Episode 374: NYPD Deputy Commissioner Robert Martínez

Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:04):
You're listening to the Mic to Do Even podcast hosted
by media personality and consultant Mike Cologne. We're starting to

(00:42):
transition into this part of the weather year, or this
pattern in the weather cycle, where the AC is still
in my room and there's parts of the day where
it is needed, but then there's parts in the evening
where I'm like, well, you know what, I should probably
turn it off. So we're heading soon and I'm trying
to fight it. But when you live in this part
of the country, it's just inevitable where the ac will

(01:03):
come out, the foliage and the leaves will change. Sooner
or later, we're gonna go from wearing flannel to having
to bundle up and wear about eighteen or nineteen different
layers because it'll be freezing down here in these parts.

Speaker 2 (01:14):
But in the.

Speaker 1 (01:14):
Meantime, we salvage the best of the weather that we can.
On that note, I welcome you back, ladies and gentlemen,
to the Mike the Newaven Podcast, episode three hundred and
seventy four on the Doctor here tonight with a very
interesting guest, and as someone who is a buff of
emergency vehicles, fire and police alike, I'm really glad that
he's here tonight to explain some of the nuances that
go into maintaining one of the largest, if not the

(01:35):
largest police fleet in the world. When I will say
is yeah, and checked out the previous episode, please do
So that was with Mitch Stern, and that was a
very very fun episode to do, for best the bravest
interviews with the Ft and Ys the lead. Of course,
Mitch was on the FD and Y EMS side and
was heavily involved in so many of the different operations
involving EMS pre merger with the Ft and Y, and

(01:56):
of course and of course rather post merger with the
Ft and Y. So that's one of the fun episodes
that we've had, and I'm sure tonight will be fun
as well. Just a quick shout out because I was
telling producer Victor, this is weird for me as a
New York Yankee fan because in the modern era just
you're very used, at least I am, and especially the
Aaron Boone era of the arch rivals get in the
last laugh. Houston beats the garbage out of the Yankees

(02:17):
every time they play them in the playoffs up until recently,
up until last night. So at Boston but someone who
did not live through the two thousand and three American
League Championship Series, which the Yankees won, and that was
until last night, the last time they had eliminated Boston
for the playoffs, or the nineteen ninety nine American League
Championship Series. That was a new one for me, but

(02:37):
it was quite the feeling I even put on Facebook.
I don't know what to do with my hands, but
nevertheless glad to see them do that. Shout out to
Camp Schlittler, who produced one of the finest postseason performances
I've seen as the New York Yankees roll on to
the American League Division Series and for now, at least,
don't take more years off my life than they already have.
But we're not ESPN, where the Mike and Neaven podcast

(02:59):
is a great guest to get to. I'm not gonna
keep him waiting, so we're gonna roll a couple ads
and get right into it. First things first, Hey, we're
talking about baseball, right so producer Victor and the Chop
Seat baseball fans. If you bleed Braves, Country, red and Blue,
this one's for you. Check out The chop Seed podcast,
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(03:19):
recaps and trade rumors to player spotlights and the latest
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(03:41):
Apple podcast, YouTube, or wherever you get your podcasts. He
gives them Braves Country. There's always room at the chop seat.
Indeed there is. And even though the Braves, his braves
are not in it, he still I'm not saying that gloatingly.
He's still doing a great job covering the rest of
the playoff picture because at the end of the day,
it's about the game necessarily, just a team you group

(04:01):
for with the game as the whole. Certainly him and
I are big fans of the game. And of course
if you need a PI come on now. You already
know folks don't go to anybody else, go to one guy,
Go to Billy Ryan. The Mike the New Haven Podcast
is proudly sponsored and supported by the Ryan Investigative Group.
If you 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

(04:23):
Department who served the 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,
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Bill at three four seven four one seven sixteen ten.
Again three four seven four one seven sixteen ten. Reach
him at his website or the email that you see here. Again,

(04:44):
if you need a PI, look no further than Bill
Ryan and the Ryan Investigative Group, a proud supporter and
sponsored of The Mike the New Haven Podcast. Well, of course,
as they talked about, you know, it's important for police
officers in New York City to get to these emergencies.
But they're not going to be able to get to
these emergencies if the cars aren't working, if the sector
cars aren't working. Certainly for the special Operations Division, the

(05:06):
members of emergency service if there alreadyps aren't working. And
my next guest certainly had a big role and the
reason why New York City Police cars were able to
respond to any and all emergencies across the streets of
the five boroughs in the first place because for over
thirty years many of them as a mechanic ultimately, lastly,
as a deputy commissioner in the Fleet Services Division, tonight's
guest played a central role in that. And like I said,

(05:28):
I'm a big buff of emergency vehicles. He was involved
in so many different iterations of the New York City
Police Department's fleet and that tonight is retired NYPD Deputy
Commissioner from the Fleet Services Division, Bob Martinez. Bob, welcome.
How are you can't hear you?

Speaker 2 (05:44):
Bob?

Speaker 1 (05:46):
And we lost a sound there on you for a second.
There still can't hear you. This might be a sudden
live podcasting at its finest, Folks. You can try coming
back out, Bob and coming back in with the microphone.
We'll mute your microphone and we'll see what happens. You're
sorry about this, folks, stand by, still don't have you

(06:07):
so we'll put you in the back for now. Bob,
try coming out and coming back in via the same
link and hopefully that'll rectify the issue there. Sorry about that, folks. Again,
happens from time to time. No issue there, But like
I said, Bob, ultimately and we'll get into it tonight,
was with the NYPD since the eighties, so think about it.
You know, he saw the transition from some of the
older models into newer models. Let's see if we have

(06:28):
him now, Bob, go ahead say something and yeah, still
can't hear you. So no, it's not getting salty, Joe.
Sorry about this. We weren't having these issues before, I swear,
but these issues are upon us now unfortunately. So yeah,
don't quite know what's going on there. No, still can't
hear you, So hello, everybody tune in. Terry Murnaine is here,

(06:54):
Joe Oliga you're here as well, and yeah, still not
not able to get you. So we'll put you in
the back for now and figure that out in the
meantime until that situation resolves itself. No worries, folks. Again,
this happens from time to time. It's not the first
time we've had technical difficulties. Won't be the last. But

(07:16):
once we get that up and running, don't be afraid
to put something in the live chat again. If you
have a question, you know how it goes, we'll be
able to highlight it. And there's a lot to highlight
here because Bob Bob was with the NYPD across a
variety of different roles within fleet services for thirty three years.
He rose through the rights to become a Deputy Commissioner,
as we said in the introduction, So we will see

(07:40):
just what went into that, some certain stories surrounding the fleet.
And now, of course we have Bob back and let's
see if you can move the camera a little bit
back there. Bob. Yeah, yeah, there you go. Now we
got you all right, So you know, before I get in,
just make sure if you're using the phone, just make
sure it's plugged in that way the battery doesn't die

(08:01):
on this mid conversation. But as we go along here,
one of the things I wanted to highlight before I
get into anything involving, of course, your career is where
did you grow up if you grew up in the city,
and what attracted you about the automotive industry early on
in your life? If at all.

Speaker 2 (08:16):
Yeah, I grew up in Queens Village and I started
working on motorcycles back in nineteen seventy two. I was
enthusiasts riding dirt bikes in the local parks and stuff,
and I got into dirt bikes. I was actually twelve
years old when I saw the working in my first
motorcycle shop at the New York Motorcycle and that was
in bell Ros and that's where I really started being

(08:40):
a mechanic. And then actually when I went through high school,
they had a cooperative program for the seniors and I
was able to actually go to classes in the morning
and then the motorcycle shop guys would pick me up
in the motorcycle van and I would do mechanic work
in the afternoon for my senior year. So that's what

(09:01):
really started me. And I went to a vocational high school,
so I have a high school diploma in both mechanics
and academics.

Speaker 1 (09:10):
And that's something that's obviously the pathway for what would
come throughout the course of your career. So you mentioned
being seventeen years old, and around this time, I believe
was when you got into New York Motorcycle Club, which
still exists today working on motorcycles. I mean, it makes sense.
You went from riding dirt bikes right to working on them,
and you started when you were twelve, so this was
probably a very easy transition.

Speaker 2 (09:28):
Yeah. Yeah, so it's and that's kind of how I
even got into the NYPD. So I did have my
own motorcycle shop for a little while, and between that
and then when I went back to work for a
New York motorcycle after I didn't do so well with
my own business, we were selling parts to the NYPD.
That's when the NYPD was using the Amaha scooters. So

(09:50):
when a guy was picking up parts, I said, of
they hiring anybody because I started having kids and I
needed a job with benefits. And that's how I started
as an older service worker. And from day one when
I went to work there, I started working on motorcycles.
And what happened was they got a delivery of motorcycles
literally the same day that I came to work for

(10:11):
the NYPD, and they wanted someone to help get these motives.
They bought twenty eight motorcycles. And back then the motorcycles
were Holly Davison's were still under AMF and the quality
wasn't very good. So our first job, and my first
job was with the NYPD, believe or not, was to
check out these along with this other mechanic ritchie with Cicero,

(10:34):
check out the motorcycles, make sure and we would actually
have to ride them, put one hundred miles on each
motorcycle before we would give them to a highway patrol,
get all the bugs out, and literally test ride one
of these motorcycles on the BQE one and them went
on fire while I was driving, So it was a
serious thing and they all leaked oil back there back then.

(10:54):
So that was my first job as they actually as
an order service worker. I wasn't even meccanic, getting in
about six months after being an older service worker, they
promoted me to mechanic because they saw I had the
aptitude to be a regular a mechanic.

Speaker 1 (11:07):
And again that's something that we'll highlight over the course
of our conversation tonight too. And again a lot of
different components of the fleet that I do want to
dive into before that, though, I will say who taught you?
Were you self taught or did a family member teach you?

Speaker 2 (11:22):
Well, one thing I did go to vocational high school,
So might be my uh, you know, some of my
learning how to rebuild engines and that type of stuff
I actually learned in high school, but a lot of
it was self taught. My grandfather actually rode a Holly motorcycle.
He was in the Navy down in Louisiana and in

(11:43):
New Orleans actually, and he was in an organization, a
Masonic organization called Dobrado, and he would ride holidays some
motorcycles and parades and stuff. So when he moved back
to New York, he encouraged me to uh to work
on the motorcycle and showed me how to work on
he had a boat, work on the boat and stuff.
So it was a combination of self taught my grandfather.

Speaker 1 (12:03):
And in high school in which high school was this
Thomas Edison High School.

