at night.
He would come down to Midwood pick me up in

(13:32):
his Z twenty eight Camaro and we would buff fires
throughout all of Brooklyn. And like he said, he had
met Steve Kerk through the seven Ozer Auxiliary Rescue and
then we met Zach Goldfarb and Mark Michaels, which he
never mentioned that they were like, as far as I knew,

(13:52):
the first paramedics going Zach Goldfark, you had it on
the show. Yeah, wow, great, Mark Michaels is going on.
God rest his soul. But let me tell you something.
And they had an ambulance where they had gone to
like the city auction and taken the double spin rotating
police lights that they used to have on rmps at
the time, not the single yeah, the pulsa, and they

(14:16):
put it on their ambulance were you could spot it
from a mile away because they had They were the
only ambulance in the city of New York that had
all these lights on it. And they also had paramedic
written across the side, which I don't think anyone in
New York City knew there was a paramedic in New
York City. Not taking anything away from Mark Peck, who
I'm sure was already emetic and already doing a fine job,
It's just that he didn't get the light rack and

(14:38):
he didn't put the big paramedic down the side of
the thing like they did. I think they made it
twice as big as the city wanted. But and We
just we buffed them all over the place. I mean,
we chased them all night, from seven o'clock at night
till probably one two in the morning. And then I
would go home and jump I would go home and
jump into bed, and you know, and wake up the

(15:00):
next morning and go to high school sometimes and then
go to radio shack and then go meet Billy Gross
and we'd do it all over again. And we did that.
We went to some of the best jobs. I mean,
some of your old time firemen that were on duty
in the seventies and eighties can tell you some of
the jobs we went to. We went to every great
job in New York City, just as bus and we

(15:21):
had no idea. We were just stupid kids. We had
no idea the neighborhoods we were going into, the places
we were going, the people we were seeing. We had nothing.
We just went there with like a windbreaker that said
FDN Y maybe and a scanner, you know, so it
looked like we had a radio, look like we was somebody.
So nobody really messed with us. And you know, and
I have to tell you, man, I had the title

(15:42):
My Life with Billy Gross for almost four years. Is
that what did before I got to the EMS portion
and the seven Old Rescue portion. Actually so Steve Kerr
he had mentioned, but we also met Robert Mackler. Timmy O'Brien.
O'Brien was a forty year detective in Manhattan South Thomas Side.

(16:04):
After yes, after serving in seven OH Rescue with Robert
macle Steve Current way to Rouse, he went on to
be a correction officer. I don't know whatever happened to him,
but it was all. It was fabulous people and they
all went on to civil service. So when I got
transferred to Coney Island, I actually started dating Steve Kerr's sister.

(16:29):
And Steve Kerr shows up at Radio Shack one day
in the New York City ambulance. He worked for Shorefront
and he was a volunteer in the seven oh preacinct.
But he showed up in a New York City ambulance
and I said, oh, you're working for the city. How'd
you get that job? Because it was right after the seventies,
the layoffs, right crisis, And he said, Mike. I walked
in the door just to ask the guy some questions,

(16:50):
and all the pack sat me down, took my picture, blah, blahlah,
filled out some paperwork and said you start tomorrow. And
you know at Coney Island, which we lived. He lived
for blocks out to Corney Island. I lived fourth blocks
north to Corney Island. So that that's how easy he
got the job. And he told me go get your EMT.
You could be doing this in three months. And I

(17:11):
have to tell you, I mean I didn't run out
and get my MT, but I did start going towards
the ambulance route. I got hired by a local. I
sent Victor a picture of Billy gross and uniform sitting behind.

Speaker 1 (17:21):
We got it. We ran it a few weeks ago
when Billy was on uniform?

Speaker 2 (17:27):
Did you black and yellow ambulances?

Speaker 1 (17:30):
And that I think that might be the picture referring to.
It's gonna come up momentarily.

Speaker 2 (17:34):
Okay, So anyway, so the thing was, No, that's Danny Hagert.
He's a great guy too.

Speaker 1 (17:40):
Billy's got his feet up on the desk.

Speaker 2 (17:42):
VIC. Yeah no, well, yes, he's laid back in the chair,
but he don't have his speed up on the deck.
That's Steve Carr right there. This is when we're gonna
meet Chief Bratton. When he became the chief of the
Transit Police, Dennis Hill. He's all the way on the
right rock, he's all the way on the left next
to me. I got my hands out talking of course,
John Haven't Flanagan, Daryl Summons, Steve Kanyak, miss in one

(18:06):
or two. Oh, that's sitting down. Yeah, we're playing with
high expansion foam. So my father was a port authority
cop and we're out at the airport playing with high
expansion foam. It's me, Billy. That's me and Billy. And
also the guy shooting the film was Mark Michaels. He
was a paramedic at the time in Brooklyn. But uh yeah, we.

Speaker 1 (18:25):
Got we got the picture here. I'll uh yeah, I think.

Speaker 2 (18:28):
No, no, So what I what I was gonna say
was the first job. The first job I had in
the medical field was I drove an invalid coach at
a Brooklyn Jewish hospital which also wasn't in a very
good neighborhood right off Eastern Parkway in like Franklin Avenue.
And that's where I went every day to take people
to their clinic appointments or dialysis, just in a handicapped fan.

(18:49):
And then I got my advanced first Aid in CPR,
and they made me an ambulance driver, a true ambulance driver,
you know. I mean, that's all I was. I wasn't
an EMPT. I had real note, real skills. And that's
when I went for my EMT course. And as soon
as I went for my EMT course, I did the
Steve Kerr route and I went to go see Onnold
packing mass bat and a day later I'm working. They

(19:12):
didn't even give me a shield. They gave me a
patch to where where your shield would be, just one
of those half moon EMS patches. Yeah, and they told me, okay,
go to Cornea. Where do you want to go. I
said Cornel and they said, go to Corneallo tomorrow morning
at nine o'clock. I said, anybody know I'm coming. They
were like, no, just go and tell them you work there.

Speaker 1 (19:28):
I will now, well, yeah, and I have to.

Speaker 2 (19:31):
Tell you the lieutenant. When I walked in the door
was a guy by the name of Micah Roofi and
he just looked at it. A big guy, big heavyset guy.
And he looked at me and he's like, who are you.
I said, I'm Mike Grant and I work here. And
he goes since when I said, since like seven o'clock
last night, and he said, oh. Then he said, I'll
tell you what. I'm gonna put you with this guy,
Audie Stone. He was an old, like thirty year motor

(19:53):
vehicle operator. He said, I'm gonna put you with him
for today because he knows everything, seeing everything and does everything.
And uh. And then when you find somebody you like,
you grab him as a partner and state as long
as you want, you can stay for two, three, four
ships in a row if you want. That's the one
I was talking about. Yes, So that was Matches I EESB.

(20:15):
So the little Liberty Ambulance and Oxygen serviced a small
community ambulance, private ambulance service. They sold to this company
in Manhattan I E. SB, which had black and yellow ambulances.
And again it was just two knuckleheads and it was
a private ambulance. Did a lot of transfers and take

(20:36):
homes and things like that. But that was that was
kind of where we started, like you know, on the ground.
And then I and then I got hired by EMS.
I don't even know how it happened, but then, like
Steve Cartoon, I sat down, I was talking to the
guy for a half hour and the next thing I know,
he hands me an ID card and says you start
tomorrow in Cornea and boom. I worked for EMS. So

(20:59):
what ships were you working with?

Speaker 1 (21:00):
You working days? Were you working night?

Speaker 2 (21:01):
At that time? I was working days. I was working
nine to five with Audie Stone and I think it
was thirty one Charlie or maybe thirty one boy at
the time. I don't know. So here's the other thing. Now,
coneon In Hospital was supposed to like scheduled again. This
was right after the seventy I don't want to keep
saying it, but it was right after the seventies layoffs.
They were supposed to be running about fourteen ambulances. It

(21:21):
was supposed to be running at least two als and
ten or twelve BLS ambulances. But we were lucky we
were putting out because of manpower. We were lucky. We
were only putting out four ambulances a day. So you
want to talk about backlogs, I mean we used to
get the calls people say, we called you two hours ago,
where you been, and we were like, we just got
to call ten minutes ago. We drove there like maniacs

(21:43):
and they were like, you know, we called nine one
one two hours ago or an hour and a half
or what I mean, that's how bad it was. And
you know they had that MODAD system, which I thought
was fabulous. But the minute you hit that you were available,
you hit ninety eight on that modid system, that they
would go boooop and okay, thirty one boy, you're available. Yeah,
all right, take this job. And here's my first job.

(22:04):
Because I know you have somebody in your chat that
always asks you woman in labor, woman in labor, McDonald
avenue for street like avenue s I said, all right,
here we go. So Artie Stone's driving, and of course
you know Artie Stone doesn't get excited about anything. Here
I am in the a newly minted emt right out
of class. I knew absolutely nothing about delivering a baby.

(22:27):
I watched a film they handed me an ob kid
and saw me throw it in the bag, and that
was my experience period. Never did a thing with babies.
And here I am about to wet myself because I'm
going to like a baby call a bait. You know,
birth is eminent, and I don't know what I'm doing.
So I'm trying to read the Obie Kid on the

(22:47):
way to the job. Autie's hysterical laughing in the fancy.
Don't worry, kid, the woman does all the work. I'll
worry kid. No Ari kid. We get to the job.
It's on a second floor, walk up. We go up there.
It's an old Italian family. The mother and the oldest
sister are standing in the kitchen like this. The daughter,
fifteen years old is laying on the couch with a

(23:10):
baby already out between her legs. Ian right there on
the couch, and I was like, oh my god, So
now I saw panicing. I trow to go be kid.
And everything's supposed to be in the order that you
need it, right. I can't find. The first thing I
can't find is a scalpel. So I find the clamps.
I clamp off the umbilical cord. I can't find the scalpel,
so I use my medic cheers, I kiss them to

(23:32):
bless them, and then I cut the umbilical cord. And
then I grabbed the baby, hold it up by the feet,
you know, And everyone says, hit it. I didn't hit it.
I used the bulb suction. I suctioned out the nose
in the mouth and voila, the kid stops crying like crazy.
I'm like, oh, thank god, but my heart's probably going
faster than the babies is and the baby's probably doing
like one sixty so so booma boom. So now we

(23:55):
got the baby crying, the girls crying because she's like,
you know, I can't live my dad know this happened.
I was like, are you kidding me? You just had
a baby. She said, well, I be home by five o'clock.
I was, wow, when I was fifteen, I'm nineteen years old,
I'm as cruel as So we get down the amaels
and she says to me, you listen, I only did

(24:15):
it once. I said, well, honey, I'm pretty sure that's
all it takes, you know, to have a baby. So,
but that was like one of my first calls. I
don't know if it's the exact first call, but it
was the first memorable call I had. And so there's
the baby right away.

Speaker 1 (24:31):
Right right man, right off the rift.

Speaker 2 (24:35):
Right out the back. And there was probably like in
over the four years of MS, there was probably like
seven or eight more. And but after you do want
to tell you find out, you know, the last one
I did with Bobby Furrow. That was the uh cover
of the Daily News, and yeah, we have that, Yeah
we have that. They have me and Bobby Farrow reversed
as far as who's who in the picture, but yeah,

(24:57):
is that one right there. That was right before I
left rescue. So that was January twelfth, ninety three. I
left rescue in February of ninety three, and that's another
long story about why I left rescue. But all we
did on that call, me and Bobby, like I was
the left stirrup, he was the right stirrup. She's laying
on the floor of the train, and the kid in
the middle, Richardson I think his name was, He kind

(25:20):
of caught the kid, cut the cord, clamped the you know,
planting umbilical cord. He basically wrapped the baby up and
then we carried the woman upstairs to the hospital, you know,
to the ambulanson to the hospital. But I mean, you know,
it was uh, it was just yeah, Bobby Pharaoh was
so mad at me because I didn't even want to
go to this job. We were sitting up on the

(25:40):
upper west Side actually no Midtown, on the west side,
almost by the passenger ship terminal when we got that call,
and I said, by the time we get to downtown, yea,
unless it's gonna be us there or to fight the bus,
everybody's gonna beat us there, you know, because of course
trans had also worked with Code one, two and three,
so if they didn't give you three, you couldn't use
the siren, so you had to just put the lights on,

(26:02):
sitting traffic, sit at red lights, you know, the whole
nine yards. It was kind of horrible, but but we
got there, and because nobody knew the subway system, we
kind of got We were the last ones on the scene,
but the first or second ones at the woman having
the baby. But of course right behind us was the MS,
so they ended up. You know. I mean, we all
took part, but the mother does all the work. That's

(26:22):
not a Code three though, Oh no, baby, absolutely not.
I would think that's crazy to me. You're right, absolutely not,
all right, so it would be a code rain. So again,
I think I'm pretty sure it was on a weekend.
I don't know what day it was, but I'm pretty
sure it was on the weekend. If it was during
rush hour during the week for the trains already didn't
make it a code three because now you're holding up

(26:43):
the train, right, and they were afraid to take the
woman off the.

Speaker 1 (26:46):
Train, right, that's the thing that's remember Kenny explaining that.

Speaker 2 (26:50):
Yeah, right, so nobody wanted, right, nobody wanted to move
to the person. So of course, but I'm pretty sure
it was a weekend, so it was probably twenty thirty
minutes before the next train was due on that trap.

Speaker 1 (27:00):
All right, So that makes it work convenient timing on
that and but you know, working and we're talking with
Mike Grand this volume fifty two with the EMAI inside
the NYPD's Emergency Service Unit. Mark Peck to your point
about the PD bar, I mentioned this earlier. We can
highlight his common and again, I'm glad you're watching, Mark,
but he does say, nah, I hate to say, you're wrong.
We had the PD bar rear bar first medic three

(27:21):
eight five. And who did they come to when they
when they're install broke me?

Speaker 2 (27:26):
Yes, all right, I'm sorry, Mark, Sorry.

Speaker 1 (27:30):
Mark. He's got a memory like an elephant, and that
was a good show he got.

Speaker 2 (27:34):
He does, he's phenomenal. He actually called me. They just
had the fiftieth anniversary of Jacoby's medical training and he
called me, and I was I was so honored that
Mark Peck thought to me or you know, tried to
beat Job. A couple of people told me, Hey, somebody's
looking for you on Facebook. I'm not. That's another thing.
It's my own fault that I don't keep in touch
with anybody. I'm not on any social media. You would

(27:55):
think I was in the Witness Protection program. I'm a
very social guy. I don't know if you can tell
that in the first ten minutes of this thing.

Speaker 1 (28:01):
And I'm glad you are. Just makes for a great show.

Speaker 2 (28:03):
Yeah, well you could sit there and not say a word.
I'll finish the whole thing. But I mean, it's just
everybody now. I'm just saying I'm trying to go chronologically here,
but I got so many freaking stories of nonsense, and
all the people you have, you have all the people
in the in the best positions for the longest time.

(28:23):
And so I'm never gonna out Job. And I think
we spoke about this last year when I first contacted you.
I am never gonna out job anybody you've had on
this program. You know, it's just it's not gonna happen.
But and I think I said to you towards the
end of the show. You always say to people, besides
the people, what do you miss about the job? Well,

(28:45):
the job's been there for two hundred years before we
ever got there, and the job will be there for
another two hundred years. It's actually the people you worked
with that made the job so memorable and so enjoyable
and so much fun. I can't. More times than not,
in the twenty years that I worked for well, twenty
five years that I worked for the New York City
Police Department, the Transit Police Department, and EMS combined, about

(29:07):
twenty five years, I can't. I can't count on one
hand the amount of times I was miserable going away.
You know. I used to go to work and say
to whoever I was working with, I can't believe they
pay me to do this. I would do this for free.
If they said, Mike, tomorrow, you can't come in anymore.
With firing, the city ran out of money, you don't

(29:29):
have a job, I would have just went to work anyway.
Give me the keys to an amans I'm going. You know,
same thing with being a cop. I mean, you know,
for the first ten years and some guys, how do
they do it for twenty five thirty five years is
beyond me.

Speaker 1 (29:41):
Yeah, forty eight like that guy you mentioned earlier.

