Episode 378: The E-Men: Inside The NYPD’s Emergency Service Unit: Glenn Daley (Volume 54)

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

Speaker 2 (00:43):
When civilians need help, they call the police. When the
police need help, they call the Emergency Service Unit. Police
emergency service workers are being credited with saving a woman's
life in full combat regalia, and.

Speaker 1 (01:03):
There are report of an explosive hope, I can't even

(01:26):
remember the last time we played that introduction here in
the program. And while tonight's guest was not a boss
per se in Emergency Service, he was a boss and
another special Operations division unit, which was Aviation, as we'll
talk about tonight for a long time nineteen ninety three
until the end of his career in two thousand and four,
and he of course started over in housing. We'll talk
about all of that momentarily, But first, welcome, ladies and

(01:47):
Gentlemen's episode three hundred and seventy eight of the Mike
the New Avan Podcast. What will be volume fifty five
of the EMAI inside the NYPD's Emergency Service Unit if
you haven't checked out the previous episode, volume seven of
another mini series we have on this program, which is
an offshoot the Best of the Bravest nationwide edition, the
spinoff of our FD and Y miniseries, The Best of
the Bravest Interviews with the FD and Wise Elite for

(02:09):
the nationwide edition, Volume seven. Chief of Operations, Dan Coughlin
from my hometown, New Haven, Connecticut Fire Department. Good talking
with him. Really interesting man. He's done twenty three years
in counting here in New Haven, rising all the way
from private to current chief of operations for one of
the busier, if not the busiest fire department in the
state of Connecticut. So very fun talking with him. It'll

(02:30):
be very fun talking with tonight's guest. You know, it's funny.
It's a nice problem to have keeping track of new sponsors.
It's great to have new sponsors on the show. Billy
Ryan's been holding it down. But I was joking producer
Victor Off there a little inside baseball here. Now we
have to do. I have to do a better job,
that is, of keeping track of who to run and when.
So thanks to everyone who's joined us. You know, Billy's

(02:51):
always been there and we appreciate him, and of course
we appreciate our new friends over at Granted State and
Armor Tough, and in line with that, we'll run a
couple of those advertisements. Now, The Mike the New Haven
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(04:14):
no further than the elite Ryan Investigative Group, which is
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(04:37):
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look no further than Bill Ryan and the Ryan Investigative Group,
a proud supporter and sponsor of the Mike the new
Haven Podcast. You will hear from our friends over at
ARMORTUF a little bit later in the program. We certainly
didn't forget about them. My next guest is a seasoned
NYPD veteran who's twenty three year career spanned the city's

(04:59):
most turb decades, from the crack euro when he started
in the early nineteen eighties all the way through the
terrorist attacks of September eleventh, two thousand and one. He
began as a New York City Housing Police officer back when,
of course, we had three different departments in New York City,
and he patrolled the toughest developments in the Five Boroughs,
moving through elite units like TPF Tactical Patrol Force and
the Bronx Task Force before landing where the city is

(05:20):
most a versatile cops serve in that, of course, being
the Emergency Service Unit and rather was handling heavy weapons,
instructing tactics responding to the most critical situation citywide. He
was one of the many reliable hands that ESU has
in high stake components, and later he take his police
career to the skies, spending the next decade in the
NYPD Aviation Unit as both a pilot and later an instructor,

(05:43):
where he had a very steady command presence, of course,
as a boss, rising all the way to lieutenant and
ultimately retiring in two thousand and four, and that for
this volume fifty five were actually a correction volume fifty
four because Carl Russa was volume fifty three. So I
have my numbers mixed up, and that's okay, mathe math
and volume fifty four the EMN inside the NYPD's Emergency
Service Unit. That's gonna be Glenn Daly who joins us

(06:04):
now the Mike the New Even Podcast. Glenn, Welcome, how are.

Speaker 2 (06:06):
You hey doing? Mike has everything.

Speaker 1 (06:08):
Great, great, great, you know, so it's good to have
you on the program tonight. Like I said, not volume
fifty five. That's my mistake. Been a long week Volume
fifty four. And I look forward to, of course chronically
your career. We met through actually you reached out to
me via my website, and when I was looking through
what you did, I'm like, of course I got to
have this guy on. So here you are, and I'm
glad that we're talking. Like and you guys know the
drill by Now, if you got a question in the
live chat, submit it and fire away and I will

(06:30):
highlight at the appropriate time. I see Joe Maligan there,
Christian Williams and of course John Latanzio. So before I
get into your police career, just tell me where'd you grow.

Speaker 2 (06:38):
Up Long Island, Massapequa.

Speaker 1 (06:41):
All right? And did you know early on you wanted
to be on the job.

Speaker 2 (06:44):
I was one of those kids who hung out at
the local firehouse, so I knew I wanted to do
something with public service, whether the fire service of the
police service got involved. Had a circle of friends. We
all took the police test at the same time, and
we all ultimately got hired by the police department city.

Speaker 1 (07:01):
Did you test around or was the police test the
only test you took?

Speaker 2 (07:05):
Well? I took every test there was. I took the
transit police test, I took the NYPD test twice. I
took the FD test, and I actually got hired off
of one PD test and rolled over from Housing to
NYPD off the other PD test.

Speaker 1 (07:21):
Now the way they were doing it back then, I
know Housing around this time, like eighty one eighty two
was the last housing academy which was run by just
housing anything. From that point until the merge in ninety five,
they ran the academy for all three agencies, and then
they plucked off who was going to go where in
your case did you find out you were going to
housing before you started your class or at the end.

Speaker 2 (07:42):
Before, But it was it was a very interesting evolution.
I was investigated all along to go on the NYPD.
That was my goal and that was supposed to happen.
And my investigator calls me up on Wednesday and says,
you're starting next Monday. You can go ahead and quit
your job, go into work, and I give them notice.

(08:02):
Then get a phone call on Friday afternoon. I'm really
really sorry. They're gonna miss your number by about ten names,
but they might offer you housing as well. I really
don't want housing. They go, well, if you want to
come into this academy class, which was the July of
nineteen eighty one Academy class, they said, you might have
to take housing. So Monday comes and goes. The NYPD

(08:23):
class has sworn in Monday, the thirteenth of July. Tuesday,
I got a phone call from Housing and they lied.
They said that the test that the list that they
were hiring off of was not ever going to be
used again, and if I wanted to get any job
off that list, I was gonna have to take housing.
On Wednesday, the next day. Well, I knew I already
had a very good list number on the next NYPD

(08:43):
test I took. So my plan was to start with
housing and roll over when possible. We all went to
the same academy, the NYPD Academy on Twentieth Street. We
just started two days later in housing.

Speaker 1 (08:55):
And the thing that's interesting about housing at that time
is that you know it was what your man John Latanzea,
you would know it because you were a housing guy
for a long time before the merger. It was what
you made of it. You know, guys did not want
to go there, especially considering the fact that when you
want to be a police officer of New York City
during that era, you're thinking city, You're not thinking transit,
you're not thinking housing. But eventually guys I went to
housing came to love it because they felt it was

(09:16):
the best kept secret. But to go back a second,
you're a massive people long island guy. You had no
familiarity with the housing developments in New York City to
that point in your career. So when you found out
you were going there, did it strike a little bit
of fear in your heart? Now?

Speaker 2 (09:31):
I wouldn't say fear, I would say cautious curiosity. It
was culture shock. I remember my first night on patrol.
Ever I was with this in retrospect. He was an
ovally dramatic field training officer and we're turning out and goes,
this is where I keep my back of going in
case I get shot and go out of the picture.
You can take it and defend us. And I'm like,

(09:52):
what the hell have I got myself in. We're in
the smith houses behind one police plausea And that was
even more of a tea. I was in view of
the job I wanted. I could see one police plaza
and in my view I was stuck in a housing
project on the Lower East Side. It was an interesting time.
I didn't come over on the merge. I came over
on a subsequent test. I came over well before the merge.

Speaker 1 (10:15):
Yeah, that was about eighty three or so when you
came over, since a dozen years before the merger went
into effect in May of ninety five. Hard to believe
it turned thirty years old this year for both the
Transit and housing since that merger hit in the spring
of ninety five, respectively. But nevertheless, before I move on
PSA four first, and then PSA eight later we'll spend
some time on PSA four. Like you said, Lower east Side,
you're covering the fifth precinct, so Chinatown, seventh, eighth, Fighting ninth,

(10:38):
and you have the tenth precinct too, so quite a
bit to cover. Especially back then, it was quite busy.
A lot was going on right at the precipice of
the crackyar or what were those two years?

Speaker 2 (10:46):
Like? It was busy my time in PSA four. It
was only for six weeks of field training. They gave
you six weeks of field training as opposed to six
months in the NYPD, and then they changed your PSA.
It was drinking from the fire hose. It was learning
how to be a cop with a very steep learning curve.
It was just what we wanted. It was busy. It

(11:08):
was gun runs, it was chasing people, it was putting
cuffs on bad guys. It was a very interesting time.

Speaker 1 (11:15):
So tell me, I mean, you have that moment, like
you said earlier, you're like, oh, what the hell have
I got myself into. There's always that moment too where
you say all right after a call, you know, after
particularly good run or good job man, all right, now,
I see what I've got myself into. I think I'm
gonna like this. What was that first call for you
were afterwards you were like, holy crap, I'm in it now.

Speaker 2 (11:34):
It was a gun run. It was my first gun caller.
It was, you know, someone called someone in the lobby
of the building has a gun. Very precise description. We
walk into the lobby, there's the guy with the yellow
sweatshirt and the green pants and put him on the wall,
take a gun out of his waistban and I'm like,
this is what it's all about.

Speaker 1 (11:55):
Yeah, you know what. Again, you would find that out
tenfold over those next twenty three years between the multiple
units that you were in. We're talking with Glenn Dally
here in the Mike and David podcast is volume fifty
four of the email inside the NYPD's Emergency Service Unit.
He was in ESU and also later on aviation, So
a couple units within NYPDSOD. And like I said before,
if you guys got a question, you know what to
do by now. Just fired away and I'll get to

(12:16):
it whenever it is that I can PSA eight though
the Bronx and you talk about cowboy style policing, and
I say that lovingly. I've had a lot of great
Bronx cops on this show, The Bronx, especially back then
it was a different beat. So I don't know how
long you were in PSA, but what was that like
compared to Manatt.

Speaker 2 (12:30):
I got there in February of nineteen eighty two and
I rolled over to NYPD in January of nineteen eighty three,
so eleven months.

Speaker 1 (12:43):
Anything that sticks out from that time spaner not really.

Speaker 2 (12:45):
I delivered a baby. I checked that box. We've got
the gun collar and taken care of that. Boxer was checked.
The obligatory delivering of a baby in the inner City.
That boxer was checked seventeen twenty five Bruckner Boulevard in
the four to three.

Speaker 1 (12:58):
There you go, And as you know from watching the show,
that's Joe Maleiga's question. I just put in the chat
there you go, Joe. Before you even asked the question,
Glenn covered it. So there's an uplifting story. So rolling over,
I mean, it sucks that you have to do the
Academy again because it's kind No, you don't, oh really,
you didn't have to.

Speaker 2 (13:14):
It was it was a truncated course. If I really
can't remember exactly, but it was basically two weeks.

Speaker 1 (13:21):
Okay, So then even better, you're right back out on
the street. You already have the searts, you've done their academy,
so you know, at least you didn't have to go
through the whole six months again, which is nice.

Speaker 2 (13:29):
Guy.

Speaker 1 (13:29):
I know some guys who had to basically do that
in previous occasions. Rather they were coming over from transit
or housing. So NSU three, which is eighty three, kind
of back where you started in the concept of being
with an FTO. Where are we talking in the city?
What area is NSU three?

Speaker 2 (13:44):
Midtown South, Midtown North and the seventeenth preasings not.

Speaker 1 (13:47):
A bad place to be. Tell me about those early days.

Speaker 2 (13:49):
Well, it was interesting. It was a place where you
didn't go unless you had a phone call. Everyone in
n ISSU three who went right from the academy INPD
all heavily hooked up. And I was rolled over from
housing with a good friend of mine, Richie Fagan, one
of the best cops ever met in my life, by
the way, and he goes giving us a dream sheet,

(14:12):
and there's only a few of us to place. Where
should we go? I said? One of my best friends
Brian used to be an NSU three and in midtown.
He says, this is the greatest place in the world
because it's busy, you can do police work, but it
also it's nice, you can go to a decent place
to have dinner. It's not all negative. So we both
put in and said, let's see if we can go

(14:33):
to NSU three, And sure enough, because there was only
a few of us to place, they put it, it's
an Issue three and any other time, there's no way
I would have got anywhere near going there, because I'm
one of the rare people who moved through all these
great units about a hook.

Speaker 1 (14:48):
And that's again I hate to say it, and this
is just it. It's part of any big agency. It's
the same thing in the FD and Y. You going
to any other art city, it's the same thing with
their police department, fire department. A lot of these times,
not even sometime, it'd be too easy to say sometime,
seventy five eighty percent of the time. You gotta know somebody,
And there's nothing wrong with that if you can make
good on it, if you go in there and you
work hard. But when you get there to meeting to

(15:11):
these elite units like ESU, like aviation, as we'll talk
about without knowing anybody that right there is rare territory.
So that has to feel pretty good, especially with how
competitive the pool is.