Speaker 2 (12:08):
It's still high school day in Jamaica.

Speaker 1 (12:10):
Queens gotcha. So getting to the NYPD nine eighty six,
I think at this time, and it's across the board
because transit didn't have a lot of r MPs, they
didn't really need them, but housing did. Obviously the NYPD
did more. So were they still using the plymouths in
eighty six or where they had they transitioned to the
earlier versions of the Prease by eighty six eighty seven.

Speaker 2 (12:29):
No, they had the Plymouth's theories and actually the reason
why Transit Transit only had until Braddon became the commissioner
in the Transit Bureau that they only had suburbans. I didn't,
so Transit Police didn't have anything but a Chevy Suburban.
That was it. And then there was only one per
like station and Bratton had a lot to do with

(12:50):
them finally getting a regular cars and rps. But yeah,
so the Grand Fury was what I started, which I
started working on the Grand Furies. So I was in
the motorcycle for three years and then roughly three years
roughly nineteen eighty nine was when I started working in
the new car shop, which is where we started prepping
the new cars and make them ready to go on

(13:11):
the road. We would at that time, we would install
the lights, we would do the put the stripe down,
the single stripe down the side back then and then
we started. What happened was we also right around that
same time went from the brand Fury to the Chevy Caprice,
right around eighty nine and then maybe a year right

(13:34):
around nineteen actually eighty nine going into nineteen ninety was
when they stopped the square Caprice with the metal bumpers
and they went into the bubble what we called the
Bubble Caprice, which was rounded shape bumpers. And that was
when we switched light boards because originally we had a
twin sonic lightboard actually had a chain in it, one

(13:55):
switch to work the lights on and off with a
scientifics product siren box. And then when we got there
switching to the new Caprice, everybody was nervous about was
this call going to hold up? Right? So that was
that was the car children one right nineteen eighty nine
that was getting phased out. So what we did we

(14:17):
bought two years worth. We bought about fifteen hundred and
sixteen hundred doers. We actually stockpiled those on a pier
in Brooklyn. And see that light board at that light
Buarb was getting phased out too, So both the car
and the light boarb or the Federal stop making that
light board. The other bad problem with that light barb
was that the so siren was on the roof, so
it was it was very bad for the ears, the

(14:39):
ears when of the operators. So that in nineteen ninety,
we bought Approxy. The NYPD bought a proxy ME sixty
of the Bubble type just to as a pilot program,
because they bought a double years worth of the what
we called the Square model Caprice because we weren't sure
if this call was going to work out, so they
bought these sixty Five of them were for Highway Patrol

(15:02):
with the LT one motor and then the others had
six owners in it, and that was the other fifty five.
We tested them, and then I tested every light board
they wanted me to. At this point, I was working
at a new car. They wanted to see which light
bar would be the best lighteboard to replace that light bar.
So we tested everybody's bought whale in code three. The

(15:25):
list goes on and on, and then Federal was coming
out this bar, so they gave us a bar to
play with, and they gave California Highway Patrol a light
to play with. That's the V shape bar. And after
testing that bar and playing with it, we decided that
was the bar that we wanted to go with because
it had a lot of safety options, had a lot
more light output compared to any other light bar, and

(15:49):
if I I remember correctly. Commissioner Brown was the police
commissioner at the time, and we did a news conference
with that light bar U and the new Caprice, and
they asked me to take that car and go through
the car wash. We went through the car wash and
by the time I got out of the car wash,

(16:10):
the light boars stopped working and completely stopped. So now
I had to go to a news conference with the
police commission with a vehicle with no light board at work.
So I ran back to the shop. We took the
case off the bar and we took a hair dry
and blew it out. As we were drying, the light
boars started to work. Uh. So then we made the
news conference and I remember showing the commissioner I had

(16:32):
a light ball work and everything, and to be honest
with you could care less. He says, listen, kid, just
make believe you know, because I was only twenty something
years old, and does just make believe you're show me
the ball? You know, I don't really care about how
it works. So it was it was kind of interesting.
So so we we What we did was so because
the light bar had seven pods, we brought down seven

(16:52):
of these caprices and lined them up in a V shape,
just like the light bar for the news photo op
and the news conference. And that was the start. And
then and then the car worked out well. So then
in nineteen ninety one they changed the wheel well a little.
Because the ninety car, half the rear wheel was covered,

(17:13):
had a skirt over the rear wheel, it was very
hard to change the rear tire and stuff. They then
took that skirt out and made a regular wheel well
opening on the rear of the car. And the other
thing about that car you could actually put a whole
pizza on the dashboard because the dashboard was so was
so big. And then the other thing that was when
bucket seats came out, the Caprices and the Furies had

(17:37):
a fence seat, and that was the first car with
bucket seats, and that caused a big problem because now
when you were transporting prisoners, they could kick you and
there was no there was no So so now we
had all we realized we have to get cages. We
never had cages in our cars until until that car
came along. So we changed the light barb we put

(17:57):
cages on there. And then the other was we didn't
have metal bumpers, you know, So now you know, we
always had metal bumpers, were little added a little like
almost like pushbumpers added to the front of the vehicle.
So then we had to add a small pushbumper that
we was necessary at the time, and we had and
we had had had that pushbumper or something similar up

(18:18):
until just over maybe two years ago. But that was
the first caprices and then and they worked that quite well,
you know, put it department.

Speaker 1 (18:30):
Oh, they were in service from really like when you
got him, like ninety ninety one up until even late
two thousand and early two thousand and one. Quite a
few of them were still in service, even if the
color scheme had changed slightly. They lasted the NYPD quite
a while. Ken ken bowenes and the chatty was a
sergeant in emergency service and primarily in Truck two in Harlem.
And he's asking this because the common theme back then

(18:51):
was those Chevy Caprices in the nineties, especially in busier precincts.
Is the milk crates? When did the NYPD and where
did the NYPD get the milk crates?

Speaker 2 (18:58):
He wants to know, Yeah, yeah, well, yeah, the problem
the milk crates is that the seat had a floor
in them. They had a bolt that would break and
it would I mean almost everyone had happened to. So
once that bolt broke that was inside the seat, the
seat would collapse backwards. So what everybody did they would
go to the local bodegas and get milk rates, and

(19:18):
every car had a milk rate for that seat bolt.
And then eventually we came up with, you know, with
a fix for that, a little harder seat than that.
But on the good side, is that the cause of
the cages? You know, the seat couldn't go too far back?

Speaker 1 (19:32):
Yes?

Speaker 3 (19:33):
Right?

Speaker 1 (19:34):
And how is the plus now? And there was a
little bit around. It really started ninety one ninety two,
as well as the changing of the color scheme, because
back then the design of this was in big letters,
and you saw with the pictures shared earlier the Plymouth
Fury big letters, the number of the precinct and then
PCT next to it, and then of course the white
stripe with the logo of the police department on the side.
Then you went to what is again, as I told

(19:55):
you off the air, my favorite version of the fleet
for a while, and the NYC Police NYC than the
NYPD logo than police. After it changed the scheme around,
so we're still primarily blue and white, but less of
an emphasis on the white for a time being, in
more of an emphasis on the blue precinct number on
the back as a mechanic at the time. Of course,
you weren't quite in a supervisory role yet. That didn't

(20:16):
come until ninety seven, which we'll talk about. Did you
have a hand in suggesting that or was that more
of the top brass commissioner why suggesting that change in
the style of the fleet.

Speaker 2 (20:25):
Yeah, they what I else, commission as Kelly first time around,
he might at first deputy commission and when we did
that change, so they decided they wanted a new decal
scheme for the nineteen ninety and at the same time
the Democratic Convention was coming to town. So at one
time one of the decal schemes was actually a statue

(20:47):
of liberty with a red, white and food flag. We
actually I have some pitches hidden away of probably forty
different designs that we came up with, and then they
even hide an outside company that didn't work out, and
we uh around the same time they bought us a
decom machine so we could actually make it cut the
decals out in house. We would do them in paper,

(21:08):
put them up and then come up with some you know,
three or four different schemes uh. And then Commissioner Kelly
uh would come down with his entourage and actually, like
I said, I don't even think he was even the
commission and he might have been the first step. He
came with his group and looked at all the different designs.
And then when we had a change, UH, that was

(21:29):
when I think we went from NYC to NYPD UH.
And I think that was in Bratton took over as
police Commissioner, and then a short time after that we
actually started buying the UH. The Ford Crown VIX came
in right around the early nineties as well, you know,
so and that's and then we went to the white
scheme around around at the same time, you know. I

(21:51):
just it wasn't too far in between. It might have
been a little late and maybe ninety four with the
with the Crown vic UH and and the white car,
and then we started with the CPR on the side
of the car as well.

Speaker 1 (22:04):
So that was just piecing my timetable together. We're talking
with Bob Martinez here in the mike. The new Haven podcast.
He's retired Deputy commissioner out of the New York City
Police Department Fleet Services Division. That was so ninety two
or nexctually, No. Ninety one to ninety six is the
NYC Police era when Safer came in, I believe is
when they went ninety six ninety seven to the whites.

(22:27):
Heavier emphasis on the white, and I think it was
something schematically where just cost less I believe was the
reason why they went to more of the white sized
style car.

Speaker 2 (22:34):
Yeah. Yeah, so that blue was called Graba Blue.

Speaker 1 (22:38):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (22:39):
Some years were paining as much as a thousand dollars
extra to get that put on the factory. So doing
some budget cuts and what have you. Let's say I
wasn't I wasn't in a supervisory role at that point
making those decisions, but it was a it was a
course factor to just go white, and that's what we did.
We just went white, and then we just had to

(22:59):
come up with a little different decal scheme and stuff than Yeah.

Speaker 1 (23:04):
Yeah, no, And that was something that was pushed for
for quite a while. Commissioner Safeer also came up with
the CPR modo on the side, and again, anything that's
cost effective Matsin's in the design that didn't look bad.
It's still designed the NYPD uses to this day. It's
a beautiful design and it looked great on those old
school Ford crownd vix and those old school Chevy Caprices
as well of that era. But I was gonna ask
you too as far as the change from NYC because

(23:25):
it was gradual. It went from NYC Police to ny
Department Logo PD. There was a few rmps that had that,
have a picture of that I'll share momentarily. And then
we went to as you said, NYPD Police. Now I
talked about it off the air, kind of seemed redundant
in nature. But I heard this and read this some
time ago, and you can confirm if it's true or not.
The reasoning being my Commissioner Safer and Mayor Giuliani at

(23:48):
the time, out of towners, particularly those from other countries
coming in seeing a card be easier to identify it
as the police if it said NYPD Police as opposed
to NYC Police. They basically wanted it to be less vague,
I believe, yeah.