Speaker 2 (29:45):
But I seriously got burned out because I think so.
When I was doing the MS, I was doing no
less than eighty hour weeks. I mean, yes, you only
get scheduled forty hour weeks. But then I stayed, you know,
I worked the ninth to five. Then I stayed for
the five to one. I'd find somebody who wanted to work.
Sometimes it was with another EMT, sometimes it was with
a medic. I kind of learned a lot, you know

(30:05):
what I mean. But you couldn't keep me there long enough.
I mean, I just I wanted. But I was nineteen
years old, nineteen twenty twenty one, twenty two, twenty three,
that's how long, you know. And I was a young kid.
I could do it.

Speaker 1 (30:17):
You don say you got the adrenaline four it, you
got the energy for it if you have a sleep
next day.

Speaker 2 (30:23):
I didn't know that. I didn't need to go home
and sit in my recline. I didn't need to do anything,
just keep me going. I mean it was all I
love doing this, you know. I couldn't believe that at
nineteen twenty years old. Here I am in New York
City driving an ambulance, and people call if I help
of calling me, And I'm just an idiot from Brooklyn
that went through one hundred and twenty hour EMP coals.
So I'm serious. You know you laugh at that, but

(30:45):
it's true. I think my mother had more first aid
experience than I did. And you used to laugh when
I'd come home and tell us stories about what I
responded to it night. But then when I became a medic,
it got a lot better.

Speaker 1 (30:56):
So how long was your medic training?

Speaker 2 (30:59):
Eight months? I think, wow, it's.

Speaker 1 (31:01):
Like a year and a half now for a lot
of guys and girls.

Speaker 2 (31:04):
I think it was eight or nine months. It started, Uh,
I believe in like March, and I went till like October.
I don't know what is that.

Speaker 1 (31:11):
That's it?

Speaker 2 (31:12):
Not March October? That's seven months. Yeah, he's pretty sure. Well,
then I had to go out and be in like
field training a little bit. Yeah yeah, And you had
to take the mac boards or whatever where they did
the scenarios and with doctors in a very intimidated I
can imagine. But I loved it. And let me just

(31:32):
say this I discussed this with Mark Peck last year
and like, uh, you know, the thing that hurts me
the most is medics are not paid what they're worth.
And I said to Mark, and he didn't agree with me,
but I said, you couldn't even you didn't. I didn't
consider it a Liverpool age. So when I was with you.
The whole time I was with the MS, I lived
at home, so I really didn't need to provide for myself.

(31:55):
I actually, believe it or not. I'm a real MoMA's boy.
I'd go home, I'd hand my mother to check that
I got and then if I needed twenty bucks for
the week to buy lunch or whatever, she would hand
me twenty bucks. Was it coming out of buy money
or how money? I didn't know. I didn't really care.
Here's my check, may you know? And whenever I needed Bunny,
she'd give me money. And my father got pissed because

(32:17):
by the time I got out of EMS. Actually I
was getting married in eighty four and my mother said, here, Michael,
here's your bank book. And I'd had like seventeen thousand
dollars in it because I had no expenses, but seventeen
thousand I was only making like fourteen four a year
with EMS as a paramedic, and I said, that's crazy, man.
They cops are making twenty three to start and after

(32:40):
three years going to thirty six plus. They get an
uniform allowance, night shift differential. All the time, they got
all kinds of perks and bennies, and we didn't get
any of that. And here we are, you know, like
I said, going to the same calls, going to the
same areas. And I still think EMS even today is
polly paid. I think they need to be double less

(33:03):
salaries tomorrow wouldn't be enough the medics.

Speaker 1 (33:05):
And it's different every you know, and I agree with
you and Donna Weaver, I misunderstood your question nine and
get you now I highlighted momentarily. But Connecticut's a little
bit different because again the medics, at least in the
fire service, and this is why a lot of these
medics try to go the fire route. The pay is
great in the fire service. If you have your medic,
you're basically a walk onto a fire department. It's not

(33:25):
a matter of if you're going to interview as a
matter of when. New York City is a little bit
of a different animal. Although the FD and WY is
leaning more towards the MS in the future. But I mean,
you got guys. I mean, if medics aren't getting paid
what they should be getting paid out in the field
of New York City for the different hospitals they work for,
and they're basically being asked to be field doctors, imagine
what the EFTs are making. That's why I say sad
to say it still to this day, rather be New

(33:47):
York Presbyterian Lennox Hill or the issues at FD and
YEMS has bastard step children shouldn't be that way, especially
with what you're asking them to do and what they
do day in and day out year in a year.

Speaker 2 (33:59):
I'm a train they go through. Now, I've gone through
the COP training, I've gone through the EMS training. You know,
I've ever gone through the ESU training. But I have
to say the medic training was the most demanding and
also the most rewarding training I ever had in my life.

Speaker 1 (34:15):
Yeah, I mean, that's that's that. And again the training
and also the street is where you get a heck
of an education. In line with that, that is question
was what program did you go through get your medic.

Speaker 2 (34:27):
I went through Jacobe Albert Einstein College of Medicine in
the Browns Okay, that was the only one at the time.
I think when I was going through Bellevue one was
going through bellv one finally started a medic program. People
went to Saint Vincent's. I Big Mark Man went to
Saint Vincent's. I'm not Suresh remark the same thing. It

(34:48):
wasn't like an organized paramedic program though. It was a
doctor who said, Hey, if we can get the guys
in the annulance to do some of these skills, we
can save a lot more lives. Yeah, but they taught them,
you know, intubation and defibrillation. Again, Mark Peck will speak
on this better than I would. He was their way
before me. But you know, we used to call Mark Peck.
You know, I don't know if they called it through

(35:09):
his face. We used to call number one because we
always thought Mark Peck was the first paramedic in New
York City. Bro, Whenever I talk about Mark Peck, I
called Mark pec number one. The people in the field.

Speaker 1 (35:19):
You know, he was Jakobe too, He's saying in nineteen
seventy seven.

Speaker 2 (35:22):
There you go.

Speaker 1 (35:23):
So he was one of the first. That's for sure,
and that was gonna say. I mean again, in most
cops these days, Well, if you're an emergency service, you
have em T training, so they train everybody to the EMTs,
and of course it helps if you were a medic prior.
There's a lot of guys who were medics prior to
get onto the DD and they ended up in ESU,
you know, even better. But back then, I mean, you
were happy at New York City EMS. You were doing

(35:44):
a lot in New York City EMS. But did you
always have ambitions to eventually try for the PD or
was that something that came to you as you were
in Okay, there you go. So how did it come about?

Speaker 2 (35:52):
Well, I still wanted to be a pilot, and I'll
tell you how it came about. I wanted to be
a New York City fineman. I'm sorry to say it.
No listen, atops of firemen are always butting heads. But
I always wanted to be a New York City fire
or if I had my choice, remember I said, we
had a summer house out of Rocky Point. Or be

(36:14):
a Suffolk County cop and when I was off duty,
be a volunteer fireman in Long Island. Because they don't
have paid departments. They have, but they have just as nice,
if not nice as equipment then the people in the city.
They didn't have the volume, but they had beautiful equipment.
I'm you know. As a kid, I used to just
love going to the firehouse, look at fire trucks, climb
all over the fire trucks, and every day nobody ever

(36:35):
said no, you know, so I wanted to be a fireman.
To be honest with you, why am I not a fireman?
Why did I never go to the fire department? Because
I smoked like a fiend at thirty years old twelve
when I was born, my whole family smoked. Again. I'm
the youngest of five kids, so by the time they
all became teenagers, all my older brother, four other two

(36:57):
other sisters, two older brothers. They all my parents smoked,
both of them. Father, my grandfather, sat in his chair
with a giant cigar burning. I think his whole life,
the whole twenty five years I was on his earth
and he was on his earth. He had a giant
cast iron cigar stand with a glass ashtray. I couldn't

(37:17):
even pick up until I was like twenty one years old.
That's how heavy it was. But I mean everybody smoked.
So by the time I was thirteen years old, I
started buying my own cigarettes. And I had a cousin,
Frank Nagirey. I don't know if you had him on
your show, but I had a cousin. He was I
know that name, yeah, Frank Nagliery. So there was two

(37:39):
Frank Naglieri's on the fire department. So his father was
the show for the four to two battalion in Bensonhurst.
And when I was a kid, all I kept saying
to my parents was if I weren't gonna be a pilot,
I was going to be a fire So they called
my mother's cousin, Frank Nagliery, or I think his wife
was my mother's cousin May, And he came of my

(38:00):
house one Saturday morning in the pouring rain in the
Chiefs car. It was a station wagon with the bell
on the front and one spinning dome and the pulsauce siren.
And he showed up to my house in the poorn
rain and said, you know, hey, DoD, send Michael out.
You know, we're gonna take it for a right around
the block and the chiefs car. I couldn't stop talking

(38:22):
about it for ten years, for ten years, but again
when it came time for me. So Frank Junior, his
son in good shape, buff, like swim his body and
all that stuff. He comes to my house, bangs on
the door and says, by, come on, I'm starting to
run and work out so that we can beat the
physical for the fly Department. And I was like, yeah,
let's do it. Run. I get about four blocks before

(38:46):
I'm like this and he ain't even breathing. He don't
even have his mouth though, but he's breathing through his
nose like a you know. And I'm like, I can't.
You know, I don't want to hold you back. You know,
you go through your thing. I'll work on quitting smoking.
And it took me till January second, twenty seventeen to

(39:06):
quit smoking.

Speaker 1 (39:07):
By the way, glad you did.

Speaker 2 (39:09):
I quit drinking, no problem. I just couldn't, not that
drinking was ever a problem, but drinking and smoking go together, right,
So yeah, but it took me for smoking was killing me.
Smoking killed half my family, killed my mother, killed my sister,
killed everybody. So yeah, killed my uncle. So I just
you know, thank God, I finally quit smoking. My oldest

(39:31):
brother is still smoking. He's seventy two, still living in
Staten Island, and all I do is go up there
and say to lose weight, quit smoking. Yeah, I think
it's not a doctor if you don't say that to
somebody who smokes, you know what I mean.

Speaker 1 (39:43):
No, listen, it's it's like they don't call it a
cancer stick for nothing. There's no good.

Speaker 2 (39:48):
Well, but again, everybody smoked in the forties and fifties.
Not that I'm not old, but you know, come sixty three,
sixty four, the Surgeon General came out and said smoking
causes low birth weight babies, causes emphysene. You know, they
had it. They were required to write then on the
side of the pack of cigarettes. As soon as my
father heard that. My father wasn't a medical guy. He
was just you know, a cop, you know, a flat

(40:09):
foot type guy. He took the two packs of cigarettes
out of his pocket, threw him in the garbage. Poor
malls or poor malls. My uncle upstairs smoked lucky strikes,
but anyway, threw him in the garbage and he was done,
never smoked again. I didn't have that kind of constitution
to be honest with you, I'd love quitch smoking six
hundred times in the forty years it took me to

(40:31):
do it. Yeah, I got hypnotized, I took the pills,
I got the patches, I got shot in the ear
with some raygun and all everything they did to quit smoking,
I took will buttrin I had patches all over my body.
I tried everything, and I just couldn't quit smoking. But
that's why I'm not in the New York City fire
upon because we all know that physical was much more

(40:53):
tougher than the New York City Police apology.

Speaker 1 (40:55):
Yeah, I mean, especially at that time, although there's a
great story and I don't I don't know if he
was smoker now, But back then, guys, you know, SCBA
was just a concept or a mask. Rather, it was
just a concept in fires. It wasn't mandatory. Ray Downy,
the great Chief of Special Operations Command who gave his
life on nine to eleven, he'd be down a hallway.
Guys are choking, you know, trying to get their mask on.

(41:15):
This is later on, and he's shouting and talking normally
above the smoke, as if it's nothing breathing it in.
And that's why they call them smoke eaters. Not so
much now. There's a lot of protection now, a lot
of awareness now. Back then, guys would put an airpac
on their back and just go straight in and then
have a cigar after.

Speaker 2 (41:32):
Yes, yes, yeah, And I have to tell you I
know a couple of guys that got thrown out of
some specialized units for not wearing the mask. So they
would actually make almost like scoop the mouthpieces out of
the mask, not have to put the mask on and
still go in, but they'd come out with their rise
and then.

Speaker 1 (41:49):
Those covered it day. You see it and it looks iconic,
but it's not good for your out. It looks very cool,
I will say, but rather not deal with the long
term aspect of it. And Bobby I don't know his
last name, but he was a sergeant in transit Rescue.
I think he went over to ESU with the merger.
Bobby g Mann were friends on Facebook.

Speaker 2 (42:05):
Bobby GA.

Speaker 1 (42:07):
What was that?

Speaker 2 (42:08):
Bobby gallanuld it.

Speaker 1 (42:09):
Might be I think so. Yeah, at least it's looking good.
Mike one of the funniest guys in em RU, great
rescue man. Yeah he was. He was believe he was
a sergeant Transit Rescue, and I see was the cat's
majamas there. He's a big Yankee fan, I believe.

Speaker 2 (42:22):
Yeah, he's the son up all the Yankees. Last Yanky
game I ever went through, Bobby Gagan set it up
and it was nineteen ninety four, and then they went
on strike and I refused to go ever again. So
that was a professional baseball game since nineteen ninety four.

Speaker 1 (42:35):
So that that is the same guy then, Because there's
a and he has it on his Facebook. It's a
picture of at the old Yankee Stadium up on the
board where they would give shout outs. There's a shout
out to all the em R you guys.

Speaker 2 (42:45):
Yes, yes, yes, it was fabulous. Yeah, all right, he's
a great guy.

Speaker 1 (42:50):
Yeah. I'd love to get Bobby on the show. I
know he's a little shy, but Bobby, if you ever
want to come on the show, I think he'd be
a great guest because I truly love to have you.
So getting on. You know, into trans at the time,
and I know it gets talked about a lot, but
transit we talked about the three police departments, you know, transit.
I felt it was also the bastard step child because
the fact that you were underground, the radios didn't work.
But again, much like EMS, it forced you to think

(43:13):
on your feet. It forced you to really have to
rely on a lot of your natural instincts, in addition
with the training you were receiving, because listen, is it
good to have the radio? Is it good to have
backup apps? Frequently? It is, especially if you get into
dicey situations. But sometimes a CoP's greatest weapon is his mind.
It's not necessarily his gun and signed anything on his
tool belt, although that's important too, it's his mind and
how he can process a situation. So much like it

(43:35):
was in education, working EMS, working with different EMS partners,
EMT and MEDICALIKE, I imagine with whatever assignment you got
out of the academy, once you got transit is the
same thing, learning how to understand people. Learning it's not
the street, but learning how to work underground where there's
so many odds stacked against.

Speaker 2 (43:51):
You, Yes, and elevated someways. Also, so I have to
tell you about transit. So transit I took two five
to five which given in late nineteen eighty. It was
a strictly transit test, and I did very well on
it that they called me almost right away. They called
me in early nineteen eighty one for transit, and I
have to tell you I was already I just started

(44:12):
with EMS again. I was going to work saying, Wow,
I can't believe they pay me to do this. Look
how fabulous fabulous it is. I'm driving to New York
City ambulance. So I was working out of Corney Island Hospital.
So I went to the Transit District which was thirty
four in Corne Island and as an as an EMT
and I walked in the door and I met a
guy named Jerry Jenkins and I think Bob Rice, but

(44:33):
I said, hey, I just got called for this job.
Should I take it? And they were like, what do
you out of your mind? Kid? This job sucks. Last
stay where you are. That's the job of the future.
Before you know it, you'll be making more than us.
So I said, okay, thanks for the info, and I
walked out, got back in the ambulance, and I was like,
very happy. I went the jobs old for the next

(44:53):
twelve hours, you know, job after job. So I didn't
take transit, but I did take eleven seventy.

Speaker 1 (45:01):
Uh.

Speaker 2 (45:01):
It was one after eleven seventy five and UH ten
ten eleven seventy five and forty sixty one three more.
But that was when they started with the try agency list.

Speaker 1 (45:11):
Yeah, Rich Academy.

Speaker 2 (45:13):
Yes, if you went, if you got the top of
the list, you went to housing. You got the middle
of the list, the middle third or whatever, you went
to transit and then the rest of the list goes
to NYPD or at least again, I was never an
Africant investigation. I don't know if they do that to
stroke your ego to try and get you to take
trains int or housing, but that's what they were telling me.
And I kept saying, I don't want transit in housing.