Speaker 2 (15:25):
Ye NSU three was was was a great place to
work because you had just a constant variety. You could
go over to the west side of a Midtown North
and Hell's Kitchen and make gun callers. You could go
over to Fifth Avenue and sit in front of Bloomingdale's
I'll have your coffee. You had Saint Pats, you had
Times Square in Midtown South. He had forty second Street,

(15:46):
where at the time pre Disney, forty second Street was
just a happy hunting ground.

Speaker 1 (15:51):
So I'm making college it was.

Speaker 2 (15:53):
They were like throwing themselves into the R and P
almost it was that easy to make a call back then.

Speaker 1 (15:59):
I mean you had the adult theaters, you had the
drug dealers, you had the women of the night. It
was not I mean, even though people are concerned about
where crime is in the city right now, I mean
I'm not saying those concerns aren't valid, but now, compared
to forty years ago, is night and day. If you
look and you just go on YouTube, you can look
at footage of New York City from the eighties, particularly
that area of the city. It was the wild wild West,

(16:21):
and some people shockingly recall it fondly. I don't know
why what they do. I mean, you do because you've
made a lot of callers. But otherwise there's a valid
reason if you were just going out there just to peruse.
It was a very dangerous and wild place to be.

Speaker 2 (16:34):
No, it was an interesting time, and it was very
good because being an NSU you didn't have all the
responsibilities being in the precinct. But with already having eighteen
months on the job, I wasn't really right out of
the academy rookie. So my partner and I, Richie, we
got a lot of courtesies extended to us that you

(16:55):
normally wouldn't get an issue. We always got the good post,
the good car. And when we produced and we were ready,
we had a year and a half under our belt
of making collars. So we went out and we made
collars and showed a lot of activity and that basically
had a ball.

Speaker 1 (17:12):
Yeah, and that makes you, you know, listen, that that
adds to your appeal because when bosses are looking to
see what assignments. They can put guys in or even
make recommendations down the road if they see you're an
active cup that's always going to go around a long way.
That being said, you weren't there long. There's busy precincts,
and then there's busy precincts, and then there's just straight
up war zones of precincts. I can't think of a

(17:32):
better example of that. In the nineteen eighties and even
into the nineties, and even today. Then the seven to five.
You know what the motto is, you were there, you
give us twenty two minutes, We'll give you a homicide exactly.
And I say this, this is no exaggeration, the most
violent precinct in New York City. You weren't there too long,
like I said, But I remember, I imagine that even
though it was a pre tenure, rememberable one.

Speaker 2 (17:52):
I I probably had the well I didn't get the
full treatment of the seven five. I was there for
one month to the day. It was very, very interesting.
Towards the end of NSU Richie and I will all
take on the side and told we really like you guys.
You're staying right here in Midtown North. This is going

(18:13):
to be a command after Nshoe, It's like, oh great,
it's fantastic. A couple of weeks goes by Tension to
roll call, here's your assignment, and we're, oh, we'll go.
We're just gonna move our locker from one room to
the other in Midtown North and they're like, Richie Fagan,
he went to the sixth seven of the seven zero
and I went to the seven five. I looked at
him and go, what happened to Midtown North? Who's supposed
to stay in Midtown for so on the way to

(18:37):
the seven five, I had my interview for TPF. I
was front loading my exit from the seven to five.
And I only spent one month to the day in
the seven five, and that was during the nineteen eighty
three con Edge strike. And three of those four weeks
were on fixed posts in front of content facilities, doing
absolutely nothing. And I'll never forget. On one set tours,

(19:00):
I was assigned to a coned substation that just had
a twenty foot high concrete wall generateds humming. Couldn't go
inside because it was a facility of labor. You couldn't
bring your car to post because they didn't want you
sitting in your own personal car, so standing out there
in front of an empty lot and I'm literally standing
there with a carcass of a dead dog at my

(19:22):
feet and a locked door to cond for a late
tour from eleven o'clock to night to seven o'clock in
the morning, going what on earth did if I got
myself involved in and three and a half weeks in
I got transferred to TPF and that started a whole nother.

Speaker 1 (19:38):
Chapter, as we'll talk about it until you went to
ESU in eighty six. Now, between your time in TPF
and the Bronco Tacks Force Task Force rather, it was
pretty interesting because you get the chest to really do
a lot on a burrow wide level. But TPF is
interesting in that it used to be I think it
was part of SOD, was it not.

Speaker 2 (19:53):
Yes, it was part of SOLD.

Speaker 1 (19:55):
So it's part of SOD, and it's kind of a
precursor to what ended up becoming disordered control, to what
kinda ended up becoming SRG as we have it now
in the current iteration of the NYPD. So back then,
what were you guys doing pretty much that disorder control
riot control?

Speaker 2 (20:08):
Well, because there aren't riots every night of the week.
Mostly back then it was we did not do a
lot of disorder control. We would flood into high crime precincts,
saturate them and make as many collums as we could
possibly could. Everybody in TPF wasn't the college, and you
were either in a Bronx unit or a Brooklyn unit.

(20:29):
If you're in the Bronx unit, you did your first
two days in the three four. I'm sorry, you do
your first two days in Manhattan, three four, then the ninth.
Then we would do the four to three and the
four to six, and we had a very unique chart
where we only worked four days on two days off.
If you're in a Brooklyn unit, you worked the three four,
the ninth, and then you went to the believe it

(20:51):
was the seven to one and the seven seven. I
was in a Bronx unit, so well, we'd always start
off in Manhattan. Everyone would do the three four and
the ninth, and then you'd go to your Bronx or Brooklyn,
and then we had a steady detail which it would
temporarily assign to for a couple of months at a
time to forty second Street. We were assigned the south

(21:12):
side of forty second Street, between seventh and eighth Avenue.
And that was again when forty second Street was crazy
town and for being a twenty two year old cop,
there was nothing better in.

Speaker 1 (21:24):
The world I can imagine. I mean again that it's
high octane, it's high energy. You're never not going to
be busy unless you just don't want to be. I
didn't want to ask us. I didn't know if it
was the same as anti crime back then street crime,
which was still in existence and awesome part of sod.
Were you guys playing close to where you guys uniform?

Speaker 2 (21:40):
No, strictly strictly uniform.

Speaker 1 (21:42):
Okay, And again you learn a lot about different parts
of the city. Of course, there's a lot of collars
to be made. Who were the cops that stood out
to you? And what are the collars, you know, besides
the gun runs, if there's anything else that stand out
to you from that time as well.

Speaker 2 (21:55):
And TPF, we had a couple of interesting situations. One
was I used really really bad tactics on a suspect
and I almost got myself seriously hurt. It was Easter
Sunday nineteen eighty four. This guy was drag racing up
and down forty second street, which was crowded wall to
wall with people almost running into running people over. So
we told him to pull over, and he wouldn't open

(22:17):
his window, and we told him to opened his window,
and he wouldn't open his window, and he finally cracked it,
and I made the rookie mistake of reaching in the
car to turn off the ignition. At that time, the
window was rolled up in my arm. He put it
in gear and took off down forty second Street, dragging
me behind, wearing the soles off my shoes. I was

(22:37):
able to reach grab him by the neck and he
had a bunch of gold chains on. That's when gold
chains are really coming in fashion, and he wanted his
chains more than he wanted me, and I ripped him
off his neck, and I actually pulled my arm out
of the car and threw the chains to the crowd,
and the crowd took his chains, and he got out
of his car to the car to try and take
the chains, and then we dealt with him, put him

(22:57):
in a handcuffs, took him to jail. That was my
Eastern eighty four man.

Speaker 1 (23:01):
Did you get hurt at all or just scrapes?

Speaker 2 (23:03):
Banged up bumps and scrapes. Didn't you know, have to
go sick or anything, you know, went to the hospital,
got checked out, and you know, strange springs and bumps
and bruises.

Speaker 1 (23:14):
But thankfully nothing too too serious. Yeah, because I mean, listen,
there's a lot I think a VeVe Dolsve. Poor guy,
he's never going to be the same. He got dragged
by a suspect not too many years ago, and uh,
you know they promoted him to detective since then, but
he's got lifetime disabilities that he's going to have to
grapple with and it's a dangerous situation for a lot
of cops to be in. It was that on a
traffic stop.

Speaker 2 (23:33):
Yeah, he was. He was drag racing up and down
a crowded when Times Square was in its heyday of
criminal activity. For some reason, all of the nare To
Wells would come there at night on Easter night, and
I mean it was like a block party where curb
to curb the street was full of pedestrians, just like
like in a Marni Gras type situation. And this guy

(23:56):
was driving through the crowd and we I tried to
stop on my very foolishly reaching into the car, and
that This was the beginning of nineteen eighty four. My
partner and I got a cop named Red Burke, another
fantastic cop. We were signed there for like four or
five months. We saw our action on forty second Street.
In four or five months got involved in more serious

(24:19):
things than the rest of the time in TPF. I
remember one time there used to be a gyro store,
a little Greek restaurant, and I went in to use
the bathroom real quick, and I come out and I
see the crowd screaming and pointing what's going on? And
I see my partner Red on the ground with a
perp strangling him. So he reaches up, and you never

(24:41):
frontcuff somebody, but his hands were conveniently placed on his throat,
so they were convenient to be snapcuffed. So he cuffed
him and we rolled the guy off, and we used
to drive in vans, so we had room to mobilize
on like an R and P. So we put him
front cuffed. But this guy was shot on angel dust,
was completely out of his mind, and we put him in.

(25:04):
We didn't want to uncuff him the recuff and we said, look,
let's let's leave well enough alone and put him in
the back of the van. I was in the first
bench seat. Red was driving. We start driving. He explodes
over the seat, grabs my gun and the old regulation
holstes the NYPD had were pieces of garbage. They weren't
modern security houses. The guy had my gun three quarters

(25:26):
of the way out of the hole store. I said this,
this isn't going to work out right, So we started.
Now the van's swerving all over the place. He puts
it in park, comes back. We wrestle this guy, get
him down, get him in his cell. The this sergeant
immediately many times. I get this guy out of here,
get him to the hospital. He's obviously an angel dust
or something. Bringing him out, he's still front cuff because

(25:49):
he's too crazy to rear cuff. He grabs my sergeant
from TPF, pulls him from us from standing to the ground.
He goes out with a back injury. We take this
guy at the hospital's spend the rest of the night
with him. In the hospital. They did a bunch of
toxic toxicology tests on him, and he was on angel
dust fintasycle, the.

Speaker 1 (26:11):
Which you have to understand by the way we have
a visual of that encounter of your partner strangling the purp.
I believe it looks something like this. Probably when you
rolled the up on scene.

Speaker 2 (26:19):
That was pretty closer. I'm the SpongeBob character going what
the hell is going on?

Speaker 1 (26:25):
That's the first thing I thought of when you described that,
because here's the thing. I've said this before. We were
talking about this during the orientation for the Ambulance Core
this week, and I remember seeing this too in an
episode of Cops they were filming in Philly in the
early nineties, when somewhere is either on PCP or Angel Dust.
I made the joke and listen, it's not that far
off from the truth that person can give the heavyweight
champ of the UFC a run for his money. It's

(26:47):
you become that superhumanly strong and out of this world.

Speaker 2 (26:50):
This was one of the most desperate fights I've ever
been involved in my life. I ended up having to
break his leg and fracture his skull to stop him
from getting my gun and shoes to me. That's how
That's how close it was. It was crazy, did this?
It was weird? This This four or five months on
forty second Street were just like one thing after the other.

(27:10):
We were on a boarding party for a dayliner, you
know the little tourist boats that go around Manhattan and
go up to West Point and come down. There was
a ride on a boat. TPF formed a boarding party
and boarded the boat like in an old pirate movie,
and took all the perpetrators off. It was it was.
I always say I learned really how to be a

(27:32):
street cop in TPF because all we did was, you know,
real police work. We didn't handle ladies, we didn't handle accidents,
we didn't handle the family disputes. We put handcuffs on people.
It took people to jail.

Speaker 1 (27:44):
That's how it was back then, and that's how you know,
a lot of guys wish it was today. It was again,
it was a different ballgame, it was a different time.
But again it's that's how you learned. And I feel like, listen,
STS isn't easy. I know back then it was shorter,
but even then it's still not easy. But going through
all that stuff and also having already been an SOD
with TPF and whatnot, that must have made STS a

(28:05):
relative cakewalk compared to what you had already seen and
dealt with.

Speaker 2 (28:08):
You know, it's apples and oranges it's very very different.
STS isn't really police work, it's specialty skills.

Speaker 1 (28:21):
Fair enough. Yeah, And how long was your six weeks
back then in the eighties six weeks, six weeks and
then you went out.

Speaker 2 (28:27):
Bronx Task Force came in between.

Speaker 1 (28:30):
So how long were you in the XTF.

Speaker 2 (28:33):
From June of eighty four to March tenth, eighty six?
And when they disbanded. TPF was disbanded on June fourteenth,
nineteen eighty four. They took those of us who were
in SODRE looking to go to other units in sod
and gave us preference on interviews. So I was initially
interviewed to go to the issue in the Spring in

(28:58):
June May June of nineteen eighty four, And it was
a little bit of a disheartening exercise. I'm walking in
there was this old time lieutenant there and I have,
you know, the best resume you can have when you're
twenty two years old was all typed on a manual typewriter.
And I'm a scuba diver, and I worked in the
firearms industry before, and I'm an advance to empty and

(29:20):
I thought all these things made me like a shoeing
so I was like really feeling good about myself. And
I walk in and the lieutenant looks at my looks
at my resume, peruses it. He goes, this is all
well and good, and he literally slid the phone across
the desk and said, can you have somebody make this

(29:41):
phone ring? That's a hook that can get you into
the issue. And I said, no, no, I don't. I
don't know a soul in the job. I don't have
a father on the job, a mother on the job,
an aunt or and uncle, nobody. It's just me. I'm
first generation. He goes, well, maybe we'll get to you
down the road. Have a good career, have fun at
the bronx task for yes, and I blos task for so.