Speaker 2 (24:02):
Uh, And and and the branding you know, n y
t D. I mean even today, you know when I
go traveling and people find n y p D all
of a sudden, like you know, people just it's just
known throughout the world's n Y is it. It's that's
not the you know.

Speaker 1 (24:16):
Uh.

Speaker 2 (24:16):
And and the same thing with FDN Y, right, it's
f d n Y. So it's just not New York
City Police, it's n y p D. I mean, look
at the TV shows and everything else, you know, so exactly, Yeah,
just a name recognition, uh is what you know, is
what happens there with that?

Speaker 3 (24:32):
Uh.

Speaker 2 (24:32):
But yeah, so so you know, but you know, but
try it safe for getting there. That was when when
Bratton was there for a short period of time. Yes,
but Bratton was the guy who really wanted the From
what I remember when I'm getting old now is the
Crown Fix UH and the Crown Vix. You know, they
had overhead cam, they had four wheel disc brakes. There

(24:53):
was a lot of benefits to the UH to the
Crown Vic uh. And then the Crown VIC lasted a
real long time. You I know, there was some you know,
serious issues with the Crown Vick as far as driving
in the snow and the rain and then the water
ingestion if you went through more than seven inches of
water at any speed with the Crown vig that water
got into the engine and seized the motor, and the

(25:15):
motor was jumped.

Speaker 1 (25:16):
Yeah, that was just not something that you want, especially
for that time of year, which is again we have
a six month winter around these parts. And I've often said,
especially as someone that grew up watching Cops on a
Saturday night on five of my grandmother a lot back then,
you know, it's the greatest police car ever made. And
for those of you watching on YouTube, you're seeing the
old this the design I was talking about. This is
an emergency service probably belonged to a supervisor in ESU

(25:37):
back then. This is a patrol car pertaining to ESU,
where it has the NY Department locals and PD decal
on the side of it with the striping. But again,
you know, that was something that really up until twenty thirteen,
twenty fourteen, even a little bit later than that, it
started to be phased out. That lastly, because you can
go back to any picture just type in New York
City nineteen ninety eight, nineteen ninety nine, the modern version

(25:59):
of the uh Ripece with the grownd mix. You're seeing
the met all the way. Back then taxi cabs were
using them, the NYPD was using them, So those cars
were quite literally timeless up until they stopped making them.
Of course.

Speaker 2 (26:10):
Yeah, yeah, So we're talking.

Speaker 1 (26:13):
About Martinez here, like I said on the Mike, and
we have a podcast. Hello to del Rey fifty three
also retire from the job. Garrett lingre and retired from
the FDNY. Another question from John Costello, who's retire off
the job, but not in New York and Pennsylvania. It
was a sergeant on police force out there. He says,
maybe I missed it, but the NYPD closely filed the
Michigan State Police evaluations of the different manufacturers offerings for

(26:33):
patrol vehicles later on.

Speaker 2 (26:37):
Originally we did our own testing. We would actually, you know,
you know, somebody would I done it, And this was
before I was really ill, when I was making the decisions.
We did use as a guideline, but not one hundred
percent obviously, not because we had the first hybrid police
cause in the world and they weren't the Michigan State tested.
But we use it as a guide, you know, Michigan,

(26:58):
and you know, there's a lot of fusion with what
Michigan State does, and I was actually just out of
La County Sheriffs doing some EBox training with them, And
you know, they evaluate the car, they don't certify the card.
There's nothing on a cart at certified. The only thing
that certified is a sweet Omina plus a mile plus
minus two miles an hour. And that's so they could

(27:19):
give a speeding ticket if they're if they're tailing you,
you know. Uh. So the cars are just evaluated, but
the manufacturers rate them that they are, you know, a
police vehicle. Uh They even don't even like to say
pursuit rated. Sometimes they use that word. Sometimes they don't,
you know, sometimes they say pursuit ready because of liability reasons.

(27:40):
But I always preferred to get once I was a
little higher in the food chain, was to get something
that was evaluated by Michigan State if that would meet
out our needs, because the vehicles are set up a
little different, you know. So they do their evaluation, but
they're doing you know, top speed, they're doing you know,
zero to sixty, zero to one hundred, and they're doing
break testing, they're doing urbanomics. So it's a great tool

(28:03):
to use, uh to see if the vehicle, you know,
compare one vehicle to another vehicle. And but nowadays it's
getting so limited that you know, there's not even that
many vehicles being tested because you know, Chevy's only making
a Tahoe, right they and and in in Silantis is
you know, you did the way of the Charger, they

(28:25):
had the Durango, which I hate. Right the Ford Explorer
is to meet and potatoes now, and you know I
had some you know, some things that do with that
at some point, you know, with going out the Ford
and some of the hybrid cars. So Michigan State is
a great tool to help evaluate things, but it's not
the end all because we're getting to a point, especially

(28:47):
doing a chip shortage, it was relevant the departments. We're
starting to look at other ways and now with the
you know, going green and hybrid vehicles and electric vehicles
that if you need, if you have, you know, a mandate,
state mandate or local mandate to go green or go
fuel efficient. There's only one electric vehicle that that's pursued

(29:07):
rated and that's you know, the Chevy Blazer now. And
in my opinion it's it's a little too small for
the most departments to really do what they need to do.
But Michigan State does does play a role. It's great reading,
but it's not the end all making decisions of what
the NYPD buys because obviously an R e P is
not Michigan State rights. They don't test truck right, so

(29:29):
and then they you know, they even motorcycles, you know,
sometimes they test motorcycles. Sometimes they don't test motorcycles, but
it's a good tool. And then LA County does their
own testing, you know, so you have a Michigan State testing.
LA County does almost the same type of testing, and
sometimes it almost seems like they're competing against one another. Uh,
Michigan State testing was actually going on last week when
I was out in La County at the EVOCH convention. Uh,

(29:52):
at the LA County Sheriffs at the exact same time,
was the Michigan state testing going up.

Speaker 1 (29:58):
Thanks you for that question earlier that was submitted there.
John constellone Haye to Mitchester and I see in the
chat my friend. Good to see and again I really
enjoyed the conversation we had the other day. It was great.
So ninety seven is when you become a supervisor. So
generally in terms of how many people are und you
how many people are under you and what's the day
to day like, what are your hours?

Speaker 2 (30:16):
Yeah, So when I was a supervisor, I was a
supervisor of a new car shop because that's where where
I kind of came from. And I was also actually
when I first became supervisor, I was working in Manhattan.
So I went to Peer seventy six, which was outside shop.
So that shop we had about let's say twenty people,

(30:39):
maybe twelve mechanics and order service workers and a couple
of civilians. I was taking care of most of Manhattan
in that shop. I was actually right on the water,
just below the Intrepid, and we would do we did
also the traffic people were there. It was right next
to the toepound. The shop was actually connected to the
New York City Toepound on the west side of Manhattan,

(31:03):
so we would fix their toe tarks. We would fix
the regular police cause we had to mounted unit there.
And I was there for about two and a half
three years on the pier.

Speaker 1 (31:16):
Good place to be, Pat Pogan, Glad you're feeling better,
my friend. Good to see in the chat too. Another
guy that had experience riding those old Ford emergency service raps.
He was in ESU himself from eighty six to ninety eight,
so he remembers those vehicles quite well in terms of
different you know, there's different styles. Of course, the commissioner
and whoever's in charge wants it done a certain way.

(31:36):
But as a supervisor, what's nice as you can blend
everybody's shrinks together. And you've been added a while. By
nineteen ninety seven, when this promotion came in, had been
about eleven years. So just tell me about learning to
manage different talents and the joys of having so many
different styles underneath you to combine to of course keep
the fleet running.

Speaker 2 (31:53):
Yeah, so that particular shot because they're also keep in
mind nineteen ninety six, you know what happened, we had
two mergers, right, Yeah, we took over to the Traffic Division, uh,
and we took over DOT uh you know, to that
so traffic that was part of DOT uh. And then
we also took over to the Transit police almost around

(32:13):
the same.

Speaker 1 (32:13):
Time in housing too and housing right, so.

Speaker 2 (32:17):
All this is going on. So now we had, you know,
and some people's fleets weren't as good as other people's fleets,
so uh, so we had all that going on and
so we were repairing those vehicles, and yeah, it was
quite an interesting time because we had to like evaluate
the vehicle, which vehicles are good, which weren't. But we
you know, all along throughout my career, the you know,

(32:38):
the people I worked with at the NYPD, some of
these mechanics, the talent that was there, and and the
people we got from these other agencies. It was just
incredible because they brought a little different perspective than you know,
people that grew up or kind of did the whole
career in the NYPD. We got to see, you know,
a little bit different you know, way of doing things.
Especially you know, we you know, we we added one
hundred and thirty tow trucks with the Traffic Division. You know,

(33:00):
and these tow trucks are pretty beat up because you know,
they do a lot of impounding the vehicles in New
York City. They still do. You know, it's it's a
major uh you know, they won't admit it, but it's
a major source of income for the city. It's millions
and millions of dollars they bringing impounding vehicles. So so
that was a priority was keeping these tow trucks going.
But but it was. It was really great. At the
same time, I was going to engineering school and uh,

(33:22):
you know, so when we had different problems with with
uh with the vehicles, I was using some of my
education to try to do it, which got me in
trouble actually a couple of times because my VOSS has
gotten embarrassed because I was identifying problems that they didn't
want to uh make public or deal with, you know,
because you know, you have some public servants that really
want to do the right thing and make things better
and fixed stuff. There's other public servants that you know,

(33:44):
they don't want anything additional on their desk. You know,
if they bring more work they do, they're a bad guy,
you know, right. And I was also writing employee suggestions
at the same time, so they didn't like me so
much because I was, you know, employee suggestions sometimes cause
people work too even though you might be saving someone's
life and making it vehicle better. So, you know, so
we there was one point where we had some tow

(34:05):
trucks that were question about how safety were because what
governs a tow truck is the weight on the front wheels.
So you know, a lot of apparatuses can pick up
a heavy vehicle, but if you make the front wheels
too light, you can't steer the vehicle safely. So there's actually,
you know, you put some scales on a vehicle and
you do some calculations, and you want a certain amount

(34:25):
of percentage of the way the vehicle's still on the
front wheels so you could safely steer it. Uh So
we were we were me and the other guys in
the shop and one with some you know, you know,
I was taken obviously a lot of math classes in
the engineering school. Understanding right, we were doing all these calculations,
and it turned out these tow trucks we go buy
and weren't very safe, and that was a real issue.