(45:34):
I want to be NYPD or NUCKY. And they were like,
you don't have that choice anymore, kid, You're going to transit.
And then the second test, I was going to housing.
I said I don't want to go to housing, so
they said, up, then we're gonna defer you again. So
the third test, I got caught the transit again, so
I was like yeah, so I said, well, if I'm
gonna go to transit, my original test oh two five

(45:55):
to five was it still had like six months left
that it was certified, and I actually took appointment off
oh two five five, so that I'd have more seniority
than people that came off the other one. Smart smart, Yeah,
well out of that Ada Maria Academy class. So that's
what I did. And I have to tell you it
was funny because when I get hired by Transit, Chris Ellison,

(46:18):
who was a paramedic at Cony Allen Hospital, did the
same thing. He deferred for almost four years the Transit
appointment and he took the same test oh two five five.
I think he did maybe even better than me, a
few points better than me. And he also got hired
at the same exact time as me after deferring for
four years, because it was the last chance if you

(46:39):
were on that list to get hired. So we got
hired January of eighty five. Got hired by the Transit
Police Regular Academy, and then when you get out, you
go through like three weeks of the Transit Academy and
U and then they put you in a field training
program which was only for like two weeks, but you
get a signed to a cop. They were like five

(47:00):
There was a big class. I don't know how many
over two grand two thousand Canada. You know, Transit had
four or five hundred guys in that go. Four hundred
guys in that class, I believe out of the two
thousand guys going through the City Academy, so four hundred
people were Transit cops. They they assigned you to like
a field training officer, who's just a guy going out

(47:23):
on his posts. Don't want to be a field training officer,
don't want five kids following him around, don't want to
teach anybody anything. So they sent me to Union Square
and then they they sent me for training to Coney
Island to thirty four, which is where my dream sheet
I wanted to work. I'm sorry, yeah, thirty four. So
I trained for two weeks at thirty four. Learn all

(47:44):
the posts, all the stations, all the train runs, all
the whatevers. I'm very comfortable with the area. I grew
up there and basically South Brooklyn. And the day we're
going to go out on our own, you get two
days off and then when you come back you're going
out on your own. I get notified the desk go officer.
I was just transferred to District thirty three, And I said,

(48:04):
District thirty three. Where the hell is that? And they
were like, oh, that's a Nacht New York. You know
that's Fulton and Van Sindern Vulton and Van Sindern. So
and I knew the area because of Billy Gross in
the Camaro buffing fires, so I was like volting and
Van Sinder and holy smokes. So now I get there.
There's so many guys there, and they're in a tiny

(48:25):
what used to be like a transit maintenance facility, so
you have no lockers. You have to basically work out
of the trunk of your car. They have roll call
outside because the roll call the muster room isn't big
enough for the amount of new cops they have plus
the old cops. And Frank O'Hare was given the roll call,
and again right away I rubbed him the wrong way

(48:45):
because when roll call was over, he said, anybody have
any questions? And I raised my hand and he said, yeah,
what do you want, Officer Granton? And I said, where's
the subway? And that's exactly he thought it been a
wise ass. He was like, oh, there's another wise ass.
I said, listen. So, with all the respect, I just
been two weeks of training in corney Allen, I got
all the lines down, the station's down. I said, they

(49:06):
sent me here today. It's the first day we're going
out alone. I got no training here and he goes
follow the crowd. They'll they'll show you where the subway is.
I had no idea where I was going, what I
was doing. I didn't know where the A was, the
J was, the the M train. I had no idea.
So there I was, and that's how I got thrown
into transit.

Speaker 1 (49:26):
And that was you know, that was a dangerous time
to be a police officer because you have to keep
in mind too when you got there. In eighty five.
This is right after Irma Iszata got killed.

Speaker 2 (49:37):
So and it's starting the big drug trade. Two thousand
murders a year in New York City. And I'm gonna
say it again because to this day it really, I mean,
I wonder where common sense went. Because the year in
New York City and not one person besides a police
officer can carry a gun in New York City. All

(49:57):
the criminals have guns, all the thieves have all the
robbers have guns, and all the drug addicts have guns.
Now and the mayor of the City of New York
right now was a former transit cop who I stand
next to at some jobs. And let me tell you, so,
I can't believe like he's not saying, Okay, you know,
let's let everybody. The Supreme Court already ruled the New
York City's permitting system on constitutional, so they should be

(50:20):
able to let anybody who lives in New York City
want to buy a gun buy a gun. Honest, hard working,
good people. I don't care what Cali are, I don't
care what socioeconomic background you come from. Anybody who can
carry a gun should be carrying a gun. But no
we don't. They're still fighting them tooth and nail, and
we're still having I don't know how many murders whatever
in New York last year. I have no idea four hundreds.

Speaker 1 (50:43):
Five hundred something, which is because the lowest that it
ever got right, what we know one is too many.
These people aren't just numbers, they were people. So we're
not saying that right. But the lowest that ever got
from two twenty seven hundred plus in nineteen ninety was
two hundred and eighty nine as recently as two thousand
and eight, team, which is remarkable when you think about it,
it's almost that's a crazy drop. I'm not a mathematician,

(51:06):
so I couldn't tell you the exact percentage. But nevertheless too,
I mean back then you also got to understand too.
It's and I know you do. But generally I speak
to the audience the little crimes. Bill Bratton had the
broken windows model which he brought to transit, which we'll
talk about in a little bit, which shopped transit crime
twenty seven percent at the time. Where if you enforce
the little things, usually the guy that jumps the turnstile listen.

(51:27):
Sometimes it is just a young kid that's being an idiot.
You pull them to side, Hey, don't do that, come on,
pay for to pay the fare, and they got nothing
else going on to just being a dumb kid. But
a lot of the other times it's somebody jumping the
turnstile who probably committed a homicide, probably has a warrant
out for something else. And if you enforce the little things,
it usually takes down the guys who are wanted or
are gonna do bigger things before they can actually do it.

Speaker 2 (51:50):
Work.

Speaker 1 (51:51):
They work like a charm. It's one of the best models,
if not the best model in policing that's ever invented.
So before I get to EMRU, anything notable that sticks
out from those two years working patrol in terms of
jobs collars.

Speaker 2 (52:04):
All right, yes, yes, And by the way, I sent
you this picture of Bill Braden, Yeah.

Speaker 1 (52:09):
We got it. I wondered if he was talking to.

Speaker 2 (52:12):
Any transit cop that was on patrol when Bratton came there.
Will tell you you'd go to hell them back for
Bill Bradton because of all the stuff you just said, right,
I mean, why didn't the transit regime before Bo Bratton
realized this? You know what I mean? We were kind
of working for people who didn't seem to want to
have policing done the children to happen. They wanted, like

(52:33):
everybody to be good people on the trains and that's
just never gonna happen, right, Okay, So the most notable
thing I sent you this picture too, But yes it
was the only picture I could find. The Bob Ganley
because I don't really hang with him. But Bob Gamley
was an anti crime cop in District twenty three, which
was out in the rock Ways. He used to pull
at the drinking man's command. So if you like the

(52:54):
drink you wanted to go to District twenty three, which
was but District thirty three. When you rode the trains,
you had to ride a train out to the Rockaways.
It was called the round robin, the eight train. Every
third train or whatever went all the way out to
the Rockaways, went all the way to Mott Avenue and
far Rockaway and then came right back up pissed JFK

(53:14):
and back to like Leftitz Boulevard out that way and
then the A line through Brooklyn. So Bob gets so
I'm on a train run, which again stupid me. I
get a signed I've never had any training in this command, right,
I ride down the train run, and I ride down
the train run that I go from J Street, which

(53:35):
is the headquarters of the Transit Police, and then I
take it all the way back to one hundred and
twenty First Street and then back to J Street, and
it gives you the schedule of when the train's gonna run.
The problem is one hundred and twenty first Street was
only for the first trip, because if you took it
all the way to left It's Boulevard, the train you

(53:56):
were supposed to be on was already left Left Its
Boulevard and would be at a hund getting twenty first Street.
That's why you got off the first time. But I
made the whole run. I never knew there was at
left It's Boulevard because I made the whole run from
J Street to one hundred twenty first Street. So I
just kept getting off the train at one hundred and
twenty first Street, crossing over to the other side, and
wait for my train to come back. Little did I

(54:18):
know it when two boys stops and the last stop
was actually Left It's Boulevard. So when I finally find
this out, actually one hundred and twenty first Street, I
saw a shoe fly looking for me. He didn't see me,
but I saw him because I was smoking, and you're
not supposed to smoke in uniform, but it's the only
time you have a chance to smoke. So I got
out of the subway, I went to the mezzanine, I smoke.
I sucked down a cigarette as fast as I could,

(54:40):
and then he came down and went up my side,
and I went up his side. I went up the
other side to take the train out of there. And
then when he saw me two hours later, he said
what were you doing here before? And I said, I
was just doing my train line, and he goes, your
train line, don't stop here. I said, yes, it does,
look one hundred twenty first Street. He goes, no, it
goes to left, it's boulevard. So the first time I
go to left's boulevard, it's, you know, the end of

(55:02):
the line. I get off the train and I'm at
the wrong end, of course, so I got to walk
the whole length of the platform to get downstairs to
the street to go smoke my cigarette. I walked past
the rear car of the train. There's three kids spray
painting the train, doing the cold graffiti thing. So now
I grabbed the trade them. What the heck are you doing?
You don't see look at the sides of me. I mean,

(55:23):
you know, I'm in uniform. You guys, you know you
should have ran before I got it. I mean, I'm
standing right next to them. They're still spray paint.

Speaker 1 (55:29):
You know, you said they were smart.

Speaker 2 (55:32):
Exactly if they were smart, we'd never catch any of them.
I locked the train them up and I called for
a car. So here I am thinking, you know, the
dead heads from District thirty three we're going to show up,
and who shows up District twenty three. Now you want
to talk about cars in shitty condition, I'm sorry.

Speaker 1 (55:48):
And that's.

Speaker 2 (55:51):
But so they they show up in a suburban. There's
like no backseat. I got three perps. The two guys
that are in the car. One guy's a little skinny
thing speed I think his name was. The other guy
was gigantic. And I said, all right, I'm putting up.
Where are I going? They go, You go in the
back with the spare tire and the jumper cables, and

(56:12):
I was like, it's old thirty and greasy back there.
Well that's where you go. Otherwise you're going to take
the train to the command. We'll see you in two hours.
So they got and I didn't know they were in
twenty three, so I was in twenty three. The last
two stops were actually District twenty three, not District thirty three.
So I ended up going all the way to fall
Rockaway to book these kids. First time I ever had

(56:33):
a DAT or even a youth a juvenile arrest. So
I walk in probably looking like that warm dova that
Bob Ganley is in plain clothes and he says, well
he got kid, and I said, I got three for graffiti.
He goes, oh, you haven't done it before. I said no,
because you can tell everything's brand, notWe He says, ah.

(56:54):
I said no, I've never done it before. I'll probably
be here for two weeks. And he goes, no, no,
let me help you out. And meanwhile his friends were
waiting for him to go drink some beers. So this
guy like a crack hole. I mean, he picks up
the phone, one numbers, he's getting all pedigrees. He's going
just get all their name and the dress, and you

(57:14):
start filling out these forms with all their name, address
and hype weight and all that nonsense. I'll print them later.
Blah blah blah. You know, I got three folders. I'm
filling out all the paperwork as fast as I can.
And he's still running circles around me, pulling open file cabinets,
doing whatever. I mean. In an hour, I had all
three kids processed, had their parents called, they were coming

(57:35):
to pick them up, and all this other crap. And
I was like, wow, I don't even know what happened,
but I just got credit for three arrests and he
did all the work. I still was no closer to knowing.
And then he was like, all right, I'm off to
the bar or whatever, and out the door he ran.
And so I told that story a lot because we
had a little website or whatever where they used to say, hey,

(58:00):
you know, we're losing people left and right. You know,
why don't anybody tell a good story about somebody before
we all leave? You know, everybody wait till somebody dies
and says, oh, you know, Mike Cologne was such a
nice guy, and you know, I loved working with him,
and you know, he did this, that and the other thing.
Everybody said, how about we start doing things like that
for the living. Yeah, my Bob Gamley story, And everybody

(58:22):
was like, wow, that's a fabulous story. You know, why
don't you tell us who you are? It's like Mike Granton,
you know, I mean, what do you want me to
tell you? I mean, yeah, So anyway, Bob Gamley was
my hero and the tang of police besides Bill Braddon.

Speaker 1 (58:38):
I imagined him pulling up to the bar that night. Guys,
you are going to believe what just happened.

Speaker 2 (58:42):
Yeah, for him, it was an old hat. I mean,
he was probably only on three two or three years
more than me. He probably came on in the eighty
one class. Yeah you know which, by the way, they
went through Hallam youw they went up at a one
hundred and sixty first of one hundred.

Speaker 1 (58:57):
And eighty O. Yes, yeah, yeah they did. Yeah, they
did run their own housing. Used to run their own h.

Speaker 2 (59:05):
All Academy again in ninety three when when Bratton took go.

Speaker 1 (59:09):
Yeah, and Bratton got there at ninety I'll get to
EMRU now, but before I move on, because today is
his anniversary. Did you know Bobby vet a ball at all?

Speaker 2 (59:16):
Bobby ven I was working that night too, but I
was in Coney Island, not and I was driving a
bus and he didn't want to go. I mean, I
trust me. I was driving like a maniac. What are
you doing? I was like, we're going to East York.
He was like, no, Wh're not? And I mean, you know, yeah,
he had fifteen seventeen years on I had a year
and a half.

Speaker 1 (59:37):
And you had to listen to him.

Speaker 2 (59:39):
I had to. I mean, what am I gonna do
with a year and a half on the job. That's
kind of like a career killer right.

Speaker 1 (59:45):
There, right there's Bobby and Bobby was confronting he'd gotten
flagged down because at that moment they didn't care what
patch Bobby was wearing. They needed a cop. They didn't
care if he was transit housing Grand YPD. But he
got flagged out by some people saying, Hey, there's some
heavily armed individuals down this way, do you mind going
to investigate. I think they were transporting a vana prisoners

(01:00:05):
when they went to do that, and so that's what
ended up, unfortunately, resulting in Bobby confront some heavily armed
guys to shootout and suit and Bobby was hitting the
head and he died at the hospital. So they just
had his ceremony. Dad, I just wanted to ask about him.
I'd be remiss if I didn't on this anniversary of
his murder. But he, you know, listened to his memories
and not forgotten. So nineteen eighty seven, EMRU has been

(01:00:27):
around ten years by this point, Joe said, And Dan
Estermon Dnestrmon, who ended up being chief of police in
my hometown in New Haven, Connecticut, as I mentioned before
in the program, was the college from at the time,
I think at Dartmouth, and so he said, listen, if
there's a major emergency down here, kind of like we
talked about. Somebody unfortunately gets raped on the subway, somebody
gets assaulted, somebody gets robbed, or somebody's having a baby.

(01:00:48):
You need if you're going to have a transit police,
you're gonna need a rapid response team equipped to handle
these specialized incidents, you know, space cases, somebody going under
the train, and so on and so forth, because it's
going to be a with the traffic before FT gets there.
It's gonna be a while with the traffic again before
NYPD Emergency Service gets there, So they couldn't call it
ESU at the time. They had to name it something

(01:01:10):
else for political reasons they did. But here you are,
a few years into it, EMRU comes around. It helps
the surmatic how the opportunity to go to EMRU come about.

Speaker 2 (01:01:19):
Okay, so another whacky story. But can I just say
one more thing about my EMS time I go. I
think you got this one too. By the way, I
married my partner in the MS. She was a medical also,
and I wouldn't have got through medic school without it
because you have to know a couple of algebraic equations
to do drip rates and things like that. And I
was terrible with algebra, and she she tutored me all

(01:01:42):
through medic school with the man. So but I married
my partner. She is, yes, fabulously Eagan. Anybody in the
MS in that time would know her also. But yeah,
so we had two kids, and but it just didn't
worry out. Twenty fifty sixteen years later it was put
so sorry about that. But anyway, right, yeah, show up.