(30:04):
It wasn't all bad.

Speaker 1 (30:05):
No, And listen, it's more of the same police work
you're already doing, especially during a busy time back then,
and everything for a reason, right. It allows you to
hone your skills. It allowed you to really further refine
your craft as a cop to win. When that call
did come around, you know you probably felt it, even though,
like you said, it's apples and orange, it's not the
same thing. But career wise, you were in a better place,
you know, right place, right time.

Speaker 2 (30:26):
It worked out, No, it was. It was a great
once again from eighty four to eighty six year almost
two years.

Speaker 1 (30:37):
Yeah, I mean listening to a hell of a run
from when TPF got disbanded. I mean you relatively landed
on your feet by still being able to be in
a task force type environment. Jim mcveigh's in the chat.
I see a Jim. Of course, you work with him
in aviation, and he was in a little bit too
an emergency. He was a long time eman for about
a dozen years before he went to aviation in his
own right. So good to see you, my friend. I'm
glad you're in the chat. Of course, he was on
this program a while ago for this mini series. You

(30:59):
weren't in the truck long, I know, like we were
talking about off the year, it was only about a
year of work out in the street before you went
down to the field as the armorer, which we'll talk
about momentarily. But nevertheless, from that year being out in
Queen's over at nine truck, what sticks out.

Speaker 2 (31:13):
Just the and it constantly reminds me of it watching
some of your previous interviews. I worked with some of
the most talented super cops I've had the privilege of
working with you mentioned earlier, Richie Teams, so many rest
in peace, and Vic Khaleady, Ronnie Wasson, mich Lamantia, Tommy

(31:36):
Connelly just just guys who were just real super professionals.
Danny Robeson and Pete Curley as sergeants, they were fantastic
to work for. And it's just just just a general
positive vibe in the place. And it was like I
wanted to begin the issue since the minute I raised

(31:58):
my right hand in housing and I'm like, well, I'm
not gonna get the issue through housing, So I got
to get out of here quickly i can. And this
was the culmination of a live stream. Besides, you know,
going to aviation, which was, you know, high on my
list of things to do, but this was more attainable.
Working a nine truck in nineteen eighty six eighty seven
was was fantastic.

Speaker 1 (32:18):
I can imagine. I mean, Queen's was busy back then
with nine and ten and look at where some of
these guys ended up. Vic Paleedi was practically I think
he's either a PA or Vix a doctor, right, He's
a doctor he's a doctor. And then on top of that,
Ronnie Watson was COE of Emergency towards the end of
his career, so he made it up the list. Now,
if we're thinking of the same Tom Connolly, and if
we're not letting know, did this Tom Connolly end up
in the bomb squad later? Yees? Yeah, okay, so we

(32:38):
are thinking of about the same Tom Connolly. I didn't
know he was an emergency.

Speaker 2 (32:41):
And his son and his son came on the job
ended up in the bomb squad also.

Speaker 1 (32:44):
Chris, Yeah, Chris Connolly. I don't know if Chris is
still going, if Chris retired, but yeah, a lot of
that's why they call the bomb Squad Truck eleven because
so many guys in the bomb Squad are former emergency
service cops. So he issued the heck of a pathway
if you want to go that to that unit. Eventually,
it's a lot of former guessing this program.

Speaker 2 (33:00):
It was just the right guys to be around, because
that's ts for six weeks, and you can only cram
so much knowledge into a six week course, and having
these experienced guys who were just always willing to share
the knowledge of you and teach you the ropes. It was.
It was fantastic.

Speaker 1 (33:17):
Yeah, I can imagine. I can imagine. Even though it
wasn't long, it was obviously a very enjoyable experience before
I get to armorer. Now, I'm not jumping ahead. I
just want to get my timeline straight to see if
this was building up as early back as when you
got onto ESU. Did you start studying for boss around
this time? No, okay, so I was a little bit later,
you know. So you mentioned to me off theyear before

(33:38):
we got on that this was you know, even though.

Speaker 2 (33:40):
It was no, no, no, no, I'd have to say when
I was a nine truck, I thige the date of
the sergeant's test, but it would have to be right
around there anyway, because they got promoted to sergeant in
eighty nine.

Speaker 1 (33:49):
Yeah, and that's around the time you were still working
down at the field, So you mentioned to me off there.
We can get into it now on the air where
it was difficult because you're having a heck of a
time over in nine truck, Like you mentioned, you're working
with some high caliber guys for sure. But nevertheless, as
you described, a very very tremendous opportunity that you knew
was never going to come around again, came your way,
tell us you know, for the audience what that opportunity was.

(34:11):
And even though it was hard, what made ultimately say, hey,
I gotta take.

Speaker 2 (34:14):
This well in the truck everybody has like a special assignment.
Some people take care of the small power equipment. Some
people take care of the hearst tools, make sure they're
all up to speed. I used to work in a
gun shop, so I was very, very comfortable with guns.
So the sergeist says, if you wouldn't mind, I want
you to take care of OLLU nine truck guns. Make

(34:34):
sure they're functionally clean, they're ready to go at all times.
At the time, we had many fourteens M seventy six
submachine guns, six sixty sniper rifles. I took at thirty
seven shotguns. There was a variety of special weapons. And
I took that really, really seriously because I always view
taking care of and cleaning guns like packing a parachute,
like when you need it, it's got to work. You

(34:55):
can't have it go bang. You have a little flag
come out and say bang. So so I got noticed
that my near obsessive care of the weapons, and they
needed someone in the camp. We used to do training
at Camp Smith three times a year, advanced tactical training
up there, and they needed someone to coordinate that and

(35:15):
take care of the weapons and develop more advanced tactical
training program as part of STS, and I was asked
if I'd like to do it. Initially, it was just
supposed to be for thirty days before and after Camp
Smith in nineteen eighty seven, And that was a little
reluctant because I was only in the truck a year
and I was just, in my opinion, just feeling comfortable

(35:36):
doing emergency work. But I said, I talked to some
guys like, you're not going to get this opportunity again,
you might as well take it. You can always come
back if you don't like it. So I went, I mean,
I had some, you know, really interesting jobs in nine
truck too. It was it was a crammed year of
just weird stuff, things that you only experienced emergency.

Speaker 1 (36:01):
And nine truck. If I'm not mistaking it, I know
ten truck is right by well, it's currently city Field,
but essentially a hop skipping a jump from the old
Chase Stadium the current city field. Nine truck. You're covering
the Rockaways area, correct.

Speaker 2 (36:11):
Yeah, yep, all the Queens South Rockaways.

Speaker 1 (36:15):
So what were the specs because every truck, I mean, listen,
you can go to a wide array of jobs. As
you just said, an emergency and a lot of guys
Jim and John you both know this in the check
as you did it. But you know, there's certain jobs
that are interesting and unique to certain trucks. Like if
you go at a ten truck, they're right by the highway,
tend to do a lot of MBAs eight truck is
known and one truck for that matter too for all
the bridges they got to go to to talk down

(36:36):
jumpers in nine trucks case, what was the signature job
that you would get?

Speaker 2 (36:40):
You know, there really isn't any standout. There's a lot
of highways, so there's a lot of pin jobs, a
lot of extrications, a lot of gun jobs. The one
O three in the one thirteen were going crazy in
the mid eighties. Yeah, and a lot a lot of
uh suspect searches, barricades. Some of the weirdest jobs I
had were das and animal jobs. Things that stick out,

(37:04):
Like I made some rudimentary notes for this interview, and
I almost forgot how many strange animal jobs we went
on your last episode with the Carl Russo jobbed. In
my memory, he had some hilarious ones, and we had
we had our share of really crazy animal jobs.

Speaker 1 (37:26):
And what was it? Essentially dogs? You know what it is?

Speaker 2 (37:29):
Well, one was at a Wendy's parking lot. We get
there and they're pointing at a garbage can. What's in
the garbage can a big snake. So I'm thinking they're
embellishing it. It's probably a milk snake or a garter snake. No,
there's a fourteen foot python in this garbage can. So
we have a black plastic garbage bag tied off over

(37:51):
the top of the can. And I'm pretty new in emergency,
I'm like, what do you do with a snake? It's
a late tour, of course, so it's like, you're not
going to call a zoo. So I called the base
and I said, what do we do for a snake?
And the guy working the desk was I'll take it.
And I didn't really care what he was going to
do with it. I just knew that I was going

(38:11):
to get rid of it. So we go to leave
with it and the guy from oneday. He goes, you
can't take my garbage can. I says, the hell, we can't.
I'll bring your garbage can back. But we're not wrestling
this snake out of the garbage can just to put
him in somewhere else. So we have this garbage bag
tied over the garbage can and the old r and
PS rips in the back door. We load it in.

(38:31):
We get a block and there's a confirmed pin job
ten thirteen. Two cops pinned in the car and I
one thirteen. We go racing down to this pin job
extricate the cops. Meanwhile, the rip was bouncing all over
the place going to the pin job. Now we go back.
This is when the Issue and Sad Office is in
Flesher Mental Park. We drove up to the Fleshyamental Park.
We go to take the snake out, and the can

(38:53):
that weighed about sixty seventy pounds now weighs four pounds.
The snake is not in the can anymore. So it
was like the last scene in the movie Alien when
she's in the escape pod and the alien is wrapped
around the superstructure of the spaceship. This thing was wrapped
around the toolshelf and we keep sledgehammers and pride bars

(39:15):
and everything. And here's me and my partner pulling it
by the tail. It's pulling back, pulling it by the tail.
I said, look who's in the desk, who's taking this
damn snake? Go get him. Three of us will pull
a snake out. We pull a snake out, get rid
of him, No harm, no foul. Another bizarre looking job
we had was was a da in an apartment and

(39:36):
the guy's dog was guarding the body and wouldn't let
us in, So like, we don't want to get bit,
but we got to tranquilize the dog. And it was
a second floor window, so I just imagine how this
looked visually. The people we pulled the RP out under
the window had a ladder on the RP. It was
a really ripe da way. So we had Scott airpacks

(39:57):
on and we got a tranquilizer rife. So here these
cops with air packs on, tranquilizer rifles on a ladder
on top of a police truck. And now the dog
wouldn't come out behind the bed. We sent a rookie
cop to the corner bodega for a box of milk
bones and we're tossing milk bones into the apartment. They
get the dog to walk out from behind the bed
so they can shoot them with the dart gun and

(40:18):
I'm like, this wasn't in the brochure what I signed up.
Another call we got was a big wasp nest the
size of basketball and someone's garden shed. And my inner
voice is saying, what the hell does this have to
do with being a New York City cop. But when
you're an emergency you never ever say we don't do that.

(40:41):
It's figure, improvise, adapt, and figure a way to do that.
So we had these they called they called them Gumby suits.
There were cold water exposure suits to make water rescues.
This is before he issue with scuba trained. So we
came up with a brilliant plan of putting the Gumby
suit on for protection, a Scott airpack on to protect
our face and head, and we went into the into

(41:02):
the shed with a garbage can and the lid, and
we looked like we really knew what we were doing.
We didn't have a clue what we were doing. It's
amazing we didn't get stung to death, and we knocked
up the thing into the garbage can, sealed it up,
and we looked like we knew exactly what we're doing,
even though we didn't have a clue. Then there was
a time I almost burnt an apartment building down, allegedly,

(41:25):
no almost, for real. I'm with a senior guy learning
the ropes. This is my first two weeks and nine truck.
It's a late tour and we get the worst d
O way I've ever been out of my life. It
was a dead body in a bathtub for a month.
This just turned into human stew. So we got sky
packs on the preescincts there and they're like gagging in

(41:47):
the hallway and I'm like, I've handled the oays before,
but this is like the one they want emergency for.
This is like a super bad So I go to
the senior guy and says, what should we do? He goes,
what I want you to do. Let's go in the
kitchen and find a can of coffee, put it in
a frying pan, and burn the coffee because the smell
will try and drive out some of the dead body smell,
the da smell. So our luck the guy wasn't a

(42:10):
coffee drinker. He was a tea drinker. There was no coffee.
There's no coffee. What do you want me to do?
He goes, take find some brown paper, you know, supermarket bags,
put him in the sink and light a little fire.
Just made it. The smoke and the fire will displace
the smell. So I do exactly what I'm told, being
a brand new guy in an emergency, and I like

(42:30):
this little fire in the sink, and then he goes, hey,
I need your hand in the air, Glenn, come in here. Well,
the little fire became a big fire, and he had
fifty year old kitchen cabinets with thirty coats of shellac
and varnish on him. They explode and I go running
back into the kitchen. Now I had the little dish

(42:51):
spray that's attached to your kitchen sink, playing fireman, putting
the kitchen cabinets out. Again, I'm like, none of this
was in the brochure. This is this is very fascinating.

Speaker 1 (43:00):
This yeah, it's it's quite the education. There's nothing like it.
But as I've covered with so many guys in the
show before, there's nobody to call after emergency. You're it,
you know, so you're the last line of defense or
essentially the special forces of the nearby police departments. So,
like you said, improvised, adapt and overcome whatever job. It is.