(34:45):
Uh So my director at the time, this guy Lenny Lesko,
he goes to a meeting. But what happened was when
I was doing these calculations, one of the heads of
the traffic division saw me doing it and he goes,
wellhy are you doing this? I says, because guys are
complaining and that they can't steer safely with the vehicles.
I'm just you know, verifying some numbers. And then the
operating manual, the owners manue for the tow truck. It

(35:07):
told you how to do this calculation and figure it out.
So I didn't realize that my director was going to
a meeting and this guy was going to the meeting
and they were bringing up the concerns about the new
tow trucks because they bought one hundred and thirty of them.
And then they said, well, you know, Bob Martinez is
checking these tow trucks out and I didn't have the
authority to do that because I was just a first
line supervisor. I wasn't working in the tech office for

(35:29):
working for the director. So basically at the time, the
executive director of Support Services and the director of Fleet
Service has got embarrassed because I identified a real safety
problem with these tow trucks. So the director right at
that meeting came to the shop and then he transferred me.
I was in a lot of trouble. I got a

(35:51):
command discipline saying that I was in supporting nation, and
I was transferred for a year. They made me go
to a different shop every day, and you know, there
were some other people that were in the food chain
at it that didn't appreciate my concern with the safety,
so they they made me pay the price, and they

(36:12):
tried to demote me, but they couldn't demote because I
was in the Union. So it wasn't it wasn't all,
you know, great stuff. But but before that happened, well,
you know, I was also playing around with LED lighting.
So the NYPD was probably the first police department in
the world to have LED lighting. So I was taking
a semiconductor class, and so we had the V bar,

(36:35):
which was all there was seven halogen lights. And then
on the highway cause we had another i think eight
halogen lights on the high rises. If you put that
light bar on, all the lights on within forty five minutes,
the battery beat that there was there's no alternator that
could keep up with it.

Speaker 1 (36:49):
Uh.

Speaker 2 (36:50):
And this is another real seat because you could have
a highway car walking a lane on the highway and
then the whole car was dead, and the guys out
there would just imagine on the FDR with a dead
car out dark, and nobody wanted to address the problem.
So one day, driving to P seventy six, I noticed,
as I'll stop the red light that the post office
truck said LED stop lights, and they were the exact

(37:11):
same size as the lights that were on the high
rise or the highway cars. So I was like, I
wonder if they'll fit. So I went down to the
post office has a repair shop on the f on
the West Side Highway down south of Manhattan. I went
down there to see where they bought those lights, and
I got in touch with the company and I took
a high riser from a highway car and converted it

(37:31):
from halogen lights to LED lights, and I reduced the
draw by like eighty five ams. It went from eighty
five ams down to like six ams for the whole
high just the high rise of Bar. So I wanted
the tech office to take a look at this and
figure out, you know, you know, maybe possibly you look
into LED lighting. And they didn't want to come down.

(37:54):
But one thing, you know, we have the meat market
not too far from where we were working. So I
offered them at State dinner. I said, listen, I'll give
you a stake, then you can come down. I want
to show you this light board that we did some
avocations too. So they came down for the stake lunch
and I had the light board running right and they said, well,
it's not that bright the LEDs, and I said, well,

(38:16):
what's powering it up? And they're looking around the BARRELFAI
was power I had the whole light board and the
flesher running on a nine bolt battery, that transistor battery.
So they were like wow, I said, you want it, brider,
And now I hooked it up to a twelve bolt
battery and they got brighted. So that was the beginning
of LEDs. So then we got on the phone with
the Federal Signal Whaling who we were buying lights, and

(38:39):
we were listening you know LEDs. You know, you got
to get into the LED mark. So we actually helped,
you know, forster the LED market. And at the time,
you know, LEDs were only originally available on red and
eventually yellow. Now now they're available in white. Uh. The
early LEDs was very limited to color schemes that you
could you could get uh. And then we got Federal

(39:00):
to switch to the v bar to LEDs as well.
So when we did that, we went from one hundred
and fifty amp draw down deliberately both whiteboards down to
like ten ams, ten twelve amps or the LED. So
it was just amazing and the life of the lights
lasted forever because LEDs have it much longer life than that.
The halogens only good for you know, a certain amount

(39:20):
of hours, you know. So that was one of my
claims of fames NYPD claims the things that we were
the first apartment to really push the f with LEDs
and reduce the load.

Speaker 1 (39:32):
And the thing is too, as the NYPD goes, you
talked about earlier how the NYPD people know it worldwide,
so the rest of the law enforcement community goes. There's
certain departments that had that kind of cachet. You think
of the NYPD, you think of the LAPD, whatever they're doing,
cities and towns across the country, maybe even in certain
parts of the world, are going to follow suit. And
that's just one of them. Again, there's another thing, like
we talked about the color schemes earlier, that the NYPD

(39:54):
is still utilizing in large part to this day and
has been fostering the market because of the fact that listen,
especially in the scenes and where you're going to be
at a while, you don't want to worry about your
light's going dead, especially if you're going to be on
the highway for whatever the reason is. I mean, we
talked earlier about pursuit rated it's kind of hard to
have a pursuit in New York City, you know, for
a variety of reasons. It's a foot pursuit, sure, a

(40:15):
car pursuit depends on where you are Staten Island, certain
parts of Queens Sure, other parts Brooklyn, the Bronx, Manhattan
maybe not so much. But nevertheless, it really does influence
greatly how members are able to operate on the road.
And again, the more raps or rather yeh rmps rather
not rips, I'm thinking about ESU that can stay in

(40:36):
service obviously, the better it is in the long run
in terms of calls and jobs that are being held
when these guys hop into sector cars being able to
be responded to it in a timely manner, I guess
in line with me having a freudy and slip and
mentioning raps, the SOD vehicles, the emergency service vehicles, the
Bob squad vehicles working on those, was the procedures any
different because of the special type of emergencies these units

(40:58):
would normally respond to.

Speaker 2 (41:00):
Well, you know, so we we with all our vehicles,
so you know, we had we had we did a
out of service numbers and stuff, so we would call them,
you know, we we brought them into another category, so
we called them nine to one one responders, so the
issue and highway patrol and and then the you know,
the seventy eight preasons, so it's ninety eight commands, you

(41:23):
know with housing and transit, but the seventy eight regular
you know, community precincts. Uh, their vehicles they are R
and P s. The they were they're the priority, you know,
so they got first priority. We had to keep those
numbers up and and we even had a a loan
of fleet, so we would only let a certain amount
of those vehicles we had a service and we couldn't

(41:43):
repair them and get them back on the road within
the twenty four hour period and five o'clock in the
morning that report came out every day. Uh, then we
would give them loan of vehicles to offset the added
service numbers. You know. But uh, but we had you know,
we you know, so the regular shops now that from
some of the record shops are doing some of the rps.

(42:03):
So we had you know, Central Repair Shop was our
main shop for fixing the issue trucks. Now we have
also a shop down employd benn Field which I opened
up probably fifteen years ago, maybe even more. But prior
to that, we didn't have that shop, and the only
shop was really the truck shop, which was in the Woodside,
New York. And it takes a special you know, there's

(42:25):
a less it's similar to like a fire truck. It
takes a special mechanic because I specially you know, they
carry a lot more weight. The other problem with the
issue is that when they bring a truck in, they
have to unload the whole truck.

Speaker 1 (42:38):
Yes, sure, it's carrying a.

Speaker 2 (42:39):
Lot of equipment on those trucks, you know, both the
big and the small. So we didn't want to take
him off the road. We'd let them come in. And
then we had we had a guy called roadside Wreck.
If any of the e SU guys that are on
you know, they probably know or heard of Roadside Wreck
because he was very famous in the su UH and
he would go around fixing these trucks in their house
so they wouldn't have to done load him. You know,

(43:00):
he did a lot of work out there, UH fixing
these trucks. And then years ago we actually had a
mechanic dye at truck too working on the truck. He
was under the truck and and it rolled a little bit,
and uh, he got killed under that truck. So the
guys he was working on the truck, doing some work
on the rear end, and the guys went out and
actually went to get him coffee. Came back and said, Larry,

(43:23):
you got your coffee, got yourry your coffee, and he
never answered and the truck rolled and the differential hit
his his his chin and broke his neck and he
died under the truck. Yes, you know, but the issue, guys,
so that that was you know, that funeral was really
incredible because the E s U came out with such
support and that was where where I don't know if

(43:45):
he was the commissioner at the time or the CEO
of E s U came out with the thing is
that when a cop needs help, he calls the s U.
But when ESU need help, they called fleet services because
E s U can't do their job without their car. Actually,
no cop can.

Speaker 1 (44:00):
Do exactly I was gonna say, no cop can if
their cars aren't running. That's listen, they need you the.

Speaker 2 (44:05):
Most important thing, right, the most important tool. A cop
can do his job without a gun. He can do
his job without the computer that's such that the cops
cannot do their job without a vehicle, and the issue
respected that, and it was such a great relationship with
Fleet Services and the issue over the years, and especially
with the with the roadside wreck, with what he did

(44:26):
on a daily basis, with these guys that keep them
up and run it.

Speaker 1 (44:28):
You know, oh is that is like I said, eh,
I can't speak English today. Like I said in the
introduction of you, you know, just as important as to
your point about a police officer being able to do
his job as him or her being able to get
to that job in the first place. You can't be functional.
You can't make the situation more tenable for whever's quality
if you don't ever get there. So the fact of
the matter is Fleet Services oftentimes is the heartbeat of

(44:50):
the job in many a sense because you quite literally
no pun intended, keep the department rolling. And I want
to go back to a second or first second, I
should say to ninety four to ninety five, because you
touched on it earlier and I wanted to dive back
into it if possible. You had a lot of our
MPs come over from housing because they were again being
in above ground Department. That's no knock on transit. Transit

(45:12):
was for the subways. You inherited their rescue r EPs.
You inherited, of course, their patrol rmps. You got a
little bit of the same from Transit too, then, Eve.
It's a small detail of many, but not to me.
And this is why I wanted to ask you, and
I got the right guy for it. Painting them over.
You got to paint over the transit now welcome them
into the NYPD. And at this time it's still the
heavy on the grabit blue as you mentioned earlier in

(45:32):
the white. So how long did that process take to
paint all the old transit and housing RNPs over into
NYPD detail.