(01:02:06):
So what happens is so now EMRU at the time
I think only had about sixteen or twenty guys in it,
and because of the big influx of cops, you know,
putting in uh two to four thousand. Well actually transit
wasn't as much. But there each class in the city
academy had about two thousand people and there are twenty
five hundred people, and then of course Transit was getting
about four or five hundred out of each of those classes.

(01:02:28):
So now the Transit Academy, the transit police was growing
just as fifth you know, conditionally, just as fast as
the NYPV. And they decided they were going to double
the sides of the rescue unit. So I go with
to work one day and there's a big position vacancy
notice on the wall and it says, uh, it says,
if you would like to be in a transit police

(01:02:49):
rescue unit. You know, by all means, here's the prerequisites,
and then submit this form and you'll be considered. So
the first pre records it was minimum of three years
on the job I had. I had two years and
two months at the time, so I said, but there

(01:03:09):
you go, I don't qualify. Then it went into any
kind of specialty, medical training and blah blah blah blah.
But the first prerequisite was three years on the job.
So I never filled out the floor because I didn't
have three years on the job. I figured there's no
way they were even going to look at me. So
come three months later, when they finally picked the sixteen
or eighteen guys they were putting in EMRU, I'm going

(01:03:33):
down the list now again. My class was small enough,
it was under four hundred people transit wise that I
and tax you can go by tax number. I'm looking
at all the names. They were all out of my class.
Most of them were out of my class. And I'm
sitting there going, wait a minute. Vinny Grin DC sat
next to me in the police academy. How was he
EMYU and this kid you know, this guy was in

(01:03:56):
there right here? Was that right here? So I start
kicking cans and I'm all pod and my boss is
Joe Lockauser and Bob Rice. They were all like, you know, hey, Mike,
Mike's never remember I told you less than five times,
less than one hand's worth the fingers when I was
miserable doing the work. Right So now I'm kicking cans,
I'm all pissed off, and everybody's coming to me.

Speaker 1 (01:04:18):
What's the matter, what happened?

Speaker 2 (01:04:19):
What's the matter? I said, you see the list for
rescue and they were like, yeah, I said, I went
to the academy with all those guys. None of them
have three years on the job. I didn't have three years.
I didn't apply, I said, but I don't have to hook,
I don't have the rabbi. I don't have to. I
don't know the white people. So they were like, wow, no,
get out of here now. Bob Rice knew me because
I was a midnight medic out of Coney Island, which

(01:04:41):
I left a lot of people out there too. I'm
kind of disappointed, but I was a midnight medica out
of Coney Island and we used to run into the
tragic guys. What was the only place open twenty four
hours in Brooklyn in nineteen eighty Duncan do in Donuts
America runs on Duncan the big thing. We would meet
the trends and cops. We would meet the housing cops.

(01:05:03):
As a matter of I I played football. Now I'm
playing with a housing lieutenant and I said, wow, the
only housing cops I knew because they were studying midnights
in Colneau Jojiah Stone and Jerry Cooney or something. And
he goes, Jojah Stone, I was the best man at
his wedding. I got him right here on my cell phone.
And the guy's like, I was like, no way. And
that's how small the whole operation. Oh my god, what

(01:05:25):
the same thing. I get to Cony Island and the sergeant
looks at me. He goes, where do I know you from?
I said, Tent Division paramedics on the air and he goes,
oh my god, yes, so you know I used to
see them every night. Mike Spinelli too, He was a
regular RMP operator on midnights. And then when he again,

(01:05:46):
you know, transit started growing. He became a sergeant and
then a lieutenant. I don't know how high he went
because then I lost track of him, but you know,
because I went into the E m r U. But anyway,
I started kicking cans and all pissed off that I
didn't have a hook to get into the E m
r U and I didn't have three years on it up.
And uh, I have to tell you. Joe Lockaraza, I believe,
called Frank Kelly, who was Joe said, uh, Paisan, you

(01:06:07):
know Frank Kelly And Joe said, ran the rescue and
and Jauza called him up and said, hey, Frank, you
missed a good guy here for rescue. He was a
paramedican corner on the hospital, this, that and the other thing.
So Frank says, tell him to keep his nose clean.
I'll come by and talk to him in a couple
of days. And that's the way Frank. He was like
whisped everything. So showing off, Frank Kelly shows up like

(01:06:31):
three or four nights later. We go into the Captain's office.
I don't think I ever said a word. Joe Lockarada said,
this guy's great. He knows the area. You don't even
have to tell him where to go. He's like the
back of his hand, but bring the bang. He can drive.
He's a good cop. You don't have a lot of complaints,
you know. So then next said Frank, all right, get
your know the screen. The next class you have to
backfil because some of these kids are gonna fall out.

(01:06:52):
We'll put you in. I said, okay, great. So I
was in the backfield class, which is like four guys. Victory.
You got that picture to the four guys in the
chief of department, I believe did you get that one? Yeah? Me,
Franco Bereducci, IRV Stallings and Louis Vega. See if that
one all forign unit dress uniform and.

Speaker 1 (01:07:14):
We can get it, don't worry, I'll get it.

Speaker 2 (01:07:16):
Taking hands with the chief, kissing babies and all that
kind of stuff. Anyway, that was the backfield class for
the big class that went in. So I went in
in like November of eighty seven. But in the interim
I responded to it, like I said, I responded to
a job on the R line fifty nine Street and
Fourth Avenue in Brooklyn. Again driving the bus. We had

(01:07:37):
an unconscious on the platform when we get there at
the guy's day. But little did we know, we didn't
know rescue was coming, so all of a sudden he
comes rescue down the stairs. And who comes down the
stairs but Jeff Dido. I know Jeff looks like al Pacino.
By the way, yeah, Tony Romano. And now I haven't
seen Tony Romano in fifteen years. When when I last

(01:07:57):
saw Tony Romano, he was a little skinny, red headed
kid Brooklyn. This guy comes down the stairs is like
six two sixth grees, built like a brick shit house.
His legs are as big as his arms are as
big as my legs. And I'm like, oh. So I
go over to Geffito and I said, hey, they call
your partner ready. He says no, they call him Rocky.
I said, want they call him Rockies because he's fast
with his hands. I said, really, let's see how fast.

(01:08:18):
So I go over. I put my book away because
I was writing all the information for the deceased guy.
I put my book away and I walked behind Rocky.
He's a big, big guy. It's like grah. I'm around
the neck and I throw him over my hip like
a judo throw, And as I'm going down, he pulls
me down with him and my name tag is cutting
into the back of his hand and he goes, great, great,
are you Mike Great? And I was like, yeah, you're

(01:08:39):
a big jerk. And now wea're hugging and rolling around
on a platform. So I was like, what are you doing?
There's a dead body here, and we're like, yeah, he is,
So what do you want to tell you? It ain't
gonna annoy him. So anyway, so Rocky to me, I
thought you were a paramedic, I said, I was when
I came to the transit police. He goes, you got
to get him a rescue you UNI, I said, I
will as soon as I can. But so I eventually

(01:09:01):
got it.

Speaker 1 (01:09:02):
Yeah, sorry, you don't have to picture. I don't think
it came through. I'm looking at I looked in the
email earlier. I don't think it came through.

Speaker 2 (01:09:06):
Thank you, Joe, Thank you fine, thank you whoever. Yeah,
I thought I said that.

Speaker 1 (01:09:12):
I don't know. That's all right.

Speaker 2 (01:09:13):
I'm a computer literate, but that's.

Speaker 1 (01:09:15):
Fine, it's fine, and that.

Speaker 2 (01:09:18):
Well, let me just look real quick, because I could
have swore.

Speaker 1 (01:09:22):
That was that was a great time to be in rescue.
Let me just say ah to everybody else in the
chat it's tuned in again. Thanks Joe Ma League Chris
Ebdence here, and I know you went through the housing
rescue training a while ago, so good to see all
you tuning in tonight. Don't forget. If you have a question,
fire it away. Some of you already have. If you
got more, don't be shy. But that was, Yeah, that
was a heck of a time to be in rescue
because there was a lot that you could do city wide.

(01:09:43):
It was one of those one of the few citywide
uners and TRANSFO police had it. And I'll never forget
something that Charlie Capernas said, not on this show, but
in the episode of Cops that Transit Police was featured for.
He's riding around Kenny Schnetzler striving him. He's like that
thick New York accident is I got four trucks for
essentially operating for four boroughs, sometimes five or six trucks
operating for four of the five boroughs, with the exception

(01:10:04):
of Staten Island, answering jobs city wide. And there's only
two guys because you guys didn't have to have you
rescue truggle like the nypdes you did. It's two guys
per truck. We're talking what eight usually, and if it's
five or six, ten or twelve, not a lot of
guys for that unit. But again, handle the whole hell
of a lot on the shift and handled it well.

Speaker 2 (01:10:24):
Yes, And I have to thought we did cover Hu
Jerry and I have thought four trucks was a lot
of trucks for us to turn out. Yeah, both times
we had enough manpower for four trucks. We didn't have
four running trucks. And that was another thing. So I
sent you a picture of right before we were about
to meet You showed it earlier, but right before we
were about to meet Bill Bratton for the first time. Yeah.

(01:10:45):
Michael O'Connor was the Chief of the chance of Police,
and he said, don't you guys better say anything bad
about the You know, about the state of the vehicles.
We don't have a vehicle on the road with over
fifty thousand miles on it. And I looked on them.
I said, gee, we drove him in a truck with
ninety thousand miles on it. The thing's a bucket of bolts.
It's about to fall apart. He said, what did I

(01:11:06):
just tell you? I said, oh, so you want me
to lie to the new chief, the incoming chief of
the department. You want me to lie to what make
you look good or to make you look like you're
doing your job. So he wanted to call me how
to rescue because I wouldn't go with the program. And
I didn't go with the program. I have to tell
you when Bratton next, I told him that we have
buckets of boats.

Speaker 1 (01:11:25):
Ye, DC, have you seen the video on YouTube where
Brad's introducing the new fleet and whatnot?

Speaker 2 (01:11:32):
Yes, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. We had to watch that.
That was another he instituted. We had to watch that
at roll call. We had to watch that at Musta
when he did that, and those were chiefs videos. That
was actually part of roll call. All right, the chief
put out a new video. Jimmy O'Neill, the guy who
eventually became police Police Commissioner, had all right. So Jimmy

(01:11:52):
O'Neill was the sergeant, newly promoted sergeant, and he was
put in charge of the video unit. And Bratton loved that.
Bratton was the one who used him for everything and anything.
Any message he wanted to get out to the troops.
He didn't wait for it to go through the chain
of command and down to the rank and file, because
it's like the telephone game. If you've ever played the

(01:12:13):
telephone game with victor there, you know, you would know that.
You know, when you say something by the time against
the victor and then back to you, it's not the
same message information. The chief said, all right, So so
Jimmy's gonna do a video of me, and we're gonna
send it to every command and you're gonna watch it
at every vocal And that's exactly what happened, and that's

(01:12:33):
how those videos came to be. And you know, Tommy O'Neil,
the only mistake he made as far as I was concerned,
was firing the.

Speaker 1 (01:12:43):
Yeah panal, that was that's a that's a source subject
for a lot of guys who are working.

Speaker 2 (01:12:48):
I can't even talk about it.

Speaker 1 (01:12:49):
Yeah, we won't get into it.

Speaker 2 (01:12:52):
I tell you, I was off the job already, so
I really can't say anything. But my nephew was on
the job and he said, Hey, I'm going to the
community breakfast for the Sacred Heart. He said, and the
policemanis Kitsch is going to be there. So I said, oh,
go over and introduce yourself. His name's John Granton. It's
my brother's name, his son. And I said, go and
introduce yourself to the police commission He goes, I don't

(01:13:13):
want to do that. I said, no, no, no, no, go
introduce yourself. So he went to the community breakfast and
he met the police commissioner and he said, hey, my
uncle said, uh, you gave him a nod on his
forehead with a hockey park and he goes, who's your uncle,
and he goes Mike Granton. He goes, tell Mike Grant
and he almost put me through the board. Said I'm
still feeling uh you know whatever, like sore ribs or

(01:13:34):
whatever from from his body.

Speaker 1 (01:13:35):
Chat so big Ranger fan too, yeah, yeah, yeah, yes.

Speaker 2 (01:13:39):
Oh yeah. On the transit hockey I played with David
Queris too. See. That was another good group of guys though,
And I was an ankle bender. I was kind of
like I taught myself to skate just to go play
hockey and be in the end.

Speaker 1 (01:13:52):
Of all, there's guys that make a whole career out
of the pucks. I'm not a Devil fan. I'm a
Diren Ranger fan myself. But if you look at like
take Jeff Buckaboom, right, he was that way. Take on
the Devil's side. Scottie Stevens was that way. Ken Danico
was that way. You know, you could count the amount
of goals. It was great analyst and MSG for the Devils.
He can count the amount of goals Ken Danico scored

(01:14:13):
in his career on one hand. But you know what
it wasn't a better stay at home defenseman on that
second line for those Devil Stanley Cup teams, right.

Speaker 2 (01:14:20):
And not as much hockey skill, but a better fighter
was Nick for the Rangers. Rangers before your time. But
I mean it was from Stotton Island. He was a
golden gloves boxer, boxing champ, I believe, and let me
tell you something was a force to be reckoned with.

Speaker 1 (01:14:36):
He could throw with the best of him. You know,
my Nick Fatio he wasn't. He was a decent fighter,
but he was more of a pest with Sean Avery.
Sean Avery was still one of my favorite Rangers to
this absolutely, said Chris Ebden mentions in the Jettolfe Samuelson
he was kind of dirty, but oflf was another one
that he he wasn't afraid to throw down if need be.
Ty Domy was another one who.

Speaker 2 (01:14:55):
Was also Yeah, and ty Dom He was a small
guy for the most.

Speaker 1 (01:14:59):
Point, he was, but he'd fight bigger guy. He's giving up,
you know six eight times he fought like four or
five six times in one season. Yes, yeah, mentions the
ticket into a ticket in was another one who was, uh,
you know he liked ticket with this ticket No.

Speaker 2 (01:15:15):
Yeah, but taking now you're getting into like the ken
Linzman you're getting into like the rat was an Annoyer.
You know. He was a guy that can get under
your skin, but he was never a tough guy.

Speaker 1 (01:15:25):
Yeah, nout that guy in that era like the Messier
and the oilers and all that stuff.

Speaker 2 (01:15:31):
Marty looked sorely one of the first may when he
was with the San Jose Sharks at Madison's Greg Garto.
We were doing a graduation for the police department and
they had to go to Chelsea Pearce to do their
uh pregame skate because they couldn't use the garden. And
and let me tell you something, I shook Marty mcsauldy's hand.
He's his hand swallowed, My hand swallowed. I mean I

(01:15:53):
didn't even know I had a hand when he and
he was like, Hey, nice to meet. Yeah. Agree, And
I mean I was like, oh my god.

Speaker 1 (01:15:59):
I mean and from what I hear a quick story
on McSorley, I mean, from what I hear off the ice,
he's an absolute gentleman. But heave an interview a number
of years ago where he was saying that he didn't
name the opponent, but somebody went after Gretzky, and Gretzky
and Messa. Messa could really defend himself. He didn't need
anybody to step in for him. Right.

Speaker 2 (01:16:16):
His ESPN somewhere does rather have him on the ice, right.

Speaker 1 (01:16:20):
So gre somebody went after Gretzky. McSorley tells a story
where he goes in and he was the guy was
spearing different guys in spirit Gretzky. So he grabs a
guy and throws him into the boards as he's going
to the bench, and the referees like, my god, Marty,
you can't be doing that. Marty shoots back, Calmus can
be No, it's okay for him. He keeps and goes
to the penalty bides. That's a great little sidebar there. Now,

(01:16:42):
if it's not ESPN em J. This is the Mike
and Dave Podcast. O. It's volume fifty two of the
event inside the NYPD's Emergency Service Unit. Our guests this evening.
It is Mike Grant and spent seven of his years
in the NYPD and Transit Police in EMRU. So a
couple of jobs I want to hit on if you
were there, and if you were and it's fine, there's always,
of course the space case in the man Unders which
was transit bread and butter airbags were were the loss

(01:17:04):
of the bread and butter and now hitting the Bratton
years too. But Union Square derailment of ninety one, and
you weren't there, Trade Center bombing the night.