Speaker 2 (43:21):
One of the craziest things we had in nine Truck
was there was a in the rip unit, the robbery
unit in the one thirteen precinct where nine Truck was based. Yeah,
there was a sergeant who was having all kinds of
personal problems. And the guy was like the worst kind
of guy you'd want to deal with as an adversary.
He was a competitive pistol shot and like a third

(43:44):
degree black belt in judo, and he walked around the
rip unit for a couple of hours because there was
a range in the basement of one thirteen and he
used to shoot there all the time. He went on
to all his coworkers, do Amo, do you have any AMMO?
You have an AMML? And I know this because one
of my very good friends who just passed away, Mike Jost,
was a detective and one thirteen rip Long story short,

(44:05):
this guy locks the door of the rip takes his
fellow the detectives hostage. He's a sergeant, takes the detective's hostage,
takes his gun out puts on the table said I'm
gonna kill myself, but if anyone gets gets brave, I'll
kill you first. So whoever wants to go first, try
to make a move on me. I get to work
for a late tour in a nine truck. Every vehicle

(44:29):
in ESU is in the parking lot. Ten truck, Adam
ten boy, ten eight truck, six truck, the RMI. I'm like,
what is going on? I'm like a sergeant or a cop.
Took hostage in the one thirteen rip office, one door in,
one door out, not a window, tactical nightmare, and we

(44:52):
negotiated with a sky for about three hours and the
resolution was he agreed to be taken to the hospital
and EVP, but they were going to send the entire
press corps wasn't downstairs In the front of one thirteen.
We took an off duty cop, put a trench coat
over his head, just just a random cop, hustled him
into an a marked carr and sped away to looking

(45:13):
it was him going to the hospital. All the press
followed that car and my partner and I from me
an issue was assigned to follow the car taking this
detective to the hospital with two tasers at the ready
in case he changed his mind not giving up the taser.
That was a very weird job. I just remember rolling.
It was supposed to be quietly tour and the entirety

(45:35):
of the issue was in the park from one thirteen.

Speaker 1 (45:37):
And that's essentially people forget because that was an al
Baker invention first and then of course it was rewritten
by the likes of Ken Bowen, as I covered many
times in the program before John Dealira that rm I
that's just precisely as situations. I believe you guys were
to bring it out for it was hostage jobs, any
cut a tactical operation, and that was in the early
days too, So I'm glad you made a mention to
that because God Almighty again was it long out there

(45:57):
in the field. But boil lot looked much like a
lot was crammed into your SDS. A lot was created
to that year in nine truck.

Speaker 2 (46:04):
Yeah it was. It was. It was an education.

Speaker 1 (46:08):
So before I move on to you make combustions at
the last of your time as the armor, just take
me to again you kind of mentioned earlier, but expanding
a little bit was a typical day now that Floyd
beit like in that position.

Speaker 2 (46:18):
Well, there was either armory days which were this is
when the Issue Office was at Flush Mental Park. We
had a full up armory. There were all the spare
weapons we kept him. If weapons had to go on
for a prepair, we take them in for repair and
to take them to the range to get repaired. A
lot of what we did was testing and evaluating new

(46:39):
weapons to modernize the weapons the issue used. And then
a big thing was teaching the tactics portion of sts,
both recurrent and initial courses for new Issue officers. But
one of the greatest privileges I had is they went
and got us a bunch of military clearances, had to

(47:00):
sign a bunch of non disclosure forms, and we got
to embed for training with Department of Defense Tier one
units like Delta Force and the Sealed Team six and
spend a lot of time training and learning techniques and
these guys to benchmark different tactics that would be applicable
in our environment. A lot of it wasn't, but a

(47:20):
lot of it really really was. And there was it
was a constant back and forth where they would be
in New York City. They they'd want to train in
an urban environment. This is pre nine to eleven, so
we weren't all over the world fighting terrorism, so they
had to find realistic urban sites. So we had several
abandoned buildings that we would use, some on Staten Island,

(47:43):
something in Brooklyn, and we would host these Tier one
military units and in return for that, they would have
us go to their bases in Little Creek in Virginia
or Fort Braggen, North Carolina and learn from them and
really learn from the best. And then we would take
whether it be weapons or tactics, and tailor them to
see what would work any issue, test it out in

(48:03):
the school with initial classes and recurrent classes, and try
and mature the tax and weapons of the issue.

Speaker 1 (48:11):
And that was something that was critical because again, essentially
it's a parabilitary organization. Like I said earlier, it's the
special Forces of New York City, particularly of course the NYPD,
So it's good to have those disciplines. And I know
that was something I think is he still trains down
to Camp Smith multiple times a year, don't they. It's
my record, I.

Speaker 2 (48:29):
Believe, so, I mean I don't know first Anaulge, because
I left Daviation in two thousand and four, but we
used to go three times a year, and that's where
when I went to aviation, a lot of the synergy
really really paid off. Jim McVeigh will attest to it
being a former emergency guy in aviation pays a lot
of dividends.

Speaker 1 (48:48):
Of course, you know, that's what Jim talked about when
he was on the program, and will get to aviation momentarily.
Highest Steve Stephanakis in the chat. By the way, I
haven't seen my buddy in the chat in a little while,
but there he is active emergency service cop, has been
in the truck tech forever, has been an ESU forever,
going back to his days in housing rescue before they
of course merged into the NYPD Emergency Service in the
absorption of ninety four. Now it's a bittersweet because it's

(49:10):
a great gig, but moving up, you know, you got
an opportunity to move up. So when you made sergeant
originally in what ninety he went back Ember eighty nine,
So okay, December of eighty nine, you went back to Manhattan,
which was nice. He had Midtown North and then Midtown
South for a little bit. So just tell me about
learning how to be a boss. Essentially, We're like a
cover with a lot of guys on the show PD.

(49:32):
At FD, you move up in the rank, it's not
about you anymore, in addition to yourself, it's about your crew.

Speaker 2 (49:37):
It was. It was interesting. I went to Midtown North
first for sergeant training, which is six months as a
new sergeant. Then they moved the permanent precinct, which I
got in Midtown South. I lucked into these two places
again just by asking for them and getting them. Look
of the draw. Uh, it was. It was great. I

(49:58):
had fantastic cops work for me, and the key most
social dynamics break down into a twenty sixty twenty rule.
Twenty percent of the people who work for you are
going to be superstars, sixty percent are going to come in,
do their job to standards and go home, and twenty
percent are going to be your nightmare. And the trick

(50:23):
is very early on delineating who's your twenty sixty twenty.
I had very few problem people, and I find that
most cops want good, good leadership. They appreciate it, and

(50:44):
you try and do the best.

Speaker 1 (50:45):
For them, right. I mean, I'm not going to point
any fingers now because it's not the right thing. To do,
and it's not something that we really do with this
programmer have any interest in. But if you look at
the complaints of current mos, that's it right there. Yet
the nail they had lack of leadership. They want good leaders,
they need good bosses. You know, when you have a
younger department, not as many older guys sticking around. That's

(51:05):
where it hurts. Not to say you can't have younger
guys with ten eleven years in the job who happened
to be at sargeon or lieutenant rules, but when you
got those salty twenty twenty five, thirty or guys even
a little bit more than that in some cases, boy,
is that of help because they know they don't know everything.
They'll tell you that themselves, but they've been around the block,
they've seen in a few things, and you know that's
as value or even not even that. Just guys who

(51:27):
have a lot of time on the job but don't
necessarily have a rank. Those guys are invaluable because younger
cops cling to that, that's their lifeline.

Speaker 2 (51:35):
Well you know the key also, you know, as a
first line supervisor, you're not there to make it Disneyland
for the cops. And make it, you know, easy and fun,
and you know, always give them an easy out. But
to treat people fairly, never ask them to do anything
that you wouldn't do. I haven't done yourself. I had
a lot of street experience under my belt by the
time I made sergeant, so I would pretty much been there,

(51:58):
done that. Have the T shirts, you carry yourself that way,
you're always coming from the issue. They probably got tired
of hearing it in the regular patrol squad. But I'm like,
tactics are you know? That's all I lived for my
last three years of the issue with weapons and tactics,
And I'm like, just because you're not an issue you

(52:19):
shoot your line officers in a precinct, doesn't mean you're
not supposed to have good tactics. And I was trying
craft and mentor these these young cops. If the way
I look at it, I did my job. If they
was finished at twenty years, safe and sound, with the
same amount of holes in the body they were born, that's.

Speaker 1 (52:39):
That's a good day at the office. And you know,
if somebody's able to go home, of course in that condition,
you know, it wasn't long as a sergeant. But never
unless you were able to mentor guys and you just
talked about it too. You were able to oversee plane
clothes operations too, working anti crime as a boss, was
it that different from working plane clothes? Of course, when
you were a uniform patrol officer, you know Saint CON's

(53:00):
kept overall.

Speaker 2 (53:00):
I never worked playing clothes as a police officer.

Speaker 1 (53:04):
Okay, Oh that's right. My TPF wasn't play closed as
you mentioned earlier, was uniform, but never less. Okay, so
I could take take her the question here. I got
TPF mixed up with street crime and anti crime, so
apologies on that front. But nevertheless, being an anti crime
supervisor anti crime you are playing closed. Different style of policing.
As I covered before, guys aren't really jumped the radio
too much unless it's urgent, you know, like a ten

(53:24):
thirteen or something. It's more so your eyes. So being
a supervisor for a unit like that, you knew policing,
you do col of work, but from a plane close
perspective rather, that was new to you. So what was
that like?

Speaker 2 (53:36):
It was? It was probably one of the best year
and a half I had on the NYPD, was when
I was in any crime supervisor Midtown South because just
practically Midtown South is a precinct where a guy that
looks like me you can get away with being an
anti crime. I just stick out like a sore thumb
in the seven nine on the snive, you know, driving

(53:59):
on marked Plymouth, Grand Fury or Chevy Impola or Crown
vic So comes to cops. What we used to do
is the day tours were so busy, we would take
one car out and park it at the Times Square
substation and we would go out on foot. It was
much easier to blend in and make collars on foot,

(54:21):
and we wouldn't go crazy with disguises, but we would
wear construction worker outfits. I had a con had helmet,
I had a phone company helmet. Blend in we would,
we would. This is when Time Square was still really,
really bad. So it was if you were patient and
you became a hunter. It was like shooting fish in

(54:41):
a barrel. And we would typically take a block like
forty second Street between Broadway and six and we would
do what we called cap In the block, we'd put
two anti crime cops, sixth Avenue side two anti crime
cops and the seventh Avenue side one in an observation
post with the sergeant, and first we would find the
crews that were out to do robberies or Grand larsones,

(55:04):
and then we key on a crew and we'd start
building a mental picture over the radio and the tack
channel ast to what the people look like they were watching,
and then you would see it was like watching a
National Geographic special of the Serengetti plane. Here comes the
limping zebra down the block. You know, mister and missus
Ohio tourist on vacation with her I love New York

(55:26):
bag and T shirt. Like, these people are gonna get robbed.
It's our job to watch them until the crew we
just spotted them, and typically they would rob them and
then they would run the sixth Avenue side of a
seventh side, where we would have two cops or each
stand by, tackle the guy doing the robbery, put cuffs on,
take them to jail. At night, we would take the

(55:46):
cars out and primarily look for guns and robberies.

Speaker 1 (55:50):
I do want to ask this because by the time
Giuliani came in and basically told the NYPD, okay, enough
have that it go clean the city up, you were
at aviation so it was a little bit different, but
at that time. Brian Lockkin's happened in nineteen ninety which
a lot of people review his murder as a turning
point in New York City's fight against crime. You know,
the pendulum started to gradually swing the other way. And then,

(56:11):
of course, when Bratt and Giuliani came in ninety four,
all bets were off and the fight was on, and
it was a fight the NYPD ended up winning for
a long time. But that be said, after he got
stabbed trying to defend his mother from a robbery. It's
just you mentioned robberies at jock my mind. How did
that change things for Franti crime at that time or
not really, not.

Speaker 2 (56:27):
Really, because we already knew what our job was, and
my directions to my team was very simple. I would
come in every day, or when I first took over
as the anti crime sergeant in town in the South,
as boys and girls, it's very simple equation here. Somebody
is going to jail every day that we work, they

(56:48):
don't know it yet, and we're going to start out
looking for gun calls and robberies. And if we have
to work all way down the Grand larsonies or or
a shoplifter. Our handcuffs are going on somebody every day,
so wrap your head around that. And someone you know,
it's called who's looking who? Who's looking for a collar?

(57:09):
That day, someone is going to take someone to jail.
Every day we work because we're in a crime took
place and we're in a perfect opportunity to make a
We're gonna go out and make as many rest as
we can. And it was it was, it was you
look at the professional criminals who we were were locking up.

(57:30):
They had countess of aillance techniques that were as good
as the Russian KGB, where when you were following them
you could think you were so slick and so sly.
Another figure. One day, we were following two guys that
were definitely getting ready to do robberies, and I was
wearing a cond helmet and there was a it was
an open ditch in the street, and they doubled back

(57:51):
on me and I jumped into the ditch and the
construction workers like, who the hell are you want to
just showed up my my shield real quick onto my coat,
and as they walked by, the two guys said to
each other, look at that idiot. It's a falling company
construction site and he's got a Connat helmet on. He's
probably a cop. I'm like, that's how shocked these guys were. Yeah,
And we would follow these crews sometimes for five, six,

(58:13):
seven hours and was never quite sure if they made
you or they didn't know. They would just be an
extra caution. Usually they paid off, but there'd be days
where you'd come up dry or you'd follow people for
five to six even hours. And what was frustrating is
you knew they didn't have into the tour. You head
in the tour, you're going back to the station. I
was signing out and going home. They s thought they're

(58:34):
going to rob somebody.