Speaker 2 (45:39):
To be honest, I don't remember actually painting too many
of the moment. Most of their fleet was junk. I
think we actually bought replacement vehicles. Okay, I really don't remember,
you know, both transit housing. Really we did repaint some
of them, like especially with their with their you know,
you know, on the vehicle. I understand back then, you know,

(46:03):
we only kept a vehicle for thirty six months. Actually
the brand Furies life cycle was twenty six months. Wow,
so very quickly we will turning the fleet over, you know,
to find fifteen hundred cars a year sometimes and then
when we had transit and hous in thirty six months
was the life So now the life cycle sixty months,
you know, So we didn't have to really repaint many

(46:25):
of those CAUs so basically replaced them. I don't remember
it being a big issue painting or trying to redecal
those vehicles at all.

Speaker 1 (46:33):
Yeah, good to know, especially the fact again, Yeah, older
model cars a little bit more difficult to maintain for
sure if you have to jump them. Hey, whatever keeps
the members safe, because you got to remember it again,
there's different factors in play as to why cops. A
lot of cops get hurt seriously and if not killed
in auto accidents on the job, and being around that time,
Dave Willis got killed going to a SHOT's fired call,

(46:55):
got ejected from the vehicle. A few months later, a
few years ago, rather, Dave Reagan got killed responding to
a similar situation shots fire job of course, which unfortunately
resulted in him losing his life. So you never wanted
to be don't want these cops killed in the first place,
but you never wanted to be a situation where their
car failed them. You know, if it's something where somebody

(47:17):
drove into their way when they weren't supposed to ran
a light tragic, yes, but at least you can say, Okay,
the fleet, the car they were in that day, is
not the reason why they died or why the reason
why they ended up suffering a very serious injury that
alters their career and their life. Now. Unfortunately, when nine
to eleven came around, this is a problem the FDNY face.

(47:38):
This is a problem the poor authority police faced in
the aftermath, and certainly a problem that was definitely not
exempt to the NYPD besides the human cost of it
losing twenty three cops that day, so many of the
fleet that responded down there was destroyed when the towers collapsed,
and it took a long while across the board for
the whole department, didn't matter what their patrol borough you

(48:01):
belonged to, to replace those vehicles. If you don't have
an exact count of that's of how many were destroyed
the day, that's fine, but nevertheless, just getting a tallly
of how many apparatus were heavily damaged, if not destroyed,
and then the process to replace them. What was that like?

Speaker 2 (48:16):
Right? Right, Well, keep in mind, we didn't know if
we're going to be attacked the next day, the next week,
so right, mindset to get the fleet rolling.

Speaker 4 (48:25):
Uh.

Speaker 2 (48:25):
And we had support from across the United across the world,
especially the United States. We had you know, General Motors
is on the Ford, Ford was on the throne, Pully Davison,
you know, everybody wanted to bring us vehicles, to donate vehicles,
give us vehicles.

Speaker 1 (48:38):
Uh.

Speaker 2 (48:38):
So we we had to you know, put together a plan,
figure out you know, what was destroyed, what wasn't destroyed.

Speaker 3 (48:44):
Uh.

Speaker 2 (48:45):
Like in the case of r EPs, there was rps
some of them, you know, the cab was crushed, but
the box wasn't. There was some of the boxes crushed
but the cab wasn't. So we would we would make
one good one. Uh. We had Roland Chassis coming in,
you know, from General Motives and anybody who could give
us a role in chassis that we could you know,
maybe put a box on the back of it. We
had about eighty cars that were destroyed one hundred percent,

(49:08):
but we had one hundred and eighty cars that we cleaned.
So very it was unbelievable and I'm still trying to
find the pictures of it. So what happened was when
the buildings came down, everything turned into dust, and it
was the closest thing to a nuclear reaction without being
a nuclear reaction. So so what happened was this dust
got into all these vehicles. So we would take over

(49:28):
a door panel or even a tail i cover and
it would be packed with this dust like it looked
like spray fome installation. The lens wasn't broken yet, this
dust was packed in there. So we had to do
and it was. This was one hundred and eighty cars
and it took a year and a half before we
were finally done doing it. We had to take these
cars to the shop, completely disassemble them, power washed them,

(49:52):
vacuum them, and then put them back together. Unfortunately, five
guys who were the overtime guys doing that, they're dead today.

Speaker 1 (50:00):
We had an eleven gacer.

Speaker 2 (50:02):
We have twenty five guys including myself, that are certified
in things that were sick from for the rest of
all our lives because of dealing with that dust. And
that dust was everything from human remains to computers to
asbestos et cetera, et cetera. So that was really what
we did, and we got we did get money from
the federal government. We got money from the federal government

(50:23):
for reimbursement for fuel for repairing those vehicles, and then
we did get vehicles back. But the thing was, the
vehicles that got destroyed were considered a has maat. So
those vehicles were really supposed to be brought to Staten
Island and then eventually destroyed and they were brought over
to New Jersey and then I don't know what they
did with them, but they were considered a haz mat

(50:43):
because of the dust that was on This is the
vehicles that weren't repairable, and that's one reason when you
go to the museum today, there's no NYPD vehicles in
the nine to eleven museum. There's no even parts from
cars in the nine to eleven museum. And that's because
we were told by the federal government it was a
has matt and all that stuff had to be considered
has matt and if you wanted a replacement vehicle, you

(51:06):
had to get rid of the vehicle and had to
be documented. And that's why to this day's a saw
spot with me that our vehicles are not in that museum.

Speaker 1 (51:14):
Yeah, I mean understandable for it's time, but obviously it'd
be great to preserve the history. And they have uniforms
and badges for certain members who responted that day. I
think Morris Smith's badge might be in that museum, and
Mike Curtain's uniform is over at the US Marine Corps
Museum as well. So some certain aspects of it are
preserved with the vehicles you have parts because for example,
and again not knocking them, it should be there, truck

(51:36):
three of the FD and Y side they a part
of that truck. I believe the entirety of that truck
which was destroyed in the collapse that day is in
the museum, which highlights you know, freezes you in time
because someone.

Speaker 2 (51:46):
Didn't follow uh the federal mandate deal. So that that's
why the real source spot with me now, spin You
know I heard her on the rad You heard that
radio recording of her or the building coming down while
she was on the radio. She was on city wide
frequently as the building came down, and today's to this day,
I can I can hear her voice in my head

(52:07):
as the building was coming down and she actually was
one of my neighbors. She actually lived closer.

Speaker 1 (52:14):
Her last words were simply a call for help over
the radio, you know, because I think, yeah, she didn't.
She didn't die right away in the collapse, I don't believe.
I think she was severely injured in it, but the
extent of the injuries and just it was chaotic. They
couldn't get to her in time. But to get a
quick aside on more before we continue, I mean, you

(52:35):
talk about courage. There's, of course, the iconic picture of
her leading that businessman away from the South Tower was
bleeding heavily. She was one of the first. She was
out of patrol that morning, out of the thirteenth Precinct
with Bobby Fazio, who also didn't make it that day,
and they see this plane hit. She goes, she gets
eyewitness statements, puts it very calmly over the radio hops

(52:56):
in the R and P. With Bobby. They go down
to the scene. Neither one of those people we have,
neither one of those officers ever came back and out
of the thirteenth Precinct, you know that day it was
Brian McDonald from Truck one ESU More and Bobby that
did not answer that call but did not return, and
Garrett Linggren says Engined six too is in the New
York State Museum, as it should be. Thanks for that input, Garrett,
I appreciate it ads further context. So moving ahead, and

(53:18):
again thank you for mentioning her. She deserves to be mentioned.
You mentioned earlier on a more lighter note, taking a
lot of math classes, and that's going to come in handy,
especially as you ascended. He ended up making director in
two thousand and six and of course executive director in
twenty ten. The budget at least back then was ninety million,
So that's a lot of again no pun intended, moving

(53:38):
parts to keep track of. You're not the only one
keeping track of it. You have people helping you. But
that day to day of saying, okay, okay, this is
where this money is going, this is where that's money's going.
Can we cut back on this because maybe we don't
need it, We should probably put more money here.

Speaker 2 (53:51):
What was that process like right well, even before so
probably to be becoming director or when I was being
considered the director, I was working in the new car
shop UH as a second line supervisor, and I was
they wanted me to go down to be interviewed to

(54:11):
be director.

Speaker 3 (54:13):
Uh.

Speaker 2 (54:13):
And I was never deput director, so it was like
a long shot for me to be even considered to
be director. So I went down there, and uh, I
don't even remember all the politics involved because I'm not
a political guy. I'm my operations guy, and I had
no hooks on the job. So the chief at the
time of Support Services calls me down, is interviewing me. Uh.

(54:36):
And he decided and I was already I had my
engineering degree at the time, and so they made he
made the decision that he wanted to make me the director.
So he goes up to the Commissioner Kelly and says,
I want Bob Martinez to be the director. And I
was already doing some work at the police Commissioner Kelly
knew me a little bit.

Speaker 3 (54:52):
Uh.

Speaker 2 (54:53):
And then and then his chief of staff told the chief,
Uh told the chief of the time that he don't
make the decision that the police commission makes a decision
on who's going to be in charge of the fleet,
because the fleet's the most important tool that the NYPD has.
This was a Wench, his name was, you know. So

(55:13):
they called me down and they say, you're being considered
the director, but Joe Wench wants to talk to you first.
So I go to Joe Wench and he says, listen,
you're the number one candidate. The chief wants to make
you the director. What's your biggest concern? I says, my
biggest concern is we'll not buying enough vehicles. And he goes,
what do you mean. I says, well, you know X
number of vehicles. Like I said, I think that at

(55:35):
that time, the life cycle was thirty six months. It
might have been forty two months. So in a perfect world,
every vehicle that's going to reach the end of its
life cycle where it is thirty six months and forty
two months, you should have money to replace that vehicle
in that twelve month period. In a perfect world, and
we were at that particular year, we did not have
enough money. This is before I was a director. So

(55:57):
I explained this to him and and then I, you know,
basically I had it written out almost all like on
a napkin, and uh, and he understood what I was
saying because he was a bean count, you know, he
came from the financial end of the business there and
the NYPD even though at this point he was chief
of staff. So he calls Fleet as I'm going back

(56:18):
to Fleet. Now the guy's in Fleet don't even know
that I'm being considered for director at the time. So
now the ain't get a call from the chief of
staff and he's telling them that I told him we're
not buying enough vehicles. I get back and I get,
you know, summoned up to the office there, the director's office,
and you go, Bob, why were you downtown? And you know,
so I'm like, you know, do I tell him that,