Speaker 2 (01:17:12):
Wait wait wait, Union Square derailment working till ten o'clock.
The Union Square at the railment happened at about eleven thirty.
So I lived in Staten Island. We were reporting at
the time. I believed in Manhattan, Hutton in Vestry Street
and we had just gotten because of Bratton take home radios,
we were assigned our individual transit Rescue, not the whole

(01:17:33):
Transit Police, but we were assigned our take home radios
that not only received the Transit police channels, but got
all VHF channels. So guess what guess what else I
was able to take home on a regular basis was
Brooklyn Fire. Still, you know, twenty years later, I'm still
tuning into Brooklyn Fire. You could scan the channels and all.
But anyway, I just walked in my door when they

(01:17:54):
started putting out about a major derailment at Union Square.
And I have to tell you it was another thing
that really was a totally unwritten rule. But I should
have just got back in my car went back to work,
but I didn't feel I had the authority and I
couldn't get a hold of anybody to approve that because

(01:18:17):
it happened again. It happened at the Union Square, and
it also happened at a plane crash a LaGuardia Airport,
which again we had enough people for four trucks. We
only had three running trucks. So they sent me and
my partner home. And that was the night that there
was a plane crash in LaGuardia Airport and all the
transit trucks ended up going there.

Speaker 1 (01:18:33):
With eighty nine Okay was it eighty nine?

Speaker 2 (01:18:37):
Way around there? Yeah? It get it off a snowy
runway and thing.

Speaker 1 (01:18:40):
Yeah, I say, either eighty nine or ninety one ninety.

Speaker 2 (01:18:43):
I got you know, I'm older than you. It's it
don't come that easy. I don't know, but it was
right around there. It had to be before ninety three,
that's all I'm gonna say.

Speaker 1 (01:18:53):
Yeah it was. It was. I can't remember the exact
plane crash, but there's pictures of it. It's like ninety two.
It's snowy and a plane did skin off the runway.
So had you left em RU by the time the
trades under bombing happened in ninety three.

Speaker 2 (01:19:04):
Or were you working there all right? So again another
another call where yes, I had just left the EMRU,
just left the E M r U. I still had
the radio. They hadn't come to take it away from
me yet because I was. It was I don't know,
a month or two after I got out of the
EMRU and UH and I had the radio, and I'm

(01:19:24):
sitting in downtown Brooklyn in three hundred Gold Street, which
I was in driver training. And that's another story. But
I'm in driver training. I'm sitting in there and I
hear the trade center bombing go down, and I hear
Joe said he's on the twenty third floor climbing stairs
looking for more people, and you know, the trucks that
were on duty were all there. But again, oh my

(01:19:48):
calling to let me go there, And plus I'm not
in the MRU anymore. I don't have an equipment. I
don't have a Scott pack, I don't have a you know,
we didn't carry spares on our truck. We were very
like you said before, we were very limited to watch supplies.
So you know, afterward, when I spoke to Joe said,
he said, oh, you should have just came, Mike. I
would have put you to wife. But I mean, you know,

(01:20:10):
I didn't have any protective gear. I didn't have any equipment.
I had knowledge and I had skills, but I didn't
have any equipment to operate with. So I did not go,
and I was basically right over to Brooklyn Bridge. I
feel terrible about this.

Speaker 1 (01:20:24):
Because Franco was I remember Franco talking about this. Franco
was there with Darryl Summers, sergeant said, and a few
other guys that responded, and the thing that Franco remembered,
which eight years later, I think Franco was driving truck
four when the trade center happened again on September eleventh,
two thousand and one, as he said when he was
climbing stairs in ninety three, because of how much he's carrying.

(01:20:46):
You know, Franco. Franco's are very still to the same,
A huge wrong guy, Frankl's. You know, it puts the
g in Jim Buff so he's you know, he's he
can handle himself. But as he was climbing the stairs,
you get tired, you start dropping things because it's so
much flights to climb and you're carrying a hell of
a lot of equipment. So he I think on the
way down. One of the guys he said this to

(01:21:07):
was Steve Driscoll, who went in and didn't come back
out eight years later. But he said to Steve, Steve,
don't take the whole world up there with you, because
it gets to be a lot after a while. And
Drinkle took a lot of it. But it was a
big job, as was the Union Square derailment. And it's
a fun unit to work. I mean, you get a
glimpse of the city. We're really city wide, I guess
before I hit on Bratt and just tell me about that.

(01:21:28):
I mean, it's it was six years of your career
and it sounds like it was the funest six years
of your career because there's so much you get to do.

Speaker 2 (01:21:34):
I had fun everywhere I went. But I mean, you know,
the trade center again, those things are all unloaded with
survivor gill when it comes to that stuff. So going
back to EMM, before we I even started working for
MS Steve Kerr myself, how he sickles. I'm trying to
pick all the people that were in. I think Billy
Gross was in there. We started a club called Masters

(01:21:57):
of Disaster. Well, we wanted to be at every big
job in the city, regardless of whether it was a
police job or fire job, or rescue job, a building
collapse or whatever. We just wanted to be at everything.
So we bought all these t shirts and we had
them silk screened or whatever. Masters a Disaster, and well,
we you know, we were just a bunch of kids playing,
you know. I mean we really had no responsibility at

(01:22:18):
the time except when when you were on duty and
doing something. So it's just it's I don't know, it's
just you just want to be at everything, and then
when you miss a big job like like nine to
eleven for instance, I mean I should have been I
think the ferry to work. I would have been right
there at like eight eight thirty in the morning. I

(01:22:38):
was ruking for a commissioner. I was running for a commissioner,
so you know, I could kind of make my own hours,
give a take, and I get his schedule, so I
just have to be there when he has to be somewhere,
because you know, i'm his aid, slavesh striding.

Speaker 1 (01:22:52):
So but then again, hey, listen, if you were there,
maybe we wouldn't have in this chat right now. You
never know for now, true.

Speaker 2 (01:23:00):
Too, right, So I'm amazed that I'm still here. But
I wasn't there when the big one with the big cloud,
when the buildings.

Speaker 1 (01:23:08):
Collapsed, the buildings. I thank goodness for that.

Speaker 2 (01:23:11):
Thank goodness because most of the people I know that.
First of all, I knew more fireman. We used to
hang and rescue one all the time. Yeah, and I
have to tell you it used to piss off ESU
because we'd be hanging out with the fire department when
it was the whole battle of the Bedge thing.

Speaker 1 (01:23:25):
Going there at that time.

Speaker 2 (01:23:26):
Yeah, they would call in man under is it like
Times Square or Penn Station. Well, again, I'm making an
allegation here. I don't know if it's true, but I
was told that some of their guys would call in
man unders because they saw our truck parked outside Rescue
one FDNY Rescue one. And but we had a radio

(01:23:47):
that went right to the train master. So what we
had to do was see, do you have a stoppage
over there? At times square on the you know, on
the number one too? No? No, you know, how about
on the four to five? No, no, no stoppages. Everything's
moving fine. Because when you have a man under the
first person that's going to report it is the motive.
The train goes into emergency when a body's under the train.

(01:24:10):
So we had like a direct thing to find out
when when the man under was legit. We knew it
was legit. If it was a nine to eleven Anonymous
on verified, we could pull the train master and he
could tell us nothing's going on at times.

Speaker 1 (01:24:24):
Squad, I got a picture.

Speaker 2 (01:24:25):
We never leave Rescue one. So then they started calling
like internal of fans saying we weren't responding to our call,
which was funny because we were all super buffs and
all ready to go to work. Do anything.

Speaker 1 (01:24:38):
You know, I was gonna ask you to you mentioned
shoe flies. Earlier, I heard a rumor. I'm not sure
if they should struggle to pull up the picture of
the rescue truck. And we'll talk about that momentarily before
I move on to a couple of other things to
hit on you in your career. But I heard a
rumor that the way to be able to sniff out
the shoe fly and transit was to do like a
backwards count on the radio something like that.

Speaker 2 (01:24:58):
Uh. You know, I was never worried about it because
I always tried to be where I was supposed.

Speaker 1 (01:25:01):
To be right now. Yeah, you did your job, But
I know that was one of the methods people tried.
I think that was one of the methhis people tried
to use to sniff out the shoe fly, so to speak.

Speaker 2 (01:25:10):
Yeah, I don't know. I know when in the NYPD
because we always had their radio wall. So even in
thirty four when I was in transit. You know, most
of the stations in thirty four are elevated. Yeah, so
so they gave you police you know New York's NYPB
radios if you needed to call for help or anything.
It was the only time I radio worked was when
you were working in Coney Island because they had the
repeaters on it right, well, you had the they were

(01:25:32):
all either elevated or open airlines. The D, the U, N,
the F all elevated or open air stations. So you actually,
you know, using an underground radio didn't work, so they
gave us NYPB radios in Coney Island, so you would
hear things like WO eight yeah, and that meant like

(01:25:53):
the duty inspectors in the six to one, you know,
it meant nothing to me. I really didn't care where
the duty inspector was. And I have to tell you
a funny story about that. When I assigned to the
Deputy Commensry of Trainings Office, we had a deputy inspector.
Actually we had a full bird. John Dugostino was the
CEO of our office, and uh John Dougastino, So he

(01:26:14):
had the duty once a month and he'd say, Hey, Mike,
I got the Brooklyn duty. You want to drive me
because I don't know Brooklyn. I know Queens. He goes,
I don't know Brooklyn for nothing. I said, yeah, yeah,
i'll drive. I know Brooklyn like the back of my head.
So I would drive him on the duty and a
couple of times like we'd pull into the seven to
one precinct on Empire Boulevard and he's in another more car,
but everybody knows it's a cop car. You know, it's
a Crown Vic, you know, with the with the tent

(01:26:38):
is all over it and the life.

Speaker 1 (01:26:39):
Minus will just put police in the side and car.

Speaker 2 (01:26:42):
It's not really unmarked exactly. So we pulled the right.
He goes inside to go sign the bladder. I go
in to take a leak, and as I'm walking into
like the muster room, he's got to be eight, nine,
ten cops running out past me. So I said, what's
going on with I thought somebody called it thirteen or
in eighty five. I said, what's going on? What's going on?
He said, Oh, dude, everybody's running. They're running the big cause.

(01:27:03):
I guess they were all watching Rocky or something, or
they were watching you know, they're taking a Pellam one
through three. I don't know what they were doing, but
they were all taking out whatever. I mean, you know
what they were all want it because the duty inspectors say,
I'm like, we're read I'm driving to He's a nice guy.
You don't want be about you know, he's not gonna
hurt you, I swear, And they just rank in the cars,
took off, blah blah blah. And then they get on

(01:27:24):
the radio and they say whatever they need to say that,
you know, the duty inspectors in the seven one. I
didn't say. I just laughed about it, because, like I said,
I never worried about it, never in my life.

Speaker 1 (01:27:34):
Of course, and he didn't have it, he didn't really
have a need to. So I was gonna say, I mean, listen,
that brings us into nineteen ninety three, and I think
was it around this time that you got promoted, because
I was gonna say, it's you're you're half the gritty,
had fun everywhere, but you're having the time of your life, right.
I'm pretty sure if you could have stated rescue, you
would have.

Speaker 2 (01:27:51):
But I would have so. And I had this discussion
with Charlie Capartner, Charlie Caparna when I said I wanted
to Actually it wasn't Charlie. It might have been Bob Gagans.
So nobody had said to me. One of the bosses
could have been Richie Locke. I don't know. One of
the bosses said to me, hey, you're within like three
hundred names on the transit sergeant's list if you get
if you're still in the MRU and you get promoted,

(01:28:12):
you got to leave for a year before you can
come back, he said. But if you leave now and
you get promoted in three months or six months, you
can come right back into the unit. So I said, okay,
let me go see what's uh, you know, the position
vacancy board, what's available. And the only thing that really
was even halfway available and I was interested in was
driver training, so you know, and of course the bane

(01:28:34):
was and you can thank Dennis Healy for this. Those
who can do, those who can't teach, and those who
can't teach teach driver training. So they just pounded me
with shit like that, stuff like and uh. Anyway, so
I ended up going to drive a training and I
have to tell you again it was a blessing in disguise.

(01:28:56):
So for the for the nine ten years I'm on
to Transit Police, I go to drive every year. You
got to submit a report that you want to get
a CBO license, get bus trained, whatever, so you can
go to details and maybe get a cushy detail driving
a bus, either a city bus or a police bus
or anything else like that. And every year I put

(01:29:17):
in for it. But again I didn't have a rabbi,
I didn't have the hook, I didn't have the guy
to get me into that training. So I put in
sixteen freaking reports twice a year, you know, for eight years,
never got called. So now I get assigned to drive
a training. The first thing I do is that I
walk into the office. The guys that were there had
left already. They're transferred out, so we got five. And

(01:29:38):
this is when Transit's going to start their own academy,
so we had to build up a drive a training unit.
So five new people come in calling me the big
rollerdecks on the desk. I go through the big rollerdecks.
I find bus training in the Bronx at the Hunts
Point depot and I call up the guy you know
the card whatever the number was. I said, how are
you doing this? Off somehoe granting over a Transit police

(01:29:59):
drive training and I said, we need a guy bus
driver train. Do you got any classes going in? He said,
we just had a class started today. I said, do
you have any vacancies and he goes, I don't know.
I'll let you know tomorrow. He says, where's the guy live.
I said, Staton Island. He goes, I can't get you
in Statna. I said, no, no, anywhere in Brooklyn, anywhere in
ben Anything's good. He goes, I'll call you tomorrow. He
calls me the next day. He says, Hey, I got

(01:30:20):
an opening. I can't get you in Stanton Island, but
I got the guy in Elma Park, which is right
off the thirty eighth street in the bque in Brooklyn.
So I said perfect. He goes, Hey, tell the gu'd
be there nine o'clock tomorrow morning. Okay, no, pup. What's
his name? Mike Granton. So this is me, Mike Granton,
and I'm calling up and scheduling my own training. So

(01:30:41):
the next thing I know, I go upstairs to operations
and I put in the log Mike Granton from driver training.
I put my shield on, my tax down. But has
training at the bus garage for the next I think
it was a ten day course for the next ten days.
And I just and I don't sign it. I just
that's why I just make an entry in a law.
So then I I know, I go to I go,

(01:31:03):
can I get bus training? And I passed aroad this,
I go through the thing. I drive a bustle all day,
every day for the next ten days. And then when
I come back, everybody says, where are you? I said,
I was a bus training. It's in the command law
it is. Yeah, So they go back two weeks and
sure ship, we'll put this in here. I don't know.
I told him I was going to bus training and

(01:31:25):
somebody put in it was me. So I got bus training.

Speaker 1 (01:31:29):
And that's back then you guys had the arrest bus too.

Speaker 2 (01:31:32):
I didn't know drive that solid spuns, drove that one
around quite a bit. Yeah, mobile processing center, yes, yeah, yeah,
it's just a regular city bus though with you know
some of them accoutrement center.

Speaker 1 (01:31:44):
But yeah, essentially, you know, as a trans of police,
insign me on side too. And that's another brat. Say,
those two years that Bratt was there wasn't long. But
think about it, and this is not hyperbleeve to say,
and him and Jack Maple to the late great Jack
Maple with they started CompStat there, kept track of these things.
They brought in a new fleet. Transit police prior to

(01:32:04):
Bratton coming in in nineteen ninety was practically begging for
a merger. And to tell you the impact the man
had on the agency. He left in ninety two because
you went back to Boston to be the police commissioner.
And then he came to New York City at ninety
four pre merger as the NPD commissioner the first time
in ninety five. When the merger happened, they didn't want it.
They were fighting tooth and nail. It wasn't until Giuliani

(01:32:25):
withheld the payroll that the merger happened.

Speaker 2 (01:32:27):
We were a choice only because of Braton.

Speaker 1 (01:32:30):
And so was housing. Housing was had injunctions going on
at the time.

Speaker 2 (01:32:34):
So Bratton got us all brand new vehicles, patrol vehicles,
ESU vehicles, buses, all brand new transit police vehicles, which
we were always getting handing downs, Like you said, second
rate stuff when everybody's left over is or you know,
Bratton was the cat's pajamas when it came to the
transit at life. Yeah, he turned. He switched the uniforms

(01:32:54):
from dog blue light blue to Dagloo dog blue commando
swetter baseball hat if you want of the nine millimeter.
He went to ben Ward and said, I'm make sure
my guy's nine millimeters, so you know, make sure you
tell your people a nine milimeters doesn't necessarily mean it's
a month. And ben Wood said, well, you can't do that.
We have a pilot project going on, like they had

(01:33:15):
fifteen or twenty guys out of the whole twenty four
thousand men department, and they were evaluating the effectiveness of
nine milimeters. And Brandon just looked at him and said,
I'm not asking you, I'm telling you, because well you
could tell me all you want, but you ain't training
him in my range, meaning Rodinan's.