Speaker 1 (58:35):
Right, and you had to hope that whoever was coming
in on the four to twelve or to twelve to eight,
depending on when your tours can nab them.

Speaker 2 (58:41):
Yeah. Yeah, and that coordination was tough to pull off. Yeah.

Speaker 1 (58:45):
Yeah, And that's the kind of the downside of it.
Bad guys don't have a like I said, like you said, rather,
they don't have time to clock out. It's twenty four
to seven for them. And like we covered before, look
at what you just mentioned there. They knew who you
guys were. Most of them they are not dumb people.
You got some criminals who are dumb people. That's what
you know. Jobs can be off the joke.

Speaker 2 (59:00):
About thank God for the dumb ones.

Speaker 1 (59:03):
Exactly, But there's a lot of them smart guys and
girls just making really dumb choices. You know, that's one
of them. If they can put those smarts to better use,
they contribute a lot to society. So that brings us
into evenil you're having the time.

Speaker 2 (59:16):
Well now you make another another year. I spent in
Midtown South one of the most rewarded, the most exciting,
if you want to call it that. Midtown South was
anti crime that did the field training for a year
with brand new rookies coming out of the academy. And
that was a blast that that was just so fulfilling.

Speaker 1 (59:39):
Seems like it was I mean listening to get motivated rookies.
They have, you know, the figure to do the jobs
if you will, and so get guys like that, it
rejuvenates the unit because you know, listen, everybody was there
at one point they were bright eyed, bushytail. They needed
somebody to men it them. You were there even though
it was housing in nineteen eighty one. Housing was no joke,
as you will know same thing again when you came
back in eighty three. So getting eyes like that, I

(01:00:00):
mean that had to be a help the trip for
you any of these guys.

Speaker 2 (01:00:03):
Yeah, yeah, it was. It was great. And I had
a deal that the CEO called me and he goes,
he goes, I want you to be a field training sergeant.
None of the sergeants just wanted to be a field
training sergeant. They looked at it just added liability, like
you're gonna running around with ten knuckleheads. They're gonna get
you in trouble. And I said, I'll do it. But
I've seen some of what's coming through here from the

(01:00:24):
academy we're getting I forget the number. I think we
were getting fifty or sixty rookies and there was going
to be five squads of ten cops. I said, I
get to pick my ten. And I made up some
crazy match trick which involved there are times to run
in the police academy. Jim the Firearms qualification score tried

(01:00:46):
the craft. What I thought was like the model rookie cop,
provationary cop coming out of the police Academy and I picked
my ten and almost to a person, it worked really well.
Motivated and to me, I'm like, this is the chances
of there's a law and when you're instructing anything, when

(01:01:08):
you're teaching someone to fly helicopter or to drive a car,
that's called the law of primacy. And so the way,
the way you learned something the first time is what
you're going to rely on as you go down the road.
So it's I have a golden opportunity out of in
part how I think, you know, in my my way
of thinking, how you should act to conduct yourself as

(01:01:28):
a street car. And it was, it was fantastic. I
did it for eight and nine months, for April ninety
one to January ninety two.

Speaker 1 (01:01:38):
And this is the round time ten or is that
later in ninety two?

Speaker 2 (01:01:41):
No, I made lieutenant when I was an aviation.

Speaker 1 (01:01:45):
See what the aviation is a starge? Yeah, originally originally
of course, and that's nineteen ninety three. So I know
you mentioned earlier ESQ was on your goal list for
the NYPD check you did that, even though it was
only for a few years. It was an enjoyable few
years between the field and of course night truck you
know aviation until you mention was on your goal list.
So what was your background in aircraft, if any at all?

Speaker 2 (01:02:04):
Well, I was. I was fascinated in aviation from the
time I could walk. And I'll never forget. I was
at a boy Scout they called it a Campbree where
all these boy Scout troops camped in this great, big
field and it was at the old Gramm and Aircraft
Company back Page, New York. And a police helicopter from

(01:02:24):
NASA County landed and put on a static display, and
I said, right then and there, I'm going to do this.
And then I listened to some people I shouldn't have
listened to, like, oh, to be a pilot, you have
to be a mathematical genius. Math was always my weak subject,
and I believed them, but I still was obsessed with aviation,
with planes, whether they were airplanes or helicopters, fighters, or

(01:02:47):
transports or airliners, just consumed with aviation. And I remember
back in nineteen eighty six, I was in the issue
and I was out on a date with my girl
girlfriend Westchester County. And where does Glenn like to go.
He likes to go to the airport and watch planes.
Planning to take off because I'm an aviation geek and
I'll never forget. We're standing there watching these planes land

(01:03:09):
and take off, and she looks at me. She goes,
why don't you stop looking at them for good saying
and start flying them. She goes, this's got to be away.
So the next week, I'm in an in service training
with the issue, which has all different so D units
in the same classroom for in service training. Excuse me,
just take a drink of water. There was harbor and

(01:03:31):
aviation and the issue, and mounted was AD then and
this this cop with my great detective skills, not being
a detective, he had a helicopter belt. Balk says, you
must be an aviation Yeah. Guy's name is roy Albernie.
He comes into play a couple of times in my
I said, how did you get into aviation? He goes, well,

(01:03:54):
you need a pilot's license. I said, okay, now we
can get a pilot license. He goes, You go to
a flight instructor and it takes a year or two.
He goes, and then you get a pilot's license and
you can fly airplanes as most people do it in
their plane because it's simply cheaper and they're more available.
Helicopters are very expensive to rent and learn it, and
then you can apply to aviation as a pilot. And

(01:04:16):
he gave me the name of a couple of flight
instructors that were in the aviation unit. One was a
sergeant at the time, later become a lieutenant aviation unit.
And I called the guy up out of the blue
and says, I'm you know, Glenn, I'm an emergency truck nine.
I want to learn to fly. He says, okay, meet
me next Tuesday at Farming Daily Airport. Gave me the
instructions of what the look like of the plane and

(01:04:38):
I started to taking flying lessons there and it took
me to nineteen eighty eight to get a pilot's license.
Then I put an application in the aviation unit. When
I was a cop an emergency emergency comes and goes,
I'm promoted. I go to Midtown North as a sergeant,
Midtown South as a sergeant. Very this this is a principal,

(01:05:01):
a philosophical principle called syncreticity. It's basically the right time
at the right place intersecting for something to occur. And
if this wasn't serendipity. I don't know what it is. Again,
still I have a private pilot's license, but I'm still
a bigger aviation geek than ever. There is a big
World War two airplane display at Farmingda Airport and this

(01:05:24):
was nineteen the end to the beginning of ninety three,
and I go to my wife because let's go a
farm Del airport and we'll check the airplanes. Yeah, fine,
let's let's go. Let's go do that. And as I'm
pulling in the driveway farming Del Airport, I see an
NYPD helicopter land Little do I know the reason why

(01:05:47):
this NYPD helicopter landing is they're picking up an FAA
inspector to go investigate gate. Let's call it a hard landing.
It's basically a crash. Two guys smacked up an NYPD helicopter.
Seeing this helicopter, she goes an application to go to
that unit. I says, yeah, but that that's years ago.

(01:06:07):
I was a cop, then I'm a sergeant. Now what's
the chances of me going there? It'll probably never happen.
Little did I know that one of the people who
was responsible for cracking up that aircraft was a sergeant
who is soon going to be launched out of the
unit and make a vacancy for a sergeant. You see
that this is at all falling the place. This gets

(01:06:30):
even stranger. I used to keep a little paper bag
of various NYPD unit patches that when I'd go on trips,
so i'd go over to Europe or different states. Cops
always like a trade patches. It's always a good icebreaker.
I get home from the airport that day, after just
seeing the NYPD helicopter, after just being what she told me,
she says, why don't you call them on Monday? Just

(01:06:50):
update your application, tell me you're a sergeant. Now tell
me you're still interested. I walk into my house. My cat,
you know, four legs and tail and whiskers. I was
walking out of my den with an NYPD aviation patch
in its mouth. If you look at me, she goes like,
this isn't a sign. You better call these people on Monday.

(01:07:14):
I call on Monday. They go, oh, you're a sergeant,
now are you? We may be needing a sergeant what
sooner than we thought because the sergeant was about in
the SI craft accident. Long story short, and I came down,
I get to do for the job. I competed for
the slot and I got picked up in May of
nineteen ninety three as a pilot supervisor on a pilot.

Speaker 1 (01:07:31):
You know. Again, what a series of events that led
to that and ended up being eleven years of year
career too, And it's one of the more interesting. There's
a lot of interesting things that you can do with
in the New York City Police Department. But you're supporting operations.
You know, you can participate in rescues to a degree.
Theirs coordination on the air see rescue component. Of course,
with the guys from the STU, they get trained in
how to repel out of helicopter, especially for situations of

(01:07:53):
that sort if there's a pursuit going on. I retell
me a story about Cops in ninety four. You could
tell it here. They filmed, but they did it. We
almost had some footage if only their cameras were working. Yeah,
I was ninety four.

Speaker 2 (01:08:07):
The TV show Cops. And then we came to New
York days. We were with us for about a week.
And of course you want to slow night. Every slow
we have a TV crew show up things. Yeah, and
I've been in a lot of aviation pursuits chasing cars.
This was one out of a movie where the guy
was going through intersections, going airborne, hitting the ground, sparks
shooting out, the park gets out. The cops chase and

(01:08:29):
they run. They tackle on the whole nine yards con
and I'm like, did you get this? He goes, we
ran out of digital space right before before the pursuit start.
They got none of it. It was ridiculous.

Speaker 1 (01:08:41):
But nevertheless, I mean, we'll talk about it here. It's
not off. This is not la right. You can't have
pursuits up the wise, you like, the guy's in the
California Highway Patrol, in the Los Angeles Police Department, for
that matter, at Los Angeles County Sheriff's Office do too.
The roads are not open an island or something. But nevertheless,
when it came situations like that, when guys on the

(01:09:03):
ground were chasing purps, tell me about the aviation Well,
it's kind of interesting.

Speaker 2 (01:09:07):
I got to the aviation unit at a very pivotal time.
The NYPD Aviation Unit was it's the first police aviation
unit in the world. They were founded in nineteen twenty nine.
And that's a benefit and it's a detriment. It was

(01:09:28):
a unit that was very set in its ways, and
they were overly specialized. And I remember, let's let's let's
rewind to nineteen eighty four, go way back to nineteen
eighty four. Nine years I was in Los Angeles taking
the LAPD test and I ran into a cop at
a police facility and he says, have you been up
on a helicopters? I didn't even know I was allowed

(01:09:50):
to go in your helicopter. So goes, he goes, let
me call the watch commander. And they called up and
it goes, if you go down there now, they'll put
on patrol. Really yeah, a cop in the Bronx TSK force,
And it was an eye opener. How integrated into patrol
these their helicopters. Remember it was election day and I

(01:10:12):
came back to New York still this wide eyed, idealistic
street cop, and I said, you know, I got to
call the Aviation Unit and tell them what I witnessed
in LA. You know, maybe they could, you know, look
into integrating these tactics. And they blew me off. I
got a five minute meeting with their CEO and he's like,

(01:10:33):
you don't understand helicopters don't work that way in New York.
I'm like, well, why can't they? You haven't you haven't
explained that to me, And then there was no good answer.
So Captain Bill Wilkins back in ninety three when I
got assigned aviation, he just passed away. He was a
phenomenal commanding Officer of Aviation, probably the best CEO, definitely

(01:10:54):
the best CEO that you had with the time I
was there eleven years. He was very invested in getting
the unit more integrated into the day to day operations
of the NPTRO Force and Issue three husing Midtown North,

(01:11:15):
Midtown South, TPF BRONX Task Force. Never once seeing the
police telepicopter have anything to do with the job I
was on perp search for pursuit. They were this specialized
unit that was tucked to the way Floyd to the
field that and Captain Wilkins was like, this is going

(01:11:38):
to change. We're going to integrate ourselves into patrol and
we're going to get into the business of the police work.
And he goes as a new sergeant here, I'm counting
on you and a couple other new sergeants to make
this happen. And it was a heavy lift because you're
shifting a paradigm and you're changing people's comfort level and

(01:11:58):
turning them. They used to go out and do a
beach patrol, or do an infrastructure patrol, do a traffic patrol,
come back to base. Meanwhile, the seven five anti crimes
in pursuit the backyard and have a helicopter. Meanwhile, it
was a vehicle pursuit in the three four, it was
a purse search. In the seven five. I'm like, we
got to get off SOD radio, get busy division radios

(01:12:20):
and start chasing backs. And that started around when I
got to the unit in May of ninety three, and
it was it was fantastic helping to take that unit
from an only specialized meat in a little box, you know,
in case of emergency brake glass and integrate it into
everyday patrol and and to have a core mission backing

(01:12:44):
up cops on the street.

Speaker 1 (01:12:45):
And of course that's as you mentioned. Los Angeles. A
friend of mine sent with us and he wanted me
to ask it refuse to pay for parking Manhattan and Jack.

Speaker 2 (01:12:58):
Danley listen to that man, I know for a fact
he was confined to a mental institution two months going
on surprisest phone prove.