(56:38):
you know why I'm down there? So they said, well,
you know, you said you weren't buying you know, we're
not buying enough vehicles. You know, how do you know that?
And so I, you know, I I originally I'm a
little bit of a wise guy sometimes, so I said, well,
I just guessed. I just figured, you know. But uh,
then they go, no, you know really, I said, no,
I'm just Then I showed them the man. I said, listen,
you know, this number of vehicles are reaching life cycle

(56:59):
this year, and we're only buying this number of vehicles.
We should be buying this number of vehicles. So literally,
literally within twenty four hours, of that conversation, Joe Wench
put another three million dollars into into Fleet's budget to
buy additional vehicles so we would have the right amount
of vehicles. So so that's what started this thing called
an aging chot. So to this day, the NYPD has

(57:22):
an aging chot. So we have every vehicle, every category,
vehicle listed by ah, you know from it's you know,
from months, you know, one month to twelve months, twelve
months to twenty four months. And we can look on
that shot at any given day and look at and
actually see how many vehicles or every category we should
be buying in a perfect world. And so we had

(57:43):
that budget. So, you know, by having that data and
having commissioners like Commissioner Kelly, Commissioner Bratton, commission O'Neil believe
in Neil, believe in me because I could show them
mathematically and why I was doing things. They let me
run the ball with that. And and I am even
going to Brad Ags and the question I wanted to

(58:04):
buy some vehicles and he said, Bob, you're in charge
of fleet, don't don't don't worry about it. You know,
you make a decision, if you make a big decision,
we'll deal with it. But just you know, I don't
need to know about these operations, and they let me
have a lot of latitude. So I basically from when
I was director all the way through the day I retired,
I made almost all the decisions on fleet. I mean,

(58:24):
I had a great team, but I would have final word,
you know, and every respect for every vehicle. My tech
guys would write to specifications that specification be sent to me.
I would bring it home, go page by page, line
by line, READI specifications and I always find something wrong
with respect And until I was happy with the spec
it didn't go out to dig. But that was just

(58:45):
a relationship we had. And the problem is that towards
the end of my you know, once it came out
defund the police and the Blasio, they stopped buying vehicles.
You know, they only started buying vehicles this year. You know,
they actually this year, they they're buying a thousand vehicles
currently and to be buying a thousand vehicles for the
next two or three years. But they're about they probably
need four thousand vehicles today. They're at a service rate

(59:08):
went from probably five percent up to thirty percent currently today.
It might even be worse than that in some commands
because you got to buy replacement vehicles. You know, it's
just it's just so important to keep these These vehicles
are hot seted, they run twenty four to seven. You
need to replacement vehicles. You can't afford not to. It's
a penny wise dollar foolish not to keep your fleet current.

Speaker 1 (59:30):
You know, how much input in line with that are
you getting from guys and gals on the street who
are riding these cars in terms of what they want,
good things are seeing, not so good things are seeing
that are making things harder for them to drive or
just to function on a comfort level in these cars.
How much input? I mean you listen, you seem like
the kind of guy to put your heir to the street.
How much input were you getting from them?

Speaker 2 (59:49):
Yeah, well I do. I mean I would do that constantly.
I talk for the cops, I talk guys in the shop.
But part of my thing was with the spec guys.
And this Jim Kroki was my last spec guy. He's
really an amazing guy with specs. And I used to say,
and he would quote me on saying all the time,
every specification for a vehicle needs to be better than
the last spec. So we always got to learn make

(01:00:11):
our contracts better. But in developing that, the two most
important people is the end user and the mechanic. The
mechanic knows what's working and what's not working and what
needs to be fixed right, and the end user knows
what needs to be you know, what the vehicle needs
to meet the mission. So the rules were with any
vehicle and even if we bought non I'm circling back

(01:00:32):
to Michigan State and if we bought a non Michigan
State evaluated vehicle, whatever vehicle we bought for whatever mission,
it has to meet the mission and it has to
be safe. Those were paramount. If the vehicle didn't meet
the mission, the vehicle is useless. And that's my little
bit of concern with the Chevy Blazer that's coming out
because it's very hard to fit prisons back a little small,
it's very limited on equipment. But you know, once again,

(01:00:54):
mission safety and then if we can go green with
a hybrid car or electric car, that's fine, but those
are the two. So that was the criteria at my
speck Rider's head. You gole had to meet the mission.
We had to get feedback from the mechanics, feedback from
the end users. And that's why we were rated since
two thousand and eight as the best run police department
in the country, Top one hundred fleet, you know, top
one hundred brief fleet, top one hundred police fleet, not

(01:01:17):
just police fleet, government fleet. So out of you know,
four or five thousand government fleets around the country, we
were rated you know, top many times, top ten, you know, And.

Speaker 1 (01:01:25):
That's something I'm sure you were very proud of.

Speaker 2 (01:01:27):
How could you not be, absolutely And that helped us
a lot because there was a time done in Bloomberg
where he wanted to privatize all the fleets. He wanted
to outsource all the fleet work. They brought consultants in
and the consultants came around, they evaluate all the fleets
and and you know what happened. They ended up getting
the small work. So instead of privatizing the fleet, they
gave us another two thousand caused to fix. So we

(01:01:49):
ended up with dep's fleet and DOT sleep about fifteen
years ago, maybe probably more than that now. And that's
that's how I come to this day. Fixes delight to
be fleet for a DOT and.

Speaker 1 (01:02:03):
Deed And again who knows that fleet better than you guys. Again,
and you can outsource us all you want to, they
can get a full runout of things, but you know
the ins and outs, and again, familiarity is what helps here.
You know the ins and outs you have here in
the street. You've been doing in a long time, going
back to the eighties. So there's certain knowledge because of
transitions of fleets past, like we talked about earlier with

(01:02:25):
some of the decals and some of the vehicles that
came in and out in the eighties, nineties, early two thousands,
to where you're going to know where to take it,
whereas these outside consultants don't. And that's no knock on them,
they just don't know. There's not enough familiarity there. So
that familiarity is what allows these vehicles to run. Because
of the fact that some of these guys like yourself,
go so far back, how could they not know you
could forget more about the NYPD fleeting A lot of

(01:02:46):
these guys could ever hope to know.

Speaker 2 (01:02:48):
Yeah, that's very true.

Speaker 1 (01:02:51):
It's not hyperbole to say that at all. So that
being said, I mean you mentioned something interesting too, in
terms of Bratton being able to really give you a
lot of attitude, which helps the decisions that you're making.
So when you became a deputy commissioner in September of fourteen,
cool moment. You've been added almost thirty years by that point.
So the go as you came into a mechanic, which

(01:03:12):
is not a bad gig in it of itself, pays great.
As we talked about earlier to that, tell me what
that moment was like when you found out you were
going to get that role.

Speaker 2 (01:03:20):
Well, that that was you. So you know in any
you know, military samil military thing is stars, right, So
so when you're a director, you're considered the one star
when you're and this is all you know. The guy
who started the stars was uh, you know, was who
was it? John Miller? John Miller with Bratton, right because

(01:03:42):
probably before that there wasn't a deputy commissioners, didn't even
have badges, see, and nobody in between. So he started
all his star stuff, you know. And so so as
a director, typically your one star then the executive director
of your two star and the chief I replaced, who

(01:04:04):
was in charge of supports services at the time, he
was a two star chief. So so I came in
as an executive director, which is a two star spot
in theory. And then at the time I was the
only executive director. So now when he made me a
three star. And this guy Bill Flynn, he was the
original executive director before that chief he always wanted and
really wanted to be a deputy commissioner. He might even

(01:04:26):
be listening, I don't know, but he uh, And that
was that was something that that I really you know,
I knew he always wanted. So as soon as I
got word I was getting that third star, I reached
out to him and I said, finally a civilians getting
a recognition for what we do here. You know, I
mean I had, you know, nine hundred people. I had

(01:04:47):
one hundred and eighty million at that time with Fleet,
you know, because I wasn't just Fleet, I was Fleet
property clerks, central records, in printing. You know, we had
we had one hundred and eighty million dollar budget, thirty
nine locations, nine hundred people. And finally I was made
at deputy commission And when Bratton came in, his question
to me is why are you the only executive director?

(01:05:08):
And you have more responsibility than most of these debut commissioners.
And so he made me finally made me. He came
in that January. Uh, but there was some stuff going
on that they couldn't promote me right away, but eventually
and Panero pushed. Panaro was the first step. He was
a guy that wrote me down to SSBU. He was
involved with some politics with the current chief that I

(01:05:29):
wasn't even priven to and needed to know about. I mean,
you know, it's so interesting on uh. You know, you
get a call one morning. Like jobs like deputy commissioners
and executive directors, it did not like they're really advertised.
It kind of just like this happens all behind the scenes,
so you get you know, I got a call from
the first step. I just recently, uh as time graduated

(01:05:50):
from NYU with my masters from the Executive management. I
was already working with the Mayor's office on some stuff
on the fleet stuff, and the first step calls me
and asks me if I'm ready for more responsibility, and
I said yeah, and I do it. I had something
to do with the Mayor's office because I was offered
to be the Commissioner of Fleet for the whole city.
They wanted me to take over all the vehicles and

(01:06:11):
the whole city and I would have had my own
agency and I would have leased and did a charge
back for every vehicle A twenty seven thousand. This was
was This was almost at the same time, around twenty ten,
twenty eleven, so we had with the different fleet stuff.

(01:06:33):
So so Bratton said, why are you the only director
and he made me a deputy commissioner. But yeah, it was.
It was a really proud moment to be a three
star in the M and then and then being at
the executive level, whether it's being a deputy commissioner or
executive director or deputy commissioner. For twelve years, I worked
directly with police commissioners. I worked for five different commissioners,

(01:06:53):
you know. I worked for you know, Kelly, I worked
for Bratton, I worked for O'Neil, I worked for Shay. Yeah,
and then see you towards the end there, and everyone
did a great job and were great guys that work
guys and ladies that work for But they all had
very different styles of leadership. I mean literally, you know,

(01:07:13):
Bratton to Kelly were like one eighties just yeah, very
much to super effective, you know really, and I just
enjoyed being sitting at that executive table. I mean Kelly
would have, you know, executive meetings three times a week Monday,
Wednesday and Friday is at three in the afternoon. They
only lasted ten to fifteen minutes, but everybody knew what
was going on. And if I needed to talk to Kelly,
I'd say, hey, boy's going to have a moment. Or

(01:07:35):
if you wanted to see me, hey Bob, wait after
I want to talk to you about something. And Bratton
continued the same thing. His meetings were once a week
instead of three times a week. But it was so
great that have the ability to interact with the Police
Commissioner on a weekly basis without an appointment, because so
many things come across that people say, this is the
police Commission's pet project the police comaker once everybody uses

(01:07:57):
the Policemenssion's name right and you can need it. You know,
my job I got to find out is this really
what the police commission wants or if someone thinks this
is what the police missions want? You know, because I
needed the real world and then you know, switching geers
going into you know, when you're dealing with stuff like
you know, nine eleven. I was a lower rank, but
you know, Superstorm Sandy. I was demand during Superstorm Sandy,
you know, you know, and we lost more vehicles in

(01:08:19):
Superstorm Sandy than we did on nine to eleven.