Speaker 1 (01:33:31):
Not Yeah, we'll pick another one that he did.

Speaker 2 (01:33:33):
He did. He went to no, no, he went to uh,
you know Long Island. The that's the uh, that's what callseum.
The island is right across the street. There was up
in the college right there. It was a big range
right there. So he actually rented half the range for
a year and trained the entire trans of Police Department on.

Speaker 1 (01:33:55):
Nine milimeters Island. The guy is fabulous, of course, and
then you know, and again he brought that same thing
to the NYPD when he took it over in nineteen
ninety four, and around that time you could see it
in the episodes of cops when they filmed with the
NYPD in nineteen ninety four, right after they filmed with
you guys that transition. Certain certain cops are still wearing

(01:34:17):
what I call the Kansas City Royals blue uniforms before
they transition to the dark ones. Even some of the
ESU guys. You see the ESU guys start to wear
the dark uniforms they still wear to this day. So
even that was a simple morale booster, and that was
the thing. So you come over and that's a you know,
anybody that lived through that, it was involved in that
and any capacity. That was an interesting time because Bratton

(01:34:37):
was on this show a while ago, as you know,
and he told me straight up, He's like, you're probably
never going to see anything like that again. Where not
just one police department he'd been a part of mergers
much smaller in Boston, but two come in. So you're
getting a groundswell of personnel that got numbers in the
NYPD to the largest they'd ever been. So going from

(01:34:58):
the Mitchellfield by the gig in the Saints, thank you, Bobby,
ye sign your Bobby appreciate you, Bob. So going from
wearing the transit patch to of course the NYPD patch.
A lot of the principles and the ways to do
the job are the same, but nevertheless there's certain personnel
aspects to it. There's certain minor tweaks that might throw
you off a little bit that you have to get

(01:35:18):
used to. So you're ninety five, ninety six, ninety seven,
what was that like getting used to again? Still doing
the job, but doing it under an entirely different department.

Speaker 2 (01:35:26):
Okay, So so my driving training days again, I didn't
get promoted, okay, And what happened was when So here's
the thing. A lot of transit cops benefited from that,
and I didn't because I was on the sergeant's list.
Anybody on the lieutenant's list, on the captain's list, which
we had certified list for lieutenant and captain. All the
transit guys got made. Every sergeant that was on a

(01:35:48):
lieutenant's list got made, and every lieutenant that was on
the captains list got made. They got promoted. But NYPD
had a current i don't know, sixty five hundred man
sergeant's list person sogeant's list, and I was like three
sixty five on a six hundred man list, and they
were up to like three twenty three or three thirty,

(01:36:09):
so I was thirty names away. But they killed the list.
They put all lists at the back of theirs and
they never make their whole list. So I ended up
dying on the list with getting promoted. So the whole
leave and then come right back was out the window.
So now the merge goes through and I'm in drive training.
I'm like in limbo what I call it? Right, So
they send us out the Floyd Benetfield to but I

(01:36:32):
guess I gotta tell a story before that, though. They
send us out to Floyd Benetfield, me and Salcote at
a sponge to work with their NYPD drive A training
and the people accepted us fine. The boss is not
so much. They thought we were They thought we were plants.
Because now, Jim O'Keeffe, I sent you a picture Jim

(01:36:53):
O'Keeffe too, Jim O'Keeffe. This is him getting sworn in
as the Deputy Commissioner training for the second time by Kelly.
But anyway, Jim O'Keeffe was he was a guy that
was brought in by Bratton, Jim O'Keeffe and some woman
named MacDonald, and he called them executive assistants with the
Transit Attarity, and they were so we didn't have deputy

(01:37:14):
commissioners or whatever. We had the chief and we had
the whole uniform, but he didn't have any civilian. Well,
Jim O'Keeffe was a civilian. He got a doctorate in
criminal justice from Houston, and Bratton brought him in as
like an executive assistant, a guy to help me implement
all the things I'm trying to implement. So and again,

(01:37:36):
Transit was starting their own academy in ninety three, so
we were assigned to somewhere in Metro Tech over there.
One of the dad's it one of the theaters there
where they were going to do the hiring, you know,
all the kids coming in for hiring like they do
it in YPB, but we were now just separate Transit police.
So we go there and Jim O'Keeffe is going to

(01:37:58):
give a speech to the new recruits, and he gives
this whole speech about, uh, his son wanted to be
an archaeologist, so he wanted him to hang a rope
from a tree in the yard. And the doctor's going
hang a rope from the tree in the art archaeologist.
He goes, you've got your you got your occupations reversed.

(01:38:21):
So the kid says, no, no, you know I want
to you to hang a rope from the tree in
the art so that I could be an archaeologist. He said,
I just show it on TV. He goes, where'd you
see it on TV? He said, Indiana Jones. But the
kid thought Indiana Jones was what an archaeologist? You know?
An action adventure guy is an archaeologist.

Speaker 1 (01:38:38):
And not quite.

Speaker 2 (01:38:41):
And another part of the speech, he goes, anybody could
be a doctor. This is in his speech to the recruits.
He said, anybody could be a doctor. I could give
you an address tomorrow you can mail away, and in
a week you have a doctorate's certificate. He said, but
it don't mean nothing. You didn't have any growth, You
didn't put anything into it. You don't get anything out
of it. He goes, but you'll have a doctorate certificate
that you know, you might be able to scam you

(01:39:03):
away into a job. He was real personal. Great speech
had everybody glued to him. Right. So when the speech
is over and we all go back to Gold Street,
they come in and they hand us all new phone
directories and on the new phone directory is doctor James
O'Keeffe's office. So I figure he's got a secretary, right,

(01:39:23):
So I said, let me call. So I called James O'Keefe.
I said, hey, doctor o'keeth, this is Mike Grant and
I worked downstairs. He's up on the fifth floor. This
is Mike Grant and I worked down on the second
floor and drive a train. And he goes, yeah, what
can I do for you? Mike? I said, yeah, listen,
you did a great speech today with those recruits. Everybody
loved it. Everybody loves you. So he says, oh, that's great.
I'm glad to hear it. I said, so listen, can

(01:39:45):
I get that address where I can be a doctor
by the end of the week. And he goes, ah,
I gotta find something for you to do, and he
hangs up the phone. So the following week I call
him again, Hey, doctor, this is Mike Grant and I've
been checking the mail every day. I haven't gotten that address.
Can you send me that address? He goes, don't you
people haven't even do it down there. I said, yeah, yeah,
we're doing our job. I said, but I you know,
I'm trying to be a doctor. Anyway, hang up the phone.

(01:40:08):
The third time, I go up to his office, but
he's not in there, and he's got a big white board.
You know when we went from truk boards to whiteboards
with the dry erase markers. Yeah, not like seventy things.
He wants to get done, like in the next ninety days.
So I erased number thirty five and I put number
thirty five, get drive a training, MD certificates or MD

(01:40:31):
address something like that. So about an hour later my
phone rings A driver Training and I said, yeah, officer granting,
and he goes, uh, you wouldn't haven't have been in
my office today, would you? I said, oh, no, dog,
I would never go in here. That would be trespassing
on in your office. And you weren't in your office.
Somebody screwed by whiteboard. I said, I don't know what
you're talking about. You know, I would never do that.

(01:40:54):
So he laughed about it. So finally we get the
certificates and but he actually cuts out of the back
of the Village voice. You know, there's like those little
personal lands. It says, free HB, FREEVD right Pobox three
eighty seven Tazana California. Well, I write and I said

(01:41:14):
I want a free PhD. And they sent me this
full color trifle of the brochure. It was beautiful. So
now I go upstairs too. We had just started an
instructional technology and the Barry Kutcher and Saldi Giovanni and
I walk in with astraian full color brochure and I said, listen,
I just came from doctor o'keef's office. He wants you
to make up five of these certificates. And he goes

(01:41:35):
doctor o'keef wants it. Yeah, right from doctor o'keef's mouth.
He told me to come down here, give this to
you and tell you to make up five of these certificates. Really, yeah, yeah,
you can check it out here. Take this five certificates.
Don't give him to him. Give him to me because
I got to do a presentation for him next week. Okay,
so show up. They do it because everybody's afraid. You know,

(01:41:55):
doctor m'keef, he's a big shot. He's above like every
uniform person. The only person answers to is Bratton. So
now they do the five things. I'd go and get
the cardboard Police Department frames, put them all in there
there's a girl in the cadet corps. H oh please,
she's gonna kill me if I can't remember my name Thomas. Anyway,

(01:42:15):
she does calligraphy and I tell her, hey, do me
a favor the five people and drive a train and
put our names on here and we're gonna be doctors.
And she was like, oh, you're gonna get fired. I
was like, just put our names on it. We won't
say you did it. She puts all our names on
the certificates. We hang them up on the wall. I
called doctor o'keith, Hey, doctor o'keith. Yeah, it's doctor Granton.

(01:42:36):
I'm down and drive a training. He goes who I said, well,
I used to be Officer Granton, but I'm doctor Granton.
Now we're having our big installation ceremony. We all became doctors.
We want you to come down so all us doctors
can hang out together. And he goes, all right, what
time are you doing it? And I said, a man,
noon and this is like ten o'clock in the morning,
So he said, I'll be there at noon. I said,
all right, thanks, hang up the phone. Blah blah blah.

(01:42:56):
Everybody says sterical. Everybody thinks I'm the funniest guy in
the world. Everybody loves. Doctor Keith walks in the door
and he's got Captain Bets behind him. Captain Betts has
no sense of humor whatsoever. The vein in his forehead
is like pulsating and gone crazy. So they walk in
the door. Doctor o'keep's got the biggest smile on his

(01:43:17):
face ever. And I'm like, look, doctor, we all became doctors.
Doctor of apologetics, doctor of missiology, doctor of this, doctor
of that, doctor of divinity. He was like, oh my god,
oh you guys are fat. Here, come on, we ordered pizzas. Here,
have a slice of pizza. Blah blah. He has the
slights of pizza. He plays along fabulously, and then he says, listen,
I gotta go upstairs because I got real work to do.

(01:43:38):
So you guys keep up whatever it is you do.
And he walks out the door, and that stays behind
and he was so angry. We were unshaven, we weren't
in uniform. With how I got. I want you guys
shaving in uniform, in dress uniform in front of my
desk in ten minutes. Ten minutes, Oh my god. So

(01:43:59):
now they're all cursing me out, Oh look what you
did now by blah blah blah blah blah. So fast
forward to ninety seven and now I'm out of driver
training and the lieutenant there gets a phone call the
Deputy Commissioner of Training would like to have a meeting
with Officer Mike Granton on three o'clock on Wednesday. So

(01:44:21):
she calls me, I got recruits in the car. I'm
somewhere at Flopper's driving around and then marked RMP, you know,
teaching driving, and she gets gives me a ten to
two fourth winth So I go back to the command
I said, what's up? She goes, I knew there was
something wrong with you being here. Why does the Deputy
commission your training want to see you? I said, I
don't know. She goes, well, look, yeah, I just got

(01:44:42):
a notification you're gonna meet with him at three o'clock
on Wednesday. And what's this with three o'clock? You get
off duty at freaking three o'clock. Yeah. He goes, well,
you're going to change your hours and all right whatever.
So I end up going to see the Deputy Commissioner
Training and he says, Michael, I said yes. He goes,
I want you to come work for me. I said no, no, no, no, no,

(01:45:04):
I said, listen, listen. I live in Staten Island. I
work in Brooklyn, Floyd Betterfield. Everybody's going towards Manhattan. I'm
going towards the other way. I got no traffic going
a where I parked my car. I got seven hundred
parking spots to choose from. No, it's nice, must be nice,
yeah exactly. I said. No no fighting to park or

(01:45:26):
no struggling or rush hour, no nothing. I said, it's
not like I have a parking spot like you do
at this beautiful building. I said, number three, My phone
voice sucks. I'm a computer alliterate, and you don't want
me in an office. It's like, you know, it's like
I having a bullet at China Shop.

Speaker 1 (01:45:42):
Right.

Speaker 2 (01:45:43):
And he looks around and he says, see all those
people out there, and he points to us out of
her office. He goes, all those people can type, they
can all operate a computer, and they can all answer
a phone. That's not what I want you for. I said, Okay,
what do you need? He goes, I need somebody I
can trust. How do you answer that? You can't trust me,
and he knew from just from horsing around with the doctor.

(01:46:06):
It's certificates. That's the only way he knew me. And
I found that out later when the secretary said to me,
you know when you came and delivered the mail last week,
Doctor o'keith yelled out the door to me and said,
who was that guy? And he said, it's my grant
and he used to work for you at Transit. He goes, yeah,
that's where I know him from. Tell him I want
to meet with him next week. He don't do meetings.
You order him when to be here and he comes here.

(01:46:28):
So anyway, so I told him, listen, I have a
handicapped daughter at home. You know, my wife went back
to nursing school. I said, I have a you know,
issues with schedule juggling. So I really don't know if
I could do it. Can you give me to Monday
and I'll give you a realistic answer, I said, But
I have to tell you I'm leaning too it snow
you need somebody else, I said, yeah, have no, I
have no polem with the trust issues. But you know,

(01:46:50):
coming to Manhattan putting on a suit, I said, I
only owned two suits. I own a wedding suit and
a funeral suit.

Speaker 1 (01:46:55):
That's it about all you need in most walks of life.

Speaker 2 (01:46:59):
He was like, come on, trying for six months. If
you don't like it, I'll put you anywhere you want
to go on a job. Needless to say, I was
there for the next seven years and before I retire,
and then.

Speaker 1 (01:47:09):
Doing a lot because at this point it's safe to
say me and you finished out of course no five,
but that at that point when you got there in
nineteen ninety seven, you had a dozen years in the job.
So the big lesson and I guess I'm going to
have the answer one of the rapid fire questions early
because you answered one of them already. Did you ever
deliver a baby? Is you're getting these guys, some of
which they already got a decent amount of time on

(01:47:31):
the job. Other guys they got time on but they're
newer two to three years. You got a dozen on.
You worked underground, you've been above ground for a couple
of years. But it's not like your transit experience is
no one void. What were you trying to teach these guys?
What were the biggest things you were trying to focus on,
you know, through Howard Safer's NYPD when you first got there,
into Bernie Carrick's NYPD, and then lastly Ray Kelly's NYPD.

Speaker 2 (01:47:55):
I didn't do teaching. I actually I answered only to
the commissioner, which was a great thing. Also, yeah, I
mean he basically like I didn't have a boss. I mean,
we had a chief of the Police Academy, and we
had a deputy inspector who of course I respected to
the ends of the earth, I mean John Bacino. And
when he left, we got Joey Stevens, a black female
who I have to tell you I was worried to

(01:48:16):
debt that she was going to be a special interest person.
He was one of the best bosses I ever worked for.
And but even her I had I had about eighteen
years on the job. And she calls me into her
office and she says, to me, h, Detective Granton. She goes,
I just got something from the Chief of Department's office
concerning you, And I said, really, what could you have gotten?

(01:48:39):
And she says, you're under special monitoring. What did I
do now? And she says, well, according to the paperwork
they sent me, get this. Now you're ready you've never
written a summons, you've never written a juvenile report, you've
never made a caller, you've never done police work. You're

(01:49:01):
a zero. From one end of the columns to the other.
You have no record of any activity on this job.
So I just started laughing. She goes, what do you
have to say for yourself? And I said, I'm a
big zero. And she goes, no, give me something to
throw at them, and I said, I said, I can't.

(01:49:21):
I can't throw anything on you. I said, let me
just say this. So when we went through the marriage,
three hundred Gold Street was basically Transit Police headquarters.

Speaker 1 (01:49:29):
Right in Brooklyn.