Speaker 1 (01:13:09):
He said, you drive around Manhattan, refused to pay for parking,
driver around for an hour until he found a free
parking spot and always would say, and I quote, it's
in the principle.

Speaker 2 (01:13:22):
Jack shaff rilege of knowing in my life and one
of my best friends in the whole world. He did
you interviewed him. He has had a story career with
the l A p D. He was in Metro, he
was in Canine. He was a TFO, which is the
toughest job in a modern American law enforcement, which is

(01:13:42):
a tactical flight officer, which is basically observer in a
police helicopic. He was a commanding instructive pilot. And he's
a close personal friend of mine and we'll both be
teaching at the Police Aviation Conference of Europe together in Germany
in May. Nice and getting back to the parking. Whenever
he's in New York, we go out to eat in

(01:14:03):
Manhattan and I just have a principle, I don't pay
to park. Call it being cheap, call it being just stubborn.
And he would like after the forty five minutes of
circling Tony's Napolis restaurant in Manhattan. For God's sakes, take
it to the most expensive parking lot. I'll pay for it.
Just park the goddamn car. I'm like, no, It's like

(01:14:24):
Jeygeter stands are getting the perfect parking spot, like the
spot exists. This is this is the white whale I
may have. We're gonna find the perfect parking spot. We're
gonna park this car, Combine him with my other good
friend who's a retired FBI pilot, and have him both
in the car. Screamed in my ears. Park the damn car,
and it just got more of a challenge. There was
no inner that would go to a pay a lot.

Speaker 1 (01:14:44):
I mean, listen, even in Connecticut downtown New eve and
it's it's you know, listen, it's a nightmare find parking.
Sometimes it's magnified times twenty five while you're in Manhattan,
and then that's any park. It's not just reliated to
Manett and there's thirty it doesn't matter where you go. Like
I said, even parts of that now, I'm sure it's
difficult that it's been a little bit more towny and rural.

(01:15:04):
No offense to them, you know, it's a nightmare. It's
a nightmare. And why pay if you don't have principle,
Because I'm one that likes the penny bench when it's necessary,
of course, But I love what you said earlier. Getting
back to aviation, you are the eyes and ears for
the guys in the ground. There's a lot of moving parts.
They don't know everything. They don't know where a guy's hiding.

(01:15:24):
I meant, not even that the guys. Girls are taking
off from them, Pedestrians getting the way, other cars get
in the way sometimes and they don't mean to, but
you can't blame them. They're all hopped up. They get
tunnel vision too. You see what they don't see, where
the guy's hiding. He's got away. How many times have
we seen cops not just in New York City but

(01:15:45):
anywhere get seriously her if not killed in the line
of duty when they're coming around and tapping. Plenty of
time in the past in New York City, perps behind
the dumpster, purps got a gun, Purp comes out, blast
the cop away. Who knows how many situations like that
aviation has presented are prevented rather by saying hey, by
the way, be able to look out. He's reaching for something. Boom,
that's where your eye is above you don't well what.

Speaker 2 (01:16:06):
Was very enlightening. Is one of my jobs as a
sergeant aviation units. Every time there was a new sergeant's
class going to the sergeant's academy or lieutenant's class or
captain's class, go in. I would give a block of
instructions to the capabilities and limitations of aviation and the
first question I would ask, these are seasoned people that
were just promoted to sergeant, lieutenant, captain. And in five

(01:16:28):
I go in there and ask what rank is required
to request an NYPD helicopter to a job? And I
would get duty, captain, duty chief, duty inspector. Says rookie
cop one day on the street, this is a police
car that flies, and it's not a super specialized piece
of equipment anymore. We're trying to break that mold. If

(01:16:50):
you think you need a cause, if we can determine
if we can make a positive effect on the job
or not. But let us worry about getting there and
getting the job done. If you're in doubt, call because
I've heard cops yelled at on division radio. Have Aviation
respond to a sergeant can get on the air side,
cancel it. I'm like, aviation's the sergeants, we're responding, we

(01:17:12):
have no problem with this job. It was so inculcated
in the mindset of the New York City Police to
form that aviation was the super specialized thing. Don't you
dare call for them? And it's just a waste of
money and resources if they're not used routinely.

Speaker 1 (01:17:27):
Right and again, you know, competence is key. Having guys
not only who know what they're doing in terms of
being able to fly the aircraft is one thing, but
just being able to survey, you know how many and
again it gets emphasized in the police academy. It follows
you over the course of your career. It's the same
thing in the fire department too. And you've heard it
a bunch of times over the court of those twenty
three years. And I'm sure it's not you teach now

(01:17:48):
you've been in retirement. Attention to detail, it's so critical,
especially in a unit like that, the slightest details missed
that things can go wrong. We're talking with Glenn Day
here in the Mike Dinavi the podcast, volume fifty four
of the Event inside the NYPD's Emergency Service student. Now,
when you got there in ninety three before or after

(01:18:09):
the Trade Center bombing, because I know aviation was helping
make rescues that day.

Speaker 2 (01:18:13):
That was a textbook high rise rescue that took place
the bombing in February of ninety three. I got there
in May of ninety three, so I wasn't there the first.
I used that as as I teach a class on
high rise rescue. In the ninety three bombing was a
textbook case of how to execute a high rise rescue.

Speaker 1 (01:18:31):
Yeah, they did a great job with that. I know
they couldn't unfortunately, do the same thing eight years later,
which we'll talk about momentarily just because of the conditions
at the top of the towers with all the smoke.
But nevertheless, in nineteen ninety three, you know, and there's
a lot of great stories that have emerged out of that. Boy,
did aviation and emergency Service do a hell of a
job under some really really difficult circumstances. Now, Hurricane Floyd

(01:18:53):
in ninety nine, just a quick note on that. When
that hit, I know ESU went mutual a truck. Five
trucks typically went out the Saddlebrook New Jersey bound Brooke,
New Jersey to help out Port Thorty police went to, Uh,
did aviation have a hand in that?

Speaker 2 (01:19:06):
And all you guys state no bound Brook. Yeah, they
we sent him up. I wasn't working that night. They
sent a couple of helicopters. They were actually doing something
called the Bambab bucket, which is a water bucket that
we fight brush fires with. They were doing bamby bucket
water drops on commercial businesses that were on the fire.

(01:19:26):
It was the weirdest thing in the world. The town
flooded then caught fire. It sounds oxymeronic, but that's.

Speaker 1 (01:19:31):
How it was. It was. It was a very difficult
situation where you work in the morning of hey, guy,
a second of John Latanzio, Uh, yep, they were there, yep.
Uh and uh. Mike Granat put this in the chat
to the Transit police. Helicopter and submarine required a duty
inspector for higher response. Yes, I any way, Transit had
a helicopter. I don't know if you're being facetious, Mike,

(01:19:52):
but nevertheless.

Speaker 2 (01:19:53):
That is super super factious.

Speaker 1 (01:19:55):
Okay, okay, good. I didn't know if they did, or
I didn't think they did. I know how he was
trying to get one before the merger, but they weren't
quite able to get aviation of their own before ninety five.
And as a good friend of mine told me, nine
to eleven aviation, you know, it's the iconic and it's
iconic for all the wrong reasons. No fault of airs,
it was just a horrible situation. Billy Candauties in the helicopter,

(01:20:15):
Greg Simmen Dinger's in the helicopter as well, flying it.
I believe. I don't know who else was with them,
but I know those two for a fact. Would flying
that day where you worked in that day? Or did
you get down later?

Speaker 2 (01:20:26):
I got down later. I was home with my wife
and her girlfriend who works with one PP called up
and said, Hey, a plane just crashed into the World
Trade cutting. You might want to let glenno. He might
have to go to work, you know, because it was
a lieutenant aviation on nine to eleven. And I was like,
probably just a not probably just but I'm sure it's

(01:20:48):
not something really horrible. It's a Cessna or something. There's
plenty of people on do you staff the aviation you know,
Let me make a couple of phone calls and see
what's going on if I have to go to work.
As I was walking out of the bedroom on the
TV the second plying hands, so I'm like, I gotta

(01:21:08):
get to work, and I'm got to get to work
right away. I made what normally took me fifteen minutes
ride to work, I made in thirty five minutes, and
just to completely destroy the side of the brakes on
my car that day, I pulled into the hangar clib
And field. There were four little columns of smoke coming
up from my wheel well, so I towarded my brakes
and I.

Speaker 1 (01:21:25):
Don't believe you that was if there was ever a
day to do something like that made sense. And it's
tough because I mean when we got down there, I'm sure,
but by both points, by that rather, both towers were down.
No aviation. Thankfully didn't lose anybody. But I mean, yeah,
I'm imagining you knew all the guys in emergency that
got killed from work. Yeah, you know, that was tough.

(01:21:46):
And you know, just after something like that, knowing those
guys being down at the site, a lot of guys
retired in two thousand and two because of the overtime
they were doing it down at the site and the
way the pensions maget and I think they got stay
time at it. I think Richie told me something like
that a while ago. Teams from that is, before he died.
He mentioned something like that in an off their conversation.
It was time added. So not leaving in two thousands,

(01:22:08):
you didn't leave till four What made you stick around
those extra years.

Speaker 2 (01:22:12):
I had the best job in the world. I was
a lieutenant pilot instruck, the pilot in the NYPD aviation Unit.
It didn't get any better than that. There was no
big financial drive to retire, you know, I was. I
was doing fine. My wife's on a job, so the
two incomes and everything. I just loved what I was

(01:22:33):
doing and so what I had the best job in
the world, So I was in no rush to.

Speaker 1 (01:22:38):
Retire normally just to go back. When guys get promoted,
they have to get moved out of your unit in
most instances, which is tough because especially if you're in
a great spot like take the guys in the emergency.
I always think about Mike Kurt, for example. Mike Kurt
was having the time of his life and he to
make sergeant. He got back to ESU eventually in nineteen
ninety eight, and he stayed there until he died in
nine to eleven. But nevertheless, I can't imagine how tough

(01:22:59):
that was for him. Did you didn't seem like you
have to lead?

Speaker 2 (01:23:02):
I achieved the impossible. I went from sergeant to lieutenant
Aviation Unit and never left. And again, it's about being
at the right time, at the right place. In April
of two thousand, the Aviation unit had to give a

(01:23:24):
presentation to the executive all the executives in the NYPDA.
I believe it was two stars in higher or one
star in high. Basically every chief commissioner, deputy commissioner was
an all in the one room at the same time,
and somebody had to give them a presentation on aviation
unit capabilities and limitations. At the time, we had a

(01:23:45):
commanding officer who was brand new in the unit no
aviation background, didn't feel comfortable talking about the unit with
his limited knowledge of aviation and asked me, as a sergeant,
would I be willing to give the presentation. It's sure
I gave the presentation. I must have made a very
positive impact on the people in the room, specifically Joe Dunn,

(01:24:08):
who was the first step. Yeah, that come October that year,
I was slated to be promoted the lieutenant and they
reached out to me and said we'd like you to
stay in the aviation unit. It was and I was
so struggling with it that I was ready to give
up the promotion to stay in the aviation as a sergeant.
I loved my job that much. Being a flying sergeant

(01:24:31):
to me was better than being a desk lieutenant some prisons.
But I was able to have it both. I've had
the most blessed career, no complaints.

Speaker 1 (01:24:42):
No, I mean listen, and you were and as a
remember and we can kind of talk about it down
before I hit on your retirement and four you were
almost going to go to the LAPD. And that's nothing
against the LAPD, lapds l of the department and so on. Right,
Jack knows he was there. There's a lot you can
do out there. There's two departments that are widely portrayed
a television and film. It's either the NYPD or it's

(01:25:05):
the LAPD. But that decision, in hindsight, proved to be
a fruitful one. And that's again nothing against the agency,
but looking at what you were able I was.

Speaker 2 (01:25:13):
I was one day away from moving to Los Angeles.
I had my letter of resignation in with the NYPD,
I had an apartment rented in the San Fernando Valley.
I was accepted to the police Academy. I was starting
the next week. And the day before I was supposed
to leave, I got cold feet and said, if I'm
this unsettled about such a monumental decision, I'm sticking with

(01:25:34):
what I know. I stayed.

Speaker 1 (01:25:37):
And look and again that to be the right decision,
because look at what you were able to do over
the course of years.

Speaker 2 (01:25:43):
It worked out in retrospect it was it was the
exact right move to make, and I would have had
a ball out there. But it's a department one quarter
of the size of the NYPD. One quart of the
opportunities of going to a unit like SWAT would would
be like the issue one quart of the opportunities of
going to a unit like Aviation Air Support out there.

(01:26:04):
So it's just a lot less movement and a lot
more competition. And again, things happened very weirdly and for
a reason with my career in NYPD, So I'm things
all happen for a reason.

Speaker 1 (01:26:17):
I'm a big question. No, I mean I neither do it.
I'm a big believer that over the course of certain
things in my own life. So that brings us into
two thousand and four best job in the world, as
you said, But nevertheless, the fun eventually has to add,
you know, time having fun those twenty three years by
the blink of night. What was it ultimately made you say, Okay,
time to go.

Speaker 2 (01:26:38):
I was having well, will be as diplomatic as possible,
but I was having creative differences with my boss, and
it was Murphy's law. I'm a lieutenant in aviation. You
and I have one person I have to answer to
who have to be a captain, and we will like
cats and dogs, and it was it was becoming onerous.