Speaker 1 (01:08:22):
Really okay, wow, funny.

Speaker 2 (01:08:24):
You know we lost over one hundred something vehicles probably
probably close one hundred and fifty vehicles total loss in
Superstorm Sandy. Plus we had a blackout for approximate three
and a half four days Lower Manhattan. You know, hostels
are out, you know, we had to do fuel, and
for Lighttown we had to actually deliver fuel to hospitals
for their generators. I mean, there was there was no
fuel for approximy two weeks coming into the pier. You know,

(01:08:47):
all the ports where the tugs come in and deliver
fuel were shut down because of Superstorm Sandy. So there
was no fuel in the whole metropolitan area.

Speaker 1 (01:08:55):
Wow. And that's something that you had to contend with
to get at least, not that either wuation was a
tenable one to be involved in, but with nine to eleven,
it's one compact area in Lower Manhattan where you know,
this is where it happened. This is the area that
we're working with to see figure out, as you said earlier,
what's damage what's salvageable, what's not there? He had the
whole city. Queen's got at the worst out of all
the five boroughs. But nevertheless, it's a city wide problem.

(01:09:18):
And that was something that I guess listened. If they
didn't feel like you did a good job, they wouldn't
have promoted you in twenty fourteen to deputy comissioner. Right.
I mean, granted was a different commissioner by then twenty twelve.
Kelly's still there. Bratton came in in fourteen, but hey,
it's it's spoke volumes to the work that you and
your guys did during that time. And Kelly was the
one you worked for the longest because he was there
so long, twelve years. I mean, I imagine that was
a great relationship to have.

Speaker 2 (01:09:39):
Yeah, yeah, I called him that. He doesn't know that,
but yeah, yeah, I was saying. Whenever I got Somerzos,
I got to see Dad, and he would speak very
close to you. He hit a unique way when you
had to be one on ones, he would speak very
close to you. I know, if you know what the
room was bugged or walk but he uh uh. But
if he believed in you, you know, he gave you
full reign. The only thing is, you know, he was

(01:10:01):
the spokesman. You know, nobody was ever on the news
other than than.

Speaker 1 (01:10:04):
Kelly right there, Yeah, as it should be.

Speaker 2 (01:10:09):
Yeah, And and Kelly was was a spokes for us.
And you never wanted him to read about something in
the newspaper that you didn't tell him first. So that
that was the pressure. You know, you had to make
sure that you informed him, you know, even if you
had to call him, you know, or you wouldn't call him.
But one of the security guys at three o'clock in
the morning, this is going down or this happened. Uh.
And then now on another side, the guys I'll know

(01:10:31):
about it is when you when you're in charge of
support services, you're a non patrol unit, right, so we
get the guys that have medical issues, we get the
guys that are under investigation. So the restricted cops, modified cops.
I've had, you know, quiet array of police officers working
for me. You know, everything from literally I hate to
hate to say it. You know, guys that end up

(01:10:53):
being convicted murder and guys who rape people, uh, to
guys that were found innocent. But in between you can
only be suspended that they're days and then we would
get them. So I would have to babysit these guys,
uh quite often, these guys and girls quite often. You know,
it was a side job, but it was it was
a little bit you know, hectic, because sometimes you get
these folks and you're not told what they're in trouble

(01:11:15):
for until it comes out of the newspapers or a
month or two later, and then you find out. You know,
we you know we had you know, was we had
caves and caves. I think he murdered people in the
liquor stores. You know. He worked in our new car
shop for for a while. He had Michael Dow you know,
the biggest drug deal, and the guy worked in new

(01:11:36):
car He was assigned in the new car shop. I
was a mechanic and he he was right next to me,
you know. So uh so you know when I when
I saw the doctormentary on him, I was telling people
about it because I lived there. You know, he would
come to work in his red corvette, his license plate
and stuff. So so much history and stuff happened during
my career there.

Speaker 1 (01:11:55):
I mean, I hate for reasons well documented, but nevertheless,
I didn't know that SA's pretty interesting, and again it's
it's not an easy situation to be in. You'd much
rather a guy a I got banged up. I'm on
light duty, you know. Hey, you know I got hurt
on the job. That's a lot better, a lot easier
to deal with. Yeah, listen, take it easy. Don't hurt
yourself again. And you had plenty of those, but it

(01:12:16):
can't be easy watching guys walk in there for that
type of reason, or worse, in the case of the
other guy you mentioned earlier, it's like, ugh, yeah, if
I shook your hand, I better count my fingers, you know.
So it's a shame. It's definitely a shame. A couple
more things I want to hit on before we get
to the rapid fire, and that towards the end, right
before you left, because you haven't been retired that long,
it's only been two years. Where it wasn't just the

(01:12:38):
auto division, it was central records that you had to
under your purview. Is also the property clerk's division too,
And the budget doubled. I mentioned earlier, you had a
ninety million dollar budget you were looking over, and that's
no small it's not chump change exactly, especially in a
city like New York it went to one hundred and
sixty one million. So is it because the fact that
you inherited more responsibility that the budget increased or what

(01:12:59):
were the factor behind that?

Speaker 2 (01:13:01):
Right? Well, some of that budget it's not operating budget.
So some of that budget that we were responsible for
really wasn't budget. It was money. So in the property clerk,
we have a lot of money that we taken as evidence.
So someone goes to bank accounts some money we actually have,
we have to actually have the money. So that that
accounted for probably fifty to sixty million dollars of that

(01:13:22):
additional money. It was money we were responsible to account for,
but it wasn't really working budget money. Uh. The majority
of our working budget money is on the fleet side.

Speaker 1 (01:13:32):
Uh.

Speaker 2 (01:13:32):
And then we also, you know, so you have your
expense budget, and then you have your capital budget, which
is will choose for the trucks and stuff like. That
expense budget, you got to spend it all within the
twelve month period. But that that was you know, but
what you know, another thing to note is that the
day I was retiring and still that time on my paperwork,
the warehouse in Redhilf, Brooklyn burnt to the ground the

(01:13:53):
biggest Remember, so I'm getting calls about the warehouse and
I'm saying, well, it's not my problem anymore. And then I,
believe it or not, I'm being questioned. You know, where
was I I was a headquarter. But people, I'm not
going to burn the warehouse down. I'm not in a
scroll of employee. So it was it was quite interesting
that that would burn down like that because that warehouse

(01:14:15):
got flooded during Superstorm Sandy. You know, so during Superstorm Sandy,
you know, not just cars. You know, I had three
warehouses that got flooded. You know, six feet of water
in these warehouses, so you know, sixteen well in total,
thirteen or fourteen thousand barrels of biological evidence went underwater.
You know, the whole auto pound thirty four hundred cars
went underwater. And I had to deal with all that,

(01:14:36):
and we had to deal with the evidence, you know,
and then we had to make the Kelly commission. Kelly said, Bob,
you're in charge of the evidence. Come up with how
you're going to handle it. And we had to make
it that the evidence is not going to be available
any any evidence that went under water. We made it
not available because it was cross contamination, we didn't know
if it was any good. And there was biological evidence

(01:14:56):
that were in called board barrels, and you know you
can do some research in that. And we had very
few cases affected by evidence not being I mean even
in blue blots. Did the whole the whole seria. One
of the episodes was on the property clerk burning down
and how everybody's going to get out of jail and none.
That's true because we really didn't have any adverse effect

(01:15:18):
on any cases because we got you know, we crossed
the t's and dot and dotted the eyes on how
we dealt with it.

Speaker 1 (01:15:24):
Yeah, you got some smart veteran cops. I mean, I
like to think there's some guys there at the end
of their careers that go there that you know, they've
been on the street, they've done their fair share investigations.
They know how to safeguard evidence. So that helps matters
significantly as well the process of things. And I guess
that does bring us to twenty twenty three, I mean
thirty seven years doing it. Did you age out or
I don't think that applied to deputy commissioners.

Speaker 2 (01:15:46):
Well, I was never uniform, so I start. Okay, I
could have worked as long as I wanted. I was
at the current administration. You know, when the new chief
and department took over a MAGERI me, didn't me and
him didn't see eyed eye, you know, so I think
he immediately went to because there was myself and three
of the chiefs, so there's four of us that were

(01:16:07):
extra retire. Within twenty four hours of him being named
chief department, he gets the same chief of department. They
get called into the PC's office, get extra retire, and
then the day after they got asked, I got called
in was extra retire. So I would have liked to
have worked another year, to be honest with you, but
it worked out fine to me. Personally, I'm doing really

(01:16:29):
well with my consulting business now nice got customers all
over the world and stuff, and I'm really involved with
developing continue what I'm doing with NYPD in the fleet.
I'm identifying the products that can save cops lives, everything
from ballistics to break pads to digital learning for police cars.

(01:16:50):
So you know, everything that I'm doing is usually related
to fleet and you know, hopefully save a cops life
or to stop a cop from being injured.

Speaker 1 (01:16:57):
And that's the name of the game ultimately at the
end of the day. And I think not that we're
going to go down the rabbit hole. This isn't that
type of show. But given everything that has happened to
those figures that you have mentioned, I think you one
out in the end now that you're a vengeable guy.
You're not. But I think Bob Martinez one and they
who shall not be named zero. You know, we'll leave
it at that. So one of the things that did

(01:17:19):
come up in the chat earlier before I hit up
the rapid fire, Joe Malega did ask this to your point, sorry,
Joyd and highlight the question until now, But is there
a chance the NYPD, because you're seeing certain fire departments
do it, certain police departments do it down the road,
is there a chance the NYPD goes all electric at
some point or never?