Speaker 2 (01:49:30):
Right in Brooklyn, Yeah, right right on Tillery Street, right
across the street from the super pumpa And yeah, okay,
so three hundred. So we weren't supposed to lose anything.
They were supposed to start getting, you know, transit. We
turned in our memo books, and we had small memo books,
so we went through them a lot. NYPD they have
a big, warm memo book and when you're done with it,

(01:49:52):
you keep it and you log out the next one
and you keep them in series type of thing. You
you know, wear the list almost like your checkbook with
the is checking the date he wrote on that one,
and then the first checking the date on the next one,
and it just keeps going for your whole career. Well,
with Transit, we didn't do that. We were we had
a very small book. We had to make twenty minute
entries and we handed in the book. So I might

(01:50:13):
have been on my sixtieth or seventieth book, but I
didn't have. I didn't I wasn't in possession of any
of them. If I got caught for court, I had
to go to like equipment and supply give him the
date of the incident, blah blah blah, and they would
have to go find the book and hand it to
me so I could produce it in court. Okay, So
now when the merge goes through, sal I'm gonna mention

(01:50:33):
him again. Salva Sponge Ktaya who also worked at three
hundred Gold Street.

Speaker 1 (01:50:38):
It's a classic New York names Salad Sponge.

Speaker 2 (01:50:40):
Well, Salad Sponge is the prodigal son. So he was
the guy when Bratton came to the Transit Police. He
had left to roll over to the NYPV and he
didn't like being treated like a rookie again. He had
like eight years on and he rolled over and they
treated him like a rookie. So he came back. So
we called him the prodigal Son. And Bratton made a
big about the fact that how great the transit was

(01:51:02):
that this guy who got to go to the great
NYPV came back to the Changit police. So Salad Sponge
was the prodigal sun. But anyway, so Sala sponges working
a gold Street after the merge, and he sees a
dumpster out in front of Gold Street that people in
that took over the Gold Street units, buildings, offices. They

(01:51:22):
were clearing out the offices and throwing everything in the dumpster,
things like my personnel fold not mine, hundreds of them.
So he started going through the folders, and he knew
all the ranged guys, he knew, you know, every name
he knew. He took it through in the trunk of
his car, trunk of his car, trunk of his car.
He must have taken three hundred personnel folders and put

(01:51:45):
him in the trunk of his car because they were
throwing them out and they were supposed to keep them
as you know, for life, you know, right, records of
what you did with your whole career. But apparently the
NYPV don't have them. So the inspector calls me in
the office and she's telling me I never did anything.
I said. I couldn't tell her because technically it's not

(01:52:07):
legal for me to have my personal folder. I had
my own personel folder because they threw them out whoever
took over the offices in three hundred gold Tree, which
that was another thing they were fighting over the offices.
We'd have a stick around the door that says this
office now belongs to Field Investigations, Field Internal Affairs, and
but there's a combola, there's a key, but there's also

(01:52:29):
a combo lock on the door, and me and the
sponge were the only ones who knew the combo lot.
So we'd be in there and guys would be pounding argeants, lieutenants,
captains would be pounding one if anybody's in there, rob
and we didn't. We never said a word because we
had all driving simulators in there, and we were told
that God the simulators until they found someone to donate

(01:52:51):
them to, which they found some high school and queens
that they eventually donated them. But anyway, but that's you know.
But anyway, so I was a zero and that's what
she came up with, and you know I couldn't tell her.
I have my own, so did Jamake car. Yeah. I
made a couple of calls. Listen, I didn't change the world.
I probably made twelve collars in my whole career period.

(01:53:13):
You know, when you get in the rescue, you don't
make callers your hand, things off hand, things off hand,
things off you know.

Speaker 1 (01:53:19):
And I'm sure she knew that, you know, Listen, I
was in a specialized dudent. We didn't really focus on
the rest could if we needed to, but it wasn't.

Speaker 2 (01:53:25):
When either Commissioner's aid or the commissioners drive or whatever.
You don't make callers.

Speaker 1 (01:53:29):
This doesn't happen.

Speaker 2 (01:53:30):
Yeah, you don't make calls.

Speaker 1 (01:53:32):
You weren't you were working. You know, it's different if
you were hiding trying to avoid work, you weren't job.

Speaker 2 (01:53:37):
I love, love my job. But then when Jim O'Keefe left,
then we got which was right before nine to eleven,
a month before nine to eleven August one. Okay, yeah,
so he left about a month before nine and maybe
two months before nine eleven. So I kind of didn't
have a boss, and then uh, we ended up getting
Carrick assigned the federal guy, Frank Stroud the commission the

(01:54:00):
Franks job. Wasn't a born and bred NYPD guy, Yeah,
nobody who wanted. Nobody wanted to play ball with him.
I have to tell you I felt horrible because I
wasn't a born and bred NYPD guy. I was a
transit car. You know, all my connections, all my all
the people that knew me over my career were all
in the New York City Transit Police. They were not

(01:54:21):
the NYPD. So here I am walking around the executive
stay up at the NYP with the new executive who
nobody even wants to talk to. They don't look at them,
they don't even greet them. I mean, it was just
it was horrible to be honest with you.

Speaker 1 (01:54:34):
So yeah, now I could see that, and I was
gonna say, I mean that brings us into five when
you left. I mean at that point where you look
into everybody says they're gonna do twenty and out, but
it's hard to actually walk away. Some guys stay longer.
Were you at that point where it's like, eh, you
know what, it's not what it's not what I it's
not was he walked away.

Speaker 2 (01:54:55):
Yeah, I had a cush your job. I could have
stayed for another twenty years, to be honest with you,
because my job, I mean again, but I was. I
didn't feel like I was being effective. I wasn't. I
was no longer proactive, so to speak. You know, I
did the best I could for O'Keefe, which Straub I
kind of felt very inadequate for what I just told you.
I wasn't really an NYPD guy. I didn't have, you know,

(01:55:17):
my hooks in different I did have, believe it or not,
I refereed ice hockey for twenty five years. So one
of my biggest advocates on my side was the Chief
of Internal Affairs, Charlie Campeasy, Yes easy, who threw his
own driver under the bus when her place got burglarized.
But that's a whole nother story. He asked me to
be his driver when O'Keefe left, and I said to him,

(01:55:41):
but he was a queen's guy and I'm a Brooklyn
got married and moved to Staten Island guy. Yeah, And
I kind of said to him, you know, I don't
chief as much as I love you know, hanging out
with you and dealing with you and talking hockey. I said,
I just I don't feel like I'm a good fit
for you, so so, you know, and he kind of
just moved on and got somebody else. But he was

(01:56:01):
the only other like executive in the police department that
I kind of felt comfortable with. But another thing in headquarters,
I'm up in the elevator and sure enough, here's another
The name's going to come up again. So Joel Lockaraza,
who's now a sergeant in a detective bureau, is on
an elevator at one PP and I get on the
elevator and he says, hey, that guy, the fat head
up in the front, is that you Mike Granton? And

(01:56:22):
I said, oh, sounds like a Brooklyn kid, and it
was Joel Lockaraza and he goes hey, he goes, uh,
did your commissioner? Oh, Jim Fife. That was another one.
He died in office. But he was also very liberal,
and I didn't necessarily like working for five and I
wasn't five s eight five brought in a new kid.

Speaker 1 (01:56:43):
Didn't he have a cancer?

Speaker 2 (01:56:44):
He did, yeah, while sitting as the commissioner, But he
was all like I said, he was. What I didn't
like about him is he went all around the country
as a police expert and he basically sunk the cop
nine out of ten times. You know, whoever paid him
to say whatever, It's kind of what he said. He
was an expert, expert, witness.

Speaker 1 (01:57:03):
Yeah whatever he needed hill be yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:57:05):
Number two On his office wall. As soon as he
moved into the office, he put up a letter from
Chief Gates from L A L A P T. And
what a booby was? What in nikom poop? What an idiot?
You know, how incompetent he was, how he didn't know
anything about fighting crime. And I said, why would you
hang a letter up like this? And he kind of

(01:57:26):
like you know, looked down his nose at me and said,
sometimes a man's better off judged by his enemies than
his friends. And I said, so you're proud of this?
He goes, yeah, the guy's a jerk, and he thinks
I'm a jerk, so that makes in me. That makes
me look great. And I was like, really, I always
thought the guy was a pretty good chief.

Speaker 1 (01:57:44):
I'm gonna say, yeah, there's a lot of guys who
worked for Darrol Gates on the LAPD during those years,
who absolutely adored the mans to this day, well they.

Speaker 2 (01:57:51):
Can trying to do away with police chasers. And he
was like, you know, so, what do you want us
to do wafting them as they drive away from the
supermom robbery or the scene him a murder or the
scene of you know whatever.

Speaker 1 (01:58:01):
Controversial guid but listen, probably one of the best she's
laped he's ever had.

Speaker 2 (01:58:06):
I agree. And and you know, one of the things
that's written in the law that we don't again that
we don't enforce, is that when you're fleeing a crime scene,
as the criminal, you're responsible for anything that happens. But
somewhere along the line, the media and the public made
it the cops for same thing with why I don't
agree with the body cams now, because nobody reviews the

(01:58:26):
body cams. Nobody looks at the look exactly contact, Look
at George Floyd, right the cop. All you've seen for
thousands of hours on the news is maybe two to
three minutes of the three cops sitting on George Floyd.
You didn't see how bizark he went for the twenty
minutes before that when they were trying to put him
in the car and the three cops couldn't even keep

(01:58:48):
him in the car or get him in the car
or whatever. He was a raven lunatic. You didn't see
any of that, you know, long contact.

Speaker 1 (01:58:57):
Even now there's just a shoot. I think Queen's kid
was lunching at cops with the knife and the cops
got hit with misconduct chargers on that. But they you know, again,
the kid lunched them with the knife. What they're supposed
to do get stabbed, right, you know.

Speaker 2 (01:59:11):
So I'm gonna say it again because you know, nobody
knows the case unless I say the choke old cop.
But I hate saying it. The guy's name is Daniel Pantaleo.

Speaker 1 (01:59:18):
The audience.

Speaker 2 (01:59:19):
Pantaleo showed up and he did his job. He was,
you know, five to seven, one hundred and forty pounds
going up against the sixty three three hundred and fifty pounds. Well,
I don't know if i'm exactly he was a big guy.
Raise your eyebrows. No exaggerating one way together. I'm just
saying he was a little kid going up against the
big guy who said not today, officer, I'm not calling listen,

(01:59:44):
you're under the arrest. So you know, if you're gonna
fight me, you's gonna be extra charges. And he wanted
to fight, Yeah, Well he put him in a headlock
and drew him to the ground. Now do you think
I don't know what I'm talking about? Go watch the
video and again it's another disappointing thing for me. Go
watch the video and count out loud one one thousand
and two, one thousand three without for when you can't

(02:00:05):
hear that guy saying something because he says I can't
breathe almost threw the whole thing from when they don't
throw him down on the ground, and don't file on
a rabbit. If you say I can't breathe, you're not
in a choke ho. If you're weezing the coffin, you're
not in a choke ho. If you're in a choke hold,
you can't move any air at all. Count the silence.
You'll never get more than five. That's not a choke hold.
I'm sorry, that's getting MMA fighter. The guy was never

(02:00:28):
in a choke hold, but yet he's world famous as
the choke hold cop.

Speaker 1 (02:00:32):
Well, one of my lieutenantses is former MMA fighter. He
gave it up when he went into the fire service.
So you know, I listen, he would know shout out
to the lieutenant, Amadila if you're watching this, Uh, you
would know and you would be able to pint on that.
So now listen, it's tough, you know again, and uh,
it's a it's a physical job, as you know, because
sometimes listen, you're not trying to wake up and fight
people and you're giving to her, but sometimes you gotta

(02:00:54):
throw hands and you gotta know how to handle yourself.

Speaker 2 (02:00:56):
I just thought I was getting old for the police department,
and I actually felt like I was either I was
I was going to do something where and again Joe
Lock arose and the elevator offered me. He said, you
could get rid of the suit. I'll get you all
the overtime you want. I was in my last three years,
so I actually said yes, I'll do it. Yeah, And
it was he wanted me to go to the detective

(02:01:16):
Bureau and work in cop shot, which is the people
that when a cop gets shot, you drive around in
the van and you announced that reward if you saw anything,
call us blah blah blah. And he said, you'll make
all the money in the world. You don't have to
wear a suit. You could just wear jeans and a
shirt and a gun belt or whatever, he said, and
you just drive around in his vent. I said, oh,
where do I sign up? And uh? And there was

(02:01:39):
another transit guy, Tommy Sullivan was his personnel officer, so
he said, oh, this should be Tommy Sullivan knew me
my whole career. That fine, great, no problem. So I
put in the application and then never heard anything. So
now three days later he's calling me, go, were's your application?
I said, I sent it already. What are you talking about?
He goes, well, Tommy never saw it. I said, well,

(02:01:59):
I said, the two channels. I don't know. I got
my boss signed it and they sent it out. I said,
where's it go from there? He goes, it only goes
to the chief of department and the police Commissioner. Now
my company sergeant in the police academy. In nineteen eighty five,
J Ballenton worked in the police Commissioner's office. So I
called him up, Aja, I need you to do me favor.
This is the first time in twenty years I'm asking
Jay for a favor. And I said, I put in

(02:02:21):
a transfer to go to the detective Bureau. I've been
a detective for seventy years, you know, it shouldn't be
a problem. And it's for cop shot and they can't
find it. So he said, all right, let me look
into it, Mike. So he looks and he calls me back. First,
he says, he can't find it. It never got here
to the police commission's office, which is the only three
steps that goes to it. Chief a department, police commissioner,
back to the detective bureau from a deputy commissioner's office. So he's,

(02:02:46):
you know, he can't find it. He can't find it.
All of a sudden, he calls me back a couple
of days later, and now the detective bureau is freaking
out because they want to put me in there but
they can't without a paperwork. And he says, oh, by
the way, the chief of department's holding up your transfer.
I said, why is that? He said, They told me
because you're under investigation. Here I am again, what did

(02:03:09):
I do? Now I'm on the investigation? What am I?
I'm back to being a zero. I mean, I don't
know what did I do? So they said, uh, he said, uh,
my sister's boyfriend, whom I called Butch the family felon.
He got arrested for driving call girls to their johns.

Speaker 1 (02:03:28):
He do.

Speaker 2 (02:03:30):
And you know what he had. He had last year's
PBA card. Listen where this shield numbers should be? It said,
chief of department out A chief of department wants to
know where did this dirt bag get my PBA card?
Tell Meanwhile, I had gotten the PVA god. I knew

(02:03:50):
all the delegates. I knew all the p I didn't
go to the chief of departments all together. Somebody gave
it to me. I had PVA gods stacked up on
my kitchen KNA. I was separated, pending divorce. I was
living alone. I had them all over my house. I
even was making displays out of them and everything else
like that. But he even told them, the investigators, Oh,
my girlfriend's brother is a cop, and he was throwing

(02:04:12):
it out and I asked him if I could take it,
and he said yeah, which I don't remember that at all,
But you know, I always gave the guy a PBA
cut anyway, And I told them if they called me
one more time about you not wearing a seatbelt, I'm
going to tell them a lot. Yeah, because I used
to get called like every other day anyway. That's so
that's why I didn't get transfer. And by the time

(02:04:34):
by the time they interviewed me, which I even went
to Campezi and said, come on, interview me already, it's
old bullshit. He goes, I don't know what you're talking about.
I said, you gotta know you're the chief of internal affairs.
I'm under internal affairs investigation. Go look it up, Mike Grayton,
go look it up. And you know, Campezi was not
the type of guy he wouldn't do you a favor.
But I wasn't answer for.

Speaker 1 (02:04:55):
A favor, but I for a fair shot.

Speaker 2 (02:04:58):
Yeah, I didn't do anything to do. Just get this
as water under the bridge and move on so I
can get transferred. Well, I never got transferred, so that
kind of soured me. And I have to tell you
the straw that broke the camel's back. We're getting ready now,
I'm ready to retire. I'm sitting there. You know, we
get news articles this stick of everything having to do
with the police Department and the commissioners, all the commissioners,

(02:05:18):
all the executives, get news articles every day from every
paper in the country that writes about the NYPD. Well,
one of the news articles was the traffic agents that
started using very police like cars and wearing police like uniforms. Well,
a traffic agent was suing the police department. He only
had like a year on the job because he wanted

(02:05:40):
to wear his turban with a captivice. Yes, he wanted
to wear a turbin with a cap deivice. This is
two thousand and five. This is when I turned around
to the secretary for the Deputy Commissioner Training and said,
I'm going to walk over to Broadway and go up
to pension and ask him how much they'll pay me

(02:06:03):
to stay home. And that was kind of like the
strayed up. I said, I don't belong here, and true enough,
I got off my desk, I walked over there, and
they told me you don't have to apply, you don't
have to appear one more day. I said, well, I
have to. I got to clear out locked his uniforms that,
you know. I mean, I had stuff all over the
place that I had to take care of and get norder.
But still that was it.