(01:26:59):
It was because coming a pain in the ass. And
I was working part time for Sikorski Aircraft, flying something
called an S seventy six, which is a very fancy
corporate helicopter, and I was part timing there, and then
they kept asking me to come full time. And the
push came to shelving at the aviation unit, where I
was tired of butting heads and decided to take take

(01:27:21):
a job. They often be a full time position flying
a place called Sikorski Shares Associate Aircraft Group, and.

Speaker 1 (01:27:29):
So the private sector is interesting. Jim McVeigh would know
too because he did it, and I seen John Tanti's comment. Yes,
crosstrating with those units like aviation was awesome, as he
says hello to calib beards as well, good to see
you in the chat, my friend. But that be said
the privacy sector VIP pilot for a little bit, and
then you were flating truck leader on out Worcester Counting
with the PD. How much fun was that if at all?

(01:27:50):
Just being able to fly and again flying some pretty
big people. Imagine in terms of the world.

Speaker 2 (01:27:55):
I was flying corporate up until last year two thousand
and four to twenty twenty four, twenty years.

Speaker 1 (01:28:01):
So that was something you were already doing essentially on
the side during the day, all right, So tell me
about to gain the notable experiences that you had with
that prior to it's.

Speaker 2 (01:28:10):
Very, very different. It's if you're doing your job right,
it's not exciting and shouldn't get exciting. The goal is
to keep it as boring as possible for the people
in the back, and like anything else, it gets routine,
which it gets when you get you're doing the same

(01:28:30):
thing over and over again. You're not doing the purp
searches anymore, you're not doing the air ceat rescues anymore.
You're not having an issue repel out of the back
of your helicopter anymore. You're flying hedge fund managers from
their home in Greenwich or the Hudson Valley to Manhattan
or to the Hampton's back and forth. And the job
satisfaction you get in that is flying precisely and professionally

(01:28:54):
and safely. That's where you take your job satisfaction where
the job satisfaction used to be assisting in a suspect
search and forget catching the bad guy or rescue in
the family who went out for a little after their
boat and the boats sank and you pull them out
of the river, saving their lives. It was a different
kind of satisfaction. It's very lucrative, it's very competitive. It's

(01:29:19):
it's you know, you get very spoiled working in the
NYPD with civil service jobs come and go in the
private sector at the drop of a hat Monday, you
might have it with the best job in the private
sector in Tuesday, might be gone.

Speaker 1 (01:29:31):
That's true, it's very fleeting. I get it, as you know,
and as ship notist. So we'll merge two together before
we get to the rapid fire. Westchester County Police O.
Eight to twenty twelve. It is their flight instructor and
also two thousand and nine of the present day, as
you mentioned you and to be teaching with Jack in
Europe in May the Police Aviation Conference of Europe. So
tell me about getting those two jobs in the most
rewarding part of each.

Speaker 2 (01:29:52):
Well. At west Chester County in two thousand and eight,
they had a commissioner who was a former NYPD chief
named Bellefiori, and he took over, and he has this
aviation unit that he knows nothing about, and wanted to
vet the unit and have it have it basically audited,
to see if there's anything that he should worry about

(01:30:15):
with the unit, or you know, he wanted he wanted
to see if what he was being told by the
people he had in the unit was good information. And
he hired me to come in and order the unit.
And I spent a month looking at every fast of
the unit and I wrote a very in depth report
as to here's just present state of the command. These

(01:30:39):
are the missions you can properly execute, These are the
ones with a little bit of training you can execute.
And these are the ones you shouldn't be executing unless
you get a lot of training. And told him he
had a safe operation as long as they colored within
the lines and didn't do missions beyond their capability. And
he said, well, how would you like to be a
contract intrupt a pilot for US? I sall, I'm working

(01:31:02):
flying VIPs. That's my real job. He goes, you make
it your own hours. Do you want to work one
day a week, two days a week, three days a week,
three days of a month. It was capped as on
an hourly to one hundred hours a year. But I
want you to come in and mentor the pilots I
have and help my operation get to the next level.

(01:31:24):
So I did that for four years and it was fun.
It gave me my fix of police aviation because you know,
flying VIPs is around all the day long. I said,
it's you're still flying a helicopter around New York City,
which is fantastic, but you still have that desire to
go chase bad guys. And it gave me my fix

(01:31:44):
to chasing bad guys and a police helicopter and working
with some really fantastic people. These guys were great. It
was Yes, it was a pleasure to work.

Speaker 1 (01:31:53):
With them, absolutely, and I'm sure that for.

Speaker 2 (01:31:55):
Four years and basically trained myself out of a job
with ever. We're all taken to the next level of flying.
And they didn't need the flight instructor anymore and they
developed their own ne house flight instructors and they have
a fantastic unit that's doing wonderful things to this day.

Speaker 1 (01:32:10):
Absolutely, and it's a pretty enjoyable and sizable department. And
so it may not be New York City, but sure
in Westchester County you're still going to see a due
a whole a lot, and now too, just teaching around
Europe and I imagine other parts of the world as well.
You're still active in it. You know, it still keeps
you going, which is important. You got to have a
busy retirement and a lot of guys go off in

(01:32:30):
Santaday and I hope with a particular friend, Danny McNally
retired out of the bombing squad or raced retirement. It's
a full time in business. It's a hard thing to
do so, still traveling and still sharing typic guys around
the world, same job, different approaches. What's the most enjoyable
part of that?

Speaker 2 (01:32:47):
What's very frustrating? Aviation? And I teach two types of classes.
I teach procedural classes, which are basically, Okay, here's a
high rise fire situation. How do you approach it from
a police aviation or public service aviation point of view?
And do effective rescues or decide whether it's beyond your
capability and don't. And then I do safety driven classes,
where there are no new ways to crash helicopters and airplanes.

(01:33:13):
It's human factors, it's technical factors, it's environmental factors. But
people keep killing themselves in helicopters and airplanes. And I
tell my courses to take the top leading causes of accidents,
pick them apart factored by factor, and develop strategies for

(01:33:36):
not repeating other people's mistakes.

Speaker 1 (01:33:39):
Critical thing to do of course today's day and agent
I just think about it, even though it's in the
private sector or wasn't anything public. An army guy was
flying it though, And that helicopter that went down with
the family a couple of months back, and it was terrible.
You know, you're looking at factors like that, even though
you wish these things didn't happen, these poor people didn't
get killed, just seeing again what was the errors and

(01:34:01):
how can we prevent them so that situations like this don't,
you know, continue to occur in the future. Those are
the silver linings. Imagine you pure yourself and so many
incidents occurring now or of yesteryear for that very reason.

Speaker 2 (01:34:14):
So it's all lessons learned. And unfortunately, there's no shortage
of material for my classes. Every I'm teaching classes next
month in Germany and in Spain in May, and between
now and those classes I'm giving, there will be recent
accidents that I will point to in my presentation. Unfortunately,

(01:34:37):
and people just don't learn, and they keep committing the
same accidents over and over and over again, and it's very,
very frustrating. And when I begin a class, I go,
I have done my job in this class if every
pilot in this room has a long, fruitful career and
retires in one piece, pretty much like when I was
teaching the tactics and a shoe Lessons learned. There's an

(01:35:00):
analogy I draw. There's a class that I teach call
inadvertent instrument meteorological conditions survival. What does that mean? In English?
The number one way of killing yourself or getting killed
in a helicopter is flight into whether that you have
a plan for, and then you do one of two things.

(01:35:20):
You either continually slow down and you lower and slower
and lower and slower trying to get out of the weather,
and you impact terrain or obstruction, so you can hit
the TV antent or a building or a hilltop or
a mountain, or you climb into the clouds. Are not
license for flight under instruments, equip the aircraft for flight

(01:35:42):
and the instruments, or are comfortable with flight under instruments,
and you lose control of the aircraft and you kill yourself.
This is the number one killer of people in a helicopters.
They're earlier responsible for about ten percent of the accidents
there responsible for fifty per cent of the deaths. That
being said one of my slides. Because most of the
people I instruct on a police aviators, I use a

(01:36:04):
gunfight analogy. I draw a little bit on my issue
tactics background. I said, gunfight and invert and instrument meteorological conditions.
What do they have a common I says, you may
go twenty year career and never have to use either
on of these skills win a gunfight or fight for
your life and helicopter in the clouds. But when it happens,

(01:36:25):
what you do in the next seconds determines whether you
live or die. And they're both one, they're both.

Speaker 1 (01:36:34):
Both.

Speaker 2 (01:36:35):
I firmly believe that officer involves shootings. Eighty percent of
them can be prevented through the use of good tactics.
How you approach a car and a car stop, how
you interview somebody on the street, how you go to
a family dispute. Do you go right to the floor
of the gun run that you're going to or do

(01:36:56):
you go to the floor below and take the stairs
the last floor so can't surprise men elevator. Good tactics
prevent gunfights. Good flying tactics and good flying SOPs and
personal minimums keep you out of these imc situations. But
once you're in, you're in a battle for your life

(01:37:16):
and there's no cramp. It's like when you get into gunfights,
you can't go time out. I'm gonna go to the
range in fire fifty rounds. When you fly into a cloud.
All of the training that you didn't do over the
last twelve months is not there to help you anymore.
It's where the rubber meets the road, and what you
do in the next couple of minutes determines whether you're
gonna live or die. I draw that analogy a lot
on bad tactics and police work and aviation safety because

(01:37:43):
people keep making the same mistakes over and over, whether
it's getting involved in shootings or crashing helicopters. They're not
learning from other mistakes.

Speaker 1 (01:37:53):
And you know something, It goes back to something you
said earlier in the program about when you were of
course the work and playing clothes. Guys know when they
woke up that they were gonna go to the jail.
But they are same thing guys from here. And it's
sad to say what you're right from here to May
when you go to Spain with Jack, guys don't know
they're gonna crash their helicopters, either get seriously injured or guilt.

(01:38:14):
But they're gonna for the reasons that you mentioned to
your point on tactics, I'm sure, and it's still the
case in precincts across the city. And I'm sure you
saw plenty of it in your precincts too. What was
the most common sticker? And a lot of these locker
lockers rather proper tactics save lives. It was just as
true when you get on the job in nineteen eighty one.
It's just as true now in twenty twenty.

Speaker 2 (01:38:33):
I mean, because with the advent of body worn cameras,
there is an endless supply of videos. You can watch
it on YouTube. Yeah, and I watched them, and I'm like,
who on earth taught this cop that this is the
right way to approach the situation?

Speaker 3 (01:38:49):
Yeah?

Speaker 2 (01:38:50):
And you know, one of the one of the deficiencies
of the NYPD, they've always been very reluctant to critique shootings,
especially when an officer is shot and or killed. And
that's the antithesis with the LAPD. They do deep dives
in Los Angeles still, like, if one of our cops
are shot or killed, something has gone terribly wrong and

(01:39:13):
we're got to do a really, really deep dive to
get the lessons learned out so the next person doesn't
get killed like disc officer. And the NYPD has always
been very, very, very reluctant. I won't say second guests,
but to analyze confrontation situations, gunfights, seriously injured and killed

(01:39:35):
cops and say how did this go wrong? And they're
they're very overly protective of cops involved in these shootings,
where if you're just burying the cop without doing a
good after action report, you're burying the answer is to
save the next cop with that cop.

Speaker 1 (01:39:54):
And here's where I think about that. Omar Edwards two
thousand and nine, chasing the purp off duty cop that's
responding things. He's the part because he sees him with
the gun in his hand, shoots and kills the poor kid.
Get had two years in the job? Was my age?
I'm twenty five. He was twenty five back in two
thousand and nine. Okay, fast forward ten years later, Brian
Simon said, gets killed responding to a robbery. What killed them?

(01:40:17):
Friendly fire? Not even a full calendar year later, Brian
mulkeen is rolling around with the suspect in the Bronx.
He gets shot, he dies. What killed them? Friendly fire?
And you almost want to scream, have we learned nothing?
There's ten years that passed from those respective shootings, from
Omar getting killed to both Brian's both Simon sin and

(01:40:40):
animal Mulkeen getting killed. Exactly ten years later in twenty nineteen,
we almost had a cop get killed. Thankfully he was
when he was seriously hurt in a friendly fire shooting
in Queens. Can we please analysis? So quite simply, and
I love the NYPD, I say, for a place of love,
can we please analysis? So guys don't die? We need
to send them home.

Speaker 2 (01:41:00):
The dirty little secret is when you're talking street cops,
increasing gleve of cops in New York, you have quantity
when you're dealing with firearms and tactics training to go
into the range. Nowadays once a year, one solitary time
a year. They're getting minimal tactics training. They're getting minimal

(01:41:22):
firearms training, and they're being shoved down into the street
and toll go, do a good job.

Speaker 1 (01:41:26):
It's just not gonna end well. They're ill equipped in
a lot of those regards. And I think the more
emphasis on training essentially. I remember the late great Howard
Safer telling me this in the program where he said
it best to running the NYPD was like running an army,
and it was just as true as when he was
Commissioner from nineteen ninety six until two thousand. It's just
as true now for Jessica Tistion to anybody else. You may

(01:41:47):
run the New York City Police Department in the future.
You have to invest in training if you are going
to run an agency, any agency, let alone one on
this size of this size, right, I can't speak English today.
Tactics tactics, tactics, How do you get good tactics? Good
training and hammering home the bullet points. The slightest mistake
can be the difference between you going home at the
end of the day or your name being added to

(01:42:09):
the memorial wall. And listen. Sometimes sometimes you can do
everything right, something can still go terribly wrong. There's situations like.