Speaker 2 (01:17:35):
Well, depends once again, you know, if a vehicle meets
the mission and safe, it could like so the New
York City Sheriff's Department's going all electric currently, right, I'll
transport to people. You know, once a vehicle is made
that meets you know, there are a couple of vehicles
that might meet the mission. But they're not cheap, like
the Ribbean SUV would probably make a great police car,

(01:17:55):
you know, but they're not interested in going in that direction.
You know, the company's not into this out and making
it into a police call. But what's available today, I
mean the Chevy Blazer, it's really you know, it's kind
of on the tight side. In order to transport President,
you've got to put a cage in there, and then
and you have to take the OEM seat out. You
have to put a plastic seat in there, and then
there's limited storage in the back. I would never go

(01:18:17):
one hundred percent with anything. I don't even like the
amount of Ford Explorers we have today. There's too many
of the same vehicle. Because if there's a national recall,
let's say there's a safety recall on brakes or transmission
or vehicles going on fire, the whole NYPD's fleet could
be put out of service in a minute's notice if
it's a serious safety issue. You never want to all

(01:18:40):
your eggs in one basket. So we need to come
up with ways to diversify the fleet. So I think
at some point there will be more and more alleged
like we have one hundred and forty eight of the
Ford Mustangs out there, what is it one and one
hundred and eight of those are marked forty or unmocked
not it's really it's not the greatest vehicle to transport

(01:19:01):
people in. You know, we help put pushbumpers on them.
It doesn't really start a purpose book. But when vehicles
come out that meet the mission, I could see that number.

Speaker 1 (01:19:09):
Go up, and hopefully that isn't the case too. And
I like to what you mentioned not putting all your
eggs in one basket. I remember there's an apartment. Wasn't
the NYPD that literally once Crown Vics were going out
of service back in twenty eleven when they stopped making them,
bought kind of like what you mentioned earlier, two to
three years worth of those vehicles just in case. Because
again it's nice that there's progress in that front. It's

(01:19:29):
I mean, you've seen smaller The NYPD had smart cars,
which got made fun of at the time. But again
you can understand the investment, especially with the Central Park precinct,
but fleet wide, one goes wrong and then we're gonna
go back to the old days what horse drawn carriages
just like that to respond to calls nobody.

Speaker 2 (01:19:44):
Wants that, so yeah, yeah. And then then the smart
cause I had a lot to do with that. That
was to replace the three wheel scooter. Yeah. Three wheel
scooter didn't have air conditioning. I wasn't a safe vehicle,
didn't have air bigs A smart car. I saw them
when I went out to England and I tried to
do with Kelly. You said absolutely not. I don't want
my tops in the smart car. Bratt and said, what's

(01:20:05):
something you always wanted to do that Kelly wouldn't let
you do. I said, I want to cause he said, Bob,
you're in charge. And we bought the last three hundred
gas powered smart cars in the world. And and someone
that was still running around today.

Speaker 1 (01:20:18):
Yeah, some of them I seen when I go down
to the city. So time has flown by. It's been
a great conversation that brings us into the rapid fire,
which is five hit run questions for me, five hit
run answers from you You could save pass if you want.
These aren't particularly hard questions, but the first one is
in the thirty seven years that you were a part
of Fleet services, favorite era of the NYPD's fleet and

(01:20:39):
favorite car, the NYPD Hat dur At that time.

Speaker 2 (01:20:42):
A favorite call was the Caprice with the help one voter.

Speaker 1 (01:20:49):
So that's that's that's nineties. Yeah, yeah, that's not a
bad one. Second, best advice an would ever gave you.

Speaker 2 (01:20:57):
To be a duck, that we're gonna go with cycles.
What we do today we might not do tomorrow, but
let things roll off. Don't take it personally.

Speaker 1 (01:21:05):
There you go, good advice. I guess in line with that,
you could expand that here. Anybody that's in your position,
leadership or any position period in the NYPD, as you
were for a long time where you're leading others, what
advice would you give.

Speaker 2 (01:21:14):
Them is to just be open minded? You know, you
know everybody likes to use the word for Michael manage
as if it's a bad word. But you have to
manage a little bit. But you also have to get
free ring right. You want to let everybody run with it.
Let them have ownership of whatever they do, whatever they do,
tasks you want them to have or think they want
to develop. Give them free reign. Then reel them in,

(01:21:35):
take a look at it. But let everybody, and I
had an open door policy, anybody could come talk to
I don't care if you were the cleaner or director.
If you want to come see me, you had to
make an appointment, and I would listen to you. I
don't mean I would you know, cataract, what your boss
wanted or any other but I would have open ears
to anybody. You know, having open ears and being fair.

Speaker 5 (01:21:55):
All right?

Speaker 1 (01:21:55):
That works well. Fourth favorite bar restaurant in New York City.

Speaker 2 (01:21:58):
Uh Albogados down on the Lower East Side. Julio the
owner There is the real top buff. I don't know
if you ever been there. It's on Second between A
and B, but definitely a place mostly you don't know about.
But if you haven't been there, you're missing it.

Speaker 1 (01:22:16):
Well you know about it now. For those of you
listening on the Mikey daven podcast, rather you're retired or active,
MS or bus like myself alike, get down there if
you can't. And Fifth, and finally, knowing what you know now,
if you can go back in time and give advice
to a younger version of yourself, what's the Bob Martinez
and now telling the Bob Martinez yesteryear.

Speaker 2 (01:22:33):
Don't don't don't don't, don't worry about them beating you up.
You know, I went home a lot of times beating up.
I had a director that absolutely, you know, director and
deputy director absolutely they hated me. At one point they
built an office of me and put me in the office,
and I would you know, and I actually thought that
they were smaller than me. And I was like, I
would just think that I was dumb and that they

(01:22:53):
knew more than me. And then as I went through
the food chain and got their positions that they definitely
were aren't smarter than me. And the biggest thing was
when I went down to SSB, which was almost like
like the wizard behind the curtain. I went in there,
I go this, this is the office only had like
fifteen people in it, and that they were people were
always afraid of and always call them the shots. And

(01:23:15):
I was like, this is SSB. This is who we
were afraid of. And it was things like we needed
over time and they wouldn't give us overtime until like,
you know, an hour before a snowstorm. And then I
found out that I could, I could authorize overtime twenty
four hours ahead of time. You know, It's just stuff
like that. So don't let you know, don't let people
bother you. As far as beating you up. You know,

(01:23:35):
you know, be able to look yourself in the mirror
and always have your heart into it and do the
right thing, and stay out of trouble and lead yourself.
Don't listen to others.

Speaker 1 (01:23:45):
There you go, good advice. Again the hour and a half,
we're not even at an hour and a half. It
flew by the man. We covered a lot of ground
and I really do appreciate thanks of course Victor for
the music, of course backing the rapid fire. Before I
give my shout outs to my goodbye to the audience.
If there's any shoutouts you got bobbed to anybody or
anything that you would like to give the floors yours, No,

(01:24:05):
just just I.

Speaker 2 (01:24:06):
Really would like to give a shout out to uh
to you know, Commissioner Kelly to give me the opportunities
and Commission of Bratton and the commissioners that believed in me.
And and I think the dividends is that the whole
department benefited from me having the ability to make the
decisions and really you know, keep the fleet and not
just the fleet that property. There were so many areas
within the support services that we improved, you know, every

(01:24:27):
unit improved, you know, whether it was printing, whether it
was you know, Central records. We really did a lot
of good work. And thank you to my staff that
the people that worked for me and supported me. I
mean they were they were they were the backbone. They
did the work. I just I just made their lives
miserable and uh and question a lot. You know, we
would have weekly meetings and uh and and like I say,
there was times where I had a micromanage. But I

(01:24:49):
really want to thank them for a lot of support
both from above and below.

Speaker 1 (01:24:53):
Well said, and again our shout out to them as well.
Thanks to everybody who tuned in tonight. As always, you
know how much I appreciate your support. And I say
it at nauseum, but it's true. Without you guys, there
is no show. So appreciate you guys always coming back
and tuneing and in rather you watched on YouTube, rather
you watched on Twitter or x LinkedIn or Facebook. It's
always appreciated. So coming up next on the Mike and

(01:25:14):
New Aven podcast. He was in the SU for sixteen
of his twenty years nineteen eighty five until two thousand
and one. All those years and six truck and that's
Carl Russo's coming up for volume fifty three of the
Event Inside the NYPD's Emergency Service. Student really looking forward
to that. That'll be Monday at six and then next
Friday I'll confirm it, but we should be on former
FD and Y Commissioner thirtieth thefty Andy commissioner. He was

(01:25:36):
the union head for a long time and then was
tapped to become commissioner in nineteen ninety six, role he
served in until the end of the Juliani administration in
two thousand and one. You know who I'm talking about,
former a FD and Y Commissioner Tom von Essen. We'll
be here next Friday at six pm for another volume
of the best of the Bravest interviews with the FD
and Wives Elite. So look forward to that conversation with Tom,
and of course the conversation Monday for the emat Inside

(01:25:58):
the NYPD's Emergency Service with Carl Russo. Now, for those
of you listening on the audio side, I have the
guy from Fleet Services, So how could I not pick
this song from their ninety eighty five or excuse me,
nineteen eighty four album, Rather Heartbeat City the Cars Duh
Coming your Way with the song drive once again. Duh,
so enjoy that from their ninety eighty four album Heartbeat City.

(01:26:19):
In the meantime on behalf of producer Victor Always on
the ones and two he's doing a great job and
retired NYPD Deputy Commissioner Bob Martinez now Mike Cologne. We'll
see you next time. Everybody and I have a great weekend.

Speaker 5 (01:26:51):
Who's gonna tell you well? Who's gonna tell you things.

Speaker 3 (01:27:07):
Are so great.

Speaker 4 (01:27:15):
You can't go home thinking nothing's wrong? Who's gonna drive
it home. Who's gonna pick you hard.

Speaker 2 (01:27:41):
When you.

Speaker 3 (01:27:49):
Who's gonna hang it up wait for you? Who's gonna
be attention to you?

Speaker 2 (01:28:05):
To you?

Speaker 3 (01:28:12):
Who's going to notock the ese when you scream you
can't go along again? Nothing's wrong. Who's going to drive

(01:28:36):
in hard.

Speaker 2 (01:28:39):
To me?

Speaker 5 (01:29:03):
Who's going behold it.

Speaker 2 (01:29:07):
Quit?

Speaker 3 (01:29:15):
Who's gonna come around.

Speaker 1 (01:29:19):
With you?

Speaker 3 (01:29:21):
Ready? You can't go along again? That's been wrong. Who's
going to drive you home? You know you can't go

(01:29:48):
on again? Then gone? Who's going to drive your hord?

Speaker 2 (01:30:02):
The general

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