Speaker 1 (02:06:25):
Yeah, I don't blame though.

Speaker 2 (02:06:27):
It was time to go. I just felt like it
was time to go.

Speaker 1 (02:06:29):
And you knew, he knew and you went. And I
don't blame you. I mean, listen, you had a hell
of a run between Transit police obviously EMS two trans
trans police, ultimately the NYPD.

Speaker 2 (02:06:39):
Said, Bobby Pharaoh, Vic, do did you show? Joe said,
Bobby Farall, Bobby Pharaoh could be the split image to Doppelganger.
To my buddy Tony Cavanaro, Well.

Speaker 1 (02:06:49):
You're showing, so we don't need it was right.

Speaker 2 (02:06:50):
Next door to me and Rocky's best friend all through
high school. So when Rocky got off work with me
in transit rescue, he went home and him and this guy,
Tony had a car repair of business. And when I
saw this picture, I said, wow, I didn't know Tony
Cavanaro knew. Joe said, but it's not it's Bobby was
looking good though. Yeah, well this isn't all the photo,

(02:07:12):
so I don't know how old, but Joe looked good. Yeah,
Joe was a great guy. Me and Joe, for some reason,
never got along. We never worked the same shift. I
was never in his squads. When I was leaving rescue,
I kind of blasted Joe for not accepting me after
five six years of being a rescue. I said, you know,
I never felt accepted by you, and that kind of
hurt me. And but you know, but and he took

(02:07:33):
it kind of hard too, But I love Joe said.
You know, like I said, when you do training, you
get through the whole, in Patty Pogan's word, the whole
craftsman tool box.

Speaker 1 (02:07:44):
Oh, Patty's in the chet. He's been watching and Patty
see it.

Speaker 2 (02:07:48):
I can't believe I didn't know Patty Pogan on the job,
but you know, people told me we had very similar
like career paths. And ye, I didn't know Patty.

Speaker 1 (02:07:56):
He was a lieutenant in EMS.

Speaker 2 (02:07:58):
Yeah, yeah, in Manhattan though, right, I think it was,
and then he had the whole.

Speaker 1 (02:08:02):
Career and then he got onto the PD. Eighty six
is when he went to emergency. He was an emergency
eighty six to ninety eight before he went to the
JTTF and that's where he finished out right after night
on it very nice. So yeah, Patty and Mike core
were tied at the hip and those two had excellent
careers together on the PD.

Speaker 2 (02:08:18):
Across the I watched the show. Uh, Patty's are mi no, Patty? Yeah, Patty.

Speaker 1 (02:08:25):
Patty's one of my I'm not saying this in the
bad way. It was fun Patty made my job very
easy like you did tonight. Because Patty was one of
my longer interviews. I think Patty had the original record,
which has since been broken by Rich Miller. It was
a truck four guy, and Rich was also a great interview,
as were you tonight. And it's funny because now we're
going to go into the rapid Fire which which hopefully
will be sponsored pretty soon, and I'm looking at it and.

Speaker 2 (02:08:46):
I never did anything, so I might not be able
to answer any of these questions.

Speaker 1 (02:08:48):
That's fun Two of them you already did, because one
of them was going to be did you ever deliver
a baby? We're good there, I'm up.

Speaker 2 (02:08:54):
To seven, eight or nine. I was very disappointed that
nobody ever named the baby after.

Speaker 1 (02:08:58):
Me, though, I mean, make should have it. Yeah, especially
with the common name like Mike, I don't know, throw
the bone and make the job easy for the mom.
The names as common as can be, at least here
in the States. So again, a couple of mics I
can relate. I feel your pain, fellow, like I get it.
So the first one is could have been an EMS

(02:09:19):
could have been in transit. Funniest call you ever responded to.

Speaker 2 (02:09:22):
Funniest Yeah, I don't you know it was funny at
the time. I don't know if anybody else a porting
to twenty, but I was working with my future wife
who aren't kind of like just dating at the time,
and it was in New Year's Eve. But we got
a call for a person's stand and when we got there,
there was a woman in a nightgown kind of like

(02:09:43):
specially nightgown, and the guy with a knife. I don't
know how she did it, but it went between his
eyelid and his eye straight down like this in his
science and he's we don't want to get how're in trouble,
So he's wearing that he fell on the night, and
we just couldn't stop laughing. To be honest with you,

(02:10:04):
that the guy fell on the night, I just, you know,
I couldn't believe it.

Speaker 1 (02:10:09):
Now, I'll skip the second one because I was did
you ever deliver a baby? Third? One? Or four? Out
of five? I'm asking it most uplifting call you ever had,
either em Master, chance Police.

Speaker 2 (02:10:19):
I had a few secons. I have to tell you.
I saved my father's sister, my aunt. I think Mitch
Stern was the paramedic on the call. Uh Joe Joey
Burtay was the one of the e MPs. I was
off duty sleep and my father dragged me out of bed,
said go down and get in the car and bring
you a medical kid. And my aunt was in cardiac

(02:10:39):
arrest and we beat them mills there. I started CPR.
They showed up and continued GP automedics did their thing,
and she actually ended up coming back, going eleven days
in the hospital and being released and it was the
best feeling in the world.

Speaker 1 (02:10:53):
Very nice. Fourth question of the rappids for a third
question really in the rapid fire. Before that, you'll be
asked when you were out on the road, either in
the ambulance, riding the bus, or riding the rescue unit,
what was the favorite place to stop and get it
by tea the city?

Speaker 2 (02:11:06):
Oh my god, you can say multiple, all right. I
love cats as deli uh from the Pastrami Boy in
the Army Classic choice. I also love Cumcow. Pumpcow is
a Chinese restaurant in Brooklyn that started as a little
storefront like door with no name, no sign, no nothing,
but there would always be a lineer. We thought it

(02:11:27):
was a crackhouse. It was a Chinese restaurant that they
ended up buying the whole block. It's in the four
Green section of Brooklyn. That's the Chinese food ever. Coumcow
Mitchy Lock god ble rest his soul was the one
who basically turned us on to him. Mitchie Lock was
the midnight sageant for the longest time, and the rescue
and it was awesome. You just wanted to go into

(02:11:49):
China Fown, which we could always go to Chinatown, but
we always went to coumcaut.

Speaker 1 (02:11:53):
The food's Goodt's.

Speaker 2 (02:11:55):
Still there, but I don't know how to food. I
haven't ate there in twenty years.

Speaker 1 (02:11:58):
I have to look it up and see if it's
still there, because that might want to such.

Speaker 2 (02:12:02):
Come out all right.

Speaker 1 (02:12:03):
And the last question, the rapid fire is fitting because
the NYPD's got an academy class going in right now.
If you once these kids graduate, let's say you can
pull one of these new guys and gals aside. Uh.
I'll ask that question momentarily, Dennis, So it's not gonna
be the last question rapid Fire. Second to last, what
advice would you give guys getting the job.

Speaker 2 (02:12:21):
Now go back to school and become a doctor, come
an airline violent honestly, so I have to die. It's
not the job I left. It's not the job I took.
To be honest with you. Yeah, once they put in
and I don't know if they can pull that or not.
And once they put in the whole, if you compress
somebody's neck or chest, you can be held personally liable,

(02:12:44):
personally liable. So here's another thing. My nephew's got into
trouble with the NYVD because because he was a uh
named in a civil suit, a civil suit against the city.
We never worried about that. As long as you're in
committed crime and you did your job. It may not
done it, you know what everybody's standard was, but you
did it to the best of your ability. You're never

(02:13:05):
worried about an indemnification. You know, the city was gonna
indemnify you. They were gonna pay anything to make that
go away. And nowadays that's not the case. So I
don't know if I would push myself, you know what
I mean. It's hard for me to talk to somebody
taking the job today because we're not talking about the
same job. Anymore. So I'm not really sure what advice

(02:13:28):
to give the mother. And you know, be truthled, to
be honest and do the best of the day.

Speaker 1 (02:13:33):
And it's not bad advice, simple but to the point.
So Dennis Eely submitted to set the buzzer. So this
will be the lot that is really I ask my
about so do I about telling Dave Brown he would
fight him out his front flow?

Speaker 2 (02:13:49):
Oh? Absolutely, It wasn't my prit It was a Madison
squag on. And so we went there. We were watching Edmonton.
He wasn't with the Philadelphia Flyers at the time, he
was the Edmonton Oilers.

Speaker 1 (02:13:59):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (02:14:00):
I were watching it with pressed up against the glass
where the zamboni comes in and out and I turn
around and standing right next to me is Dave Brown.
He wasn't dressed for the night for the Edventon Oilists.
And I said, holy shitty, you Dave Brown, and he
goes yeah. So I said, let you know, let's go.
But you know, come on, let's go into Rotunda. I
want to give it a shot. I want to I

(02:14:21):
want to try the heavyweight and he goes, oh, stop,
just stop, and I was like, no, no, no, I
honestly I thought you would be bigger. Like when I
met Marty Msawy, I was the guy was wide, the
guy was thick, and the guy had you change. Dave
Brown was just tall and thin, and I was like, wow,
I'll fight you any day a week. Let's go. And

(02:14:41):
he was so embarrassed by it, but you know, and
I was just busting chops. I didn't want to fight
the guy. That nothing against the guy, but yeah, but
he just uh he Dennis Hilly tell me about the
ice cream on the dashboard With Dennis Hilly when Joe said,
came out, so I did ice s cream on the
day board because we're getting a call, and that is
taking his night stick trying to knock my ice cream

(02:15:04):
off the dashboard, and I keep knocking it away, knocking
it away, knocking it away. Finally hits the wind shield.
It's frighten the whole winch. So Joe comes out. Now
Joe's doing like a Sherlock Holmes investigation on the wind
shield and I'm saying, yeah, yeah, rock musters spit up
and hit it or whatever, and Joe's going, I don't know,
it feels like it's cracked from the inside. I said, wow,

(02:15:26):
it's not cracked from the inside, ice stream ice screaminking
a crack the window, but Dennis Hely's night stick could.

Speaker 1 (02:15:32):
Anyway, allegedly and hied Dennis and Hi to Pete Sagretty
former another former email in the chat, good to see
all you. It was a great show man. This is
a really fun show. I'm glad you know. It took
us a while to get it on the on the board,
but I'm glad we did so. Before I say my
goodbye to the audience, if you got any shadowts to
Mike fire Away.

Speaker 2 (02:15:52):
Oh everybody, I don't know Billy Gross. Of course I
went without Billy Gross, Steve Kerr, mock Pack, Dennis Hilly.
I got a whole bunch of funny stories with Dennis Eely.
But I went way over anyway, so that's fine. Yeah,
I tell you. I also set the group photo of
all the em Yu guys, and I have to tell
you it's the salt of the yard that are the

(02:16:13):
best guys. Oh, and I also say in your group
photos that Goldfall and his wife were in here, and
Steve Carr and his wife right in here.

Speaker 1 (02:16:20):
Nice he is in here.

Speaker 2 (02:16:21):
Howie Sickles is in here. Yeah, a whole bunch of people.
We were on a cruise I don't know, probably fifteen years.

Speaker 1 (02:16:28):
Ago, but very nice, very nice with old first responders.

Speaker 2 (02:16:32):
It was really nice. Listen, just fabulous. Even my ex wife,
I'm you know, I had the best of all worlds,
but you know, I just couldn't hold on to it.

Speaker 1 (02:16:44):
Listen, everything happens for a reason in life. There's seasons
of change in life, and here and here you are
still kicking, able to deliver some great stories. Shout out
to Melinda who helped us figure out the technical difficulties
before we went on the air. Excuse me so big.
Shout out to Melinda, Thank you very much for you
your assistance earlier. And again shout out to everybody who
tuned in tonight. You know, this show can't function without

(02:17:05):
an audience, and because of the you know, having such
a great audience in all of you, this show is
able to keep on going. So stick around. We will
talk off air. Mike coming up next on the Mike
and New Haven Podcast. As I mentioned earlier, the Shark,
as he's known, another legend of New York City. EMS
was there before the merger with the ft and Y
was there after the merger with the FD and Y.
He's got a lot of stories. He helped decorate this

(02:17:27):
lovely backdrop I have here by me. You can't see
all the patches, but some of them are ems and
that's Mitch Stern himself. Will be here this Friday at
six for another volume with the best of the bravest
interviews with the FD and why is Elite? And next Monday,
writer Actor Police Officer, Warn't a lot of hats Joe
Bette LaMonte. We'll be on this program again next Monday
at six pm. So we had a lot of PD

(02:17:48):
shows coming up. We'll dip back into FD shows of course,
well this Friday's an FT show, but we'll dip back
into FD shows in October as we look to mix
it up to round out the year again. As I
mentioned at the top of the show, in light of
what happened yesterday, if you know anybody who's struggling, just
you know, keep an eye on your people, the people
in your life. Take care of them.

Speaker 2 (02:18:06):
You know.

Speaker 1 (02:18:06):
If you see anybody's feeling down, make sure just give
them a little quick text, give them a little quick message,
and just check in on your people. You never know
who's battling what it's important that we stay on top
of that because we always want to make sure we're
there to help people all their time of need. And
my condolences to that retired Moss family. I wish you
know we could have gotten to that person in time,
but hopefully you know the next time with someone else

(02:18:29):
will be a different outcome and that'll be fresh in
our minds to be able to make a difference. So
again my condolences. So thanks to everybody tune in tonight,
and again thanks to producer Victor Always on the ones
and twos for those of you listening in on the
audio sidees from their nineteen seventy six album dream Boat
Annie Heart Comes your Way with Magic Man The Meantime
on behalf of Mike Grant and producer Victor and all

(02:18:50):
you and the audience Mike Cologne. This has been volume
fifty two of the EMN inside the NYPD's Emergency Service Unit.
And as the e men like to say, anytime, baby,
take care and have a good night, and I'll see
you Friday, mister.

Speaker 4 (02:19:00):
Short cool, late night, so long ago.

Speaker 2 (02:19:12):
When M's not so strong.

Speaker 3 (02:19:15):
In Joe women never seen us so Blue and Lack
were not round.

Speaker 4 (02:19:20):
L's see we've seen each other in the dreams. Lacking
to me, you look.

Speaker 5 (02:19:27):
Back to me.

Speaker 6 (02:19:29):
Yeah longer, girls said with a smile.

Speaker 4 (02:19:38):
You have to tell me and let's get out over.

Speaker 5 (02:19:43):
Try unstand, show stand, d un stand a magic.

Speaker 4 (02:19:57):
Winter nights we sang in tune, eat inside.

Speaker 3 (02:20:00):
The months, let the spell lasso level so love past
the fault, try to realize.

Speaker 4 (02:20:11):
I'm so she read and growing up in.

Speaker 3 (02:20:16):
Yeah girl, mam a crowd of food to so lady
and my girl to be at home, Trying to understand,
trying to stand, trying.

Speaker 5 (02:20:35):
To try to try understand.

Speaker 6 (02:20:39):
He's a magic man, Mama, magic.

Speaker 2 (02:21:00):
Girl.

Speaker 4 (02:21:00):
Listen with a smile.

Speaker 6 (02:21:03):
I can't stand a love on you woman from a child.

Speaker 5 (02:21:08):
Try stand, try the sad, try, try stand, trying to
try to stay.

Speaker 4 (02:21:25):
Need a man take of me and magic.

Speaker 2 (02:22:00):
And to.

Speaker 6 (02:22:29):
Air air ext cat all this strike you love me?

(02:24:04):
At least get how wow was.

Speaker 5 (02:24:07):
Too understame same

Speaker 4 (02:24:12):
T't try to understand he's a magic man.

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Episode 372: The E-Men: Inside The NYPD’s Emergency Service Unit: Mike Granton (Volume 52)

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