Speaker 2 (01:42:16):
Those are the very small, both both in aviation accidents
and police tactical situations. You get ambush, you can't prevent.
You turn the corner and some amost starts shooting at
your arm page. It's game on. Time to get serious.
That couldn't be avoided. But so many of these situations

(01:42:37):
can be affoida well once they start little. I watched
a video recently. I forget what precinct was that it
was within the last year of this big long vehicle
pursuit and at the end they start shooting at the
occupant of the vehicle. Well, he's got a woman and
a baby in a car and they run into the crossfire.
I'm like, who caught these cops or what these cops get?

Speaker 1 (01:43:02):
I mean, listen, something like what happened to the detective
is lomp back in July. He can't do anything about that.
It's not his fault that some animal walked into that
lobby and ambushed him and shot him dead along with
a few other people. That's a bit of a different story.
Same thing with what happened to Rivera and Moreau. You know,
a few years ago, they were ambushed. They were simply
trying to do their job and this same thing, that
animal came out of the one of the closets, from

(01:43:23):
one of the rooms, that started firing on them, and
they're and the third officer that was with them that
night something like you know what we saw again and
that was the shooting out was talking about in Queens
where they're trying to make a stop I think on
a robbery suspect, you know, and all of a sudden,
detectives trying to yank him out of the car. Cops
start firing. They hit that detective in the arm. That
bullet moves a few inches to the left, a few inches
to the right. He's dead, you know. And again, it's

(01:43:45):
been six years since Simonson, it's been six years since
mal Keene. It's been sixteen years since Edwards. Have we
learned anything?

Speaker 2 (01:43:52):
Oh?

Speaker 1 (01:43:53):
When we have repeat incidents like that, that's my answer to, No,
we haven't. I'm going to tell you this right now,
and it breaks my heart to say it. And you
know this, you said your someone's gonna die.

Speaker 2 (01:44:02):
Someone's gonna So it's an all a matter of priorities.
It's it's not a priority for the NYP. They they
deemphasize anything to do with firearms, and so it's almost
like a necessary evil like they would deep down. I'm
sure I wish you didn't even have to carry if
like the UK, like they're like, well, if we have to,
let let's just do the minimum and be happy with that.

(01:44:22):
And it's ridiculous. The training has always been deficient. I mean,
when I came to the police academy, I'm like, that's it.

Speaker 1 (01:44:29):
It's you know that there has to be more of
an investment in it, and I think there's a lot of
programs that you can take money from that maybe aren't
needed in the New York City Police Department. Invest the round.
You don't have to lose the money, just you know,
reroute the money somewhere route where it's more efficient and
more effective.

Speaker 2 (01:44:44):
And you know it's a it's a big, A big
problem is it's just logistics. It's thirty five thousand members
of the service with one range, with so many points,
with so many days a year to train, then it's
just not scaled to produce that many proficient cops.

Speaker 1 (01:45:03):
It's one facility too. I think if you had multiple
outside facilities you can use like I think the trans
the police used to use Calverton back in the day
as a range. If you can just contract and I
know it costs a lot of money, but if it's
worth it as long as guys are properly trained. If
you can contact some of these ranges in the nearby
New York, New Jersey or even Connecticut area and say, listen, guys,
I know it's a pay in the neck, but we

(01:45:25):
know we only have one facility, facility out in Robin's Neck.
This is good for training we'll pay for the day.
We'll do whatever it is that we need to do
to compensate you guys for your time. We'll run you
out to Long Island, or run you out to Jersey
or running out to a certain part of Connecticut. Do
this training and we'll run it multiple times a year
across a variety commands. You'll see the improvement in due time.
But again it's a matter of if they want to priorities.

Speaker 2 (01:45:47):
That's it's simply not a priority.

Speaker 1 (01:45:48):
And that's again everyone hopes the best.

Speaker 2 (01:45:51):
Some whistles past the grave yard.

Speaker 1 (01:45:52):
And we'll put a bow on it with this. Like
I said earlier, I hate to say it, and I
don't mean them the show on a sour note like this,
before we get to the rapid fire, some one is
going to die, and then what and then what? We'll
get to the rabid fire now, but after, of course,
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six ninety seven. Okay, thank you, Vince and the frying
folk find folks, I cannot speak. It has been a
long week of EMS training and I have lost my
grip on the English language. But that's okay. You guys

(01:47:58):
still love me anyway, and I appreciate that. So it
is have time for the rapid fire, where hopefully my
grammar will stay with me at least whatever I have
left of it. And you've answered most of these questions,
so I'm gonna have to take the rabbit fire a bit.
So the first question is funniest call you ever responded to?
Patrol ESU or otherwise? Oh God that you can say,

(01:48:19):
passed it if you want.

Speaker 2 (01:48:20):
If it's too tough, well I'll come back to it
if I think of it. And I've been on this
is a weird situation. A cop would find it funny.
Probably anybody else would We're on forty second Street in
TPF and we walked past an alley just south of
forty second Street on seventh Avenue, and this guy emerges
out of the shadows and goes, come here. He's obviously

(01:48:41):
a needp. He goes, I'm an undercover. I have I
have very important information for the commissioner. I'm like, okay, right.
He pulls out a shield holder that has the cutout
for the shield in your ID card. I'm like, this
guy's legit. He opens it up and the place of
the shield is around kitchen cabinet knob. This is my shield.

(01:49:04):
I have these very secret papers to the police commissioner.
So I took the papers that included him bristly and
we left.

Speaker 1 (01:49:11):
I do that funny that it's pretty good, and it
is pretty good. As far as models of the aircraft
drug concerned, what was your favorite one to fly and why?

Speaker 2 (01:49:19):
And NYPD Bell four twelve, we had one Sorrow model
the last thirty years. One was a full up Sorrow
model search and rescue model, which had full hands off,
hover capability, takeoff capability. It flew totally hands free and
for offshore rescues. That's because of the mission involved with
the Ansty rescue. I've flown some very cool helicopter since

(01:49:44):
I've retired, but the Bell four twelve still my favorite.

Speaker 1 (01:49:46):
One. Lesson guys that were new in aviation that you
felt it was critical besides not the obviously safe, that
it was critical for them to learn and know.

Speaker 2 (01:49:56):
Remember why you're there. You're there to support the cops
on the ground or rescue people. I used to I
used to always joke I'd come into the muffet room
and people would be goofing off, you know, watching TV
or you know reading the paper. I say, any hour
of the night of day. Here what you should be
involved in, should further your ability to chase bad guys,

(01:50:19):
back up cops or rescue civilians. Just remember what the
core mission is. Everyone gets wrapped around on the axelon
attaining ratings and certifications that will help them in their
retiring career and have wonderful careers as corporate pilots are
doing whatever they do in the retire but sometimes they
lose sight of what the core mission is, why they're

(01:50:40):
there in those hangars afoid minute field in the first place.

Speaker 1 (01:50:43):
Well said, speaking of the Feldspar time in su It's
the most underrated skill that you feel it's critic.

Speaker 2 (01:50:49):
Nots, nots and rope work.

Speaker 1 (01:50:51):
There you go. Listen that same thing in the fire
service too. I'm doing a lot of those for my
Fire one Fire two class right now, a lot of knots.
So I agree with you. Lockstaff one hundred ever said,
it's important for both professionals. You know, even though you
enjoyed the entire your career between housing and of course
ultimately being on the NYPD for those twenty one of
the twenty three years as you were a police officer
in the five boroughs, what does it mean to you

(01:51:13):
personally too, if not only worn in that patch, but
also the aviation patch.

Speaker 2 (01:51:18):
I just feel exceedingly lucky. I've had, like I said before,
a blessed career. I've been in two of the most
sought after units and the NYPD had a wonderful time
in both being and coming from aviation. It's given me
a whole nother career that I've been doing for twenty
years since I retired. It just it it's a feeling

(01:51:42):
of accomplishment. There's two things I said early on in
my life. I want to do abe a cop once
I've gotten the police performance that the issue is where
I got to go. I got to figure way to
get there, and I was able to pull that off.
And then listening to that girlfriend that day, it says,
stop looking at the god damn plane and go out
and learn how to fly him. And then the very

(01:52:03):
next week find someone that put me in touch with
a flight instructor.

Speaker 1 (01:52:06):
Change your life, change your life, and of course look
at where you are now. So this was highly enjoyable
stick around. We'll talk off air before I say goodbye
to our lovely audience tonight. If you have any shout
outs clanted floors yours fire away.

Speaker 2 (01:52:18):
No, So everyone I've worked with in my career, you're
watching them. Just thanks for fantastic memories and for keeping
me safe. I watch your interviews and every week I
used to work with him. I used to work with him,
that guy, That guy's even civilians. You and NJ Berg
and I rescued his dog one day on fifty seventh

(01:52:40):
Street where a junkie kidnapped his little Scottish terror and
was running away with him. Like I know that guy too.

Speaker 1 (01:52:47):
Yes, as soon as we get off the air later on,
to see you and to go with the text NJ,
and I'll mention that the cop who saved Innigan was
on my program tonight and sentences regards, so I'm sure
and J I'll get a kick out of that. And
he's still going strong. He just actually congratulations lately because
he just got engaged to his long time girlfriend. So
good on him. I don't know when is when he's
get married, of course, but he recently proposed to his girlfriends.
So happy to see that. Good on you. And to

(01:53:09):
day you'll be hearing from me pretty shortly. Like I said,
the ground will talk off here. That's great and I
really enjoyed it.

Speaker 2 (01:53:14):
And one little sidebar I mentioned that day I went
to insert training and I saw the guy from aviation
with the bellifuckle who told me how to get to
get a pilot's license. Yes, that was nineteen eighty six,
nineteen ninety three. I go to the unit, who's to
sign as my flight instructor? That guy Royal Birdie again,

(01:53:35):
one of the finest people I ever had. The privileges
you're working with the NYPD, totally dedicated. We'd work late
tours and he'd come and get me and go, what
are we doing sitting around we can go out and train,
and said guys using on train in the late tours,
he goes, we're gonna gout and train. We'd be out
there a three thirty in the morning teaching me how
to hover helicopter. Patients of a.

Speaker 1 (01:53:51):
Saint guess what you need especially for you didn't like
that or patients has certainly required as guy's angers alike
like try to tie their best rap again, English is
not my friend this week, try their best to learn
these new tactics. So again, thank you. We'll talk all
off air, so stick Thanks to everyone who tuned in
a night. Like I said, folks, my brains are shot

(01:54:11):
because we've been doing so much over in Amar. But
I'm really excited for what lies had on that front.
Of course, that and Fire one and fire too. My
brains are I got a lot of information and I mean,
of course this podcast. So I'll give you a heads up.
For those of you in the audience, there's no show
next Friday because I've worked in the ambulance. I got
a two forty five ten forty five, so I'll be
on the bus, so I won't be able to do
the program at least for that first week. But this Monday,

(01:54:33):
we do have a show and that is going to
be of course featuring Joe Garra, also featuring Nick Colangelo
and Steve Kerr. As we do another edition of the
Best of Both Badges revisiting the nineteen ninety five Williams
were Trained railment as we'll get the perspective of, of course,
all three men who were there and the different roles
they had at that emergency which back in the summer
turned Aside tonight from his eponymously titled nineteen ninety one

(01:54:57):
debut album Seal. It's of course with crazy in the meantime,
behalf of producer Victor who had to leave us early
late to night. That sends his regards and love to
both you and of course the audience and retired NYPD
Emergency Service officer in Aviation Unit. This has been volume
fifty four, the event inside the NYPD's Emergency Service Unit.

(01:55:19):
Michael one, we'll see you next time. Take care of
a great weekend and again stay safe for.

Speaker 4 (01:56:00):
You.

Speaker 3 (01:56:00):
Yes, that's why he goes at far. It still gonna
lock the door.

Speaker 2 (01:56:07):
For those around them. Grady South and sleep and.

Speaker 1 (01:56:16):
I said, were fright.

Speaker 4 (01:56:17):
Tell long my break came Wall I said you my friend,
and touch your fist.

Speaker 3 (01:56:23):
And gass miracles will have a nice get you.

Speaker 2 (01:56:35):
But one never gonna survived.

Speaker 3 (01:56:39):
Less. We're gonna let all crazy. No one never gonna survive.

Speaker 4 (01:56:49):
Lest we ever let a.

Speaker 3 (01:56:55):
Craze ll be about walking through my head.

Speaker 5 (01:57:00):
That's gotta gone out.

Speaker 2 (01:57:03):
The get together they were.

Speaker 5 (01:57:07):
Saying at school, followed that when we first took the bill.

Speaker 4 (01:57:24):
Here pause, we'll have tons me speaking, but we never
got a survived.

Speaker 3 (01:57:38):
Less we get a little pason so I never got
to survived less we have a little lett and his snout.

Speaker 6 (01:58:31):
The fun of tikes, oh god, little scarful of people
who is sumle to fuckers a lot preserved it a
fareful of people who are terrible to fuckus, not preserved.

Speaker 3 (01:59:00):
No people preparing some so far the not pretty say
they don't. I'm not pre s not pretty, sad, they're
not prazy. But we're never gonna survive.

Speaker 4 (01:59:25):
Yes, you get a little crazy, no one ever gonna survive.

Speaker 3 (01:59:35):
Yes, yell let all, but we're never gonna survive.

Speaker 4 (01:59:44):
Yes you get a little crazy, No one ever gonna survive.

Speaker 3 (01:59:52):
By yes, yellow let all.

Speaker 7 (02:00:00):
Not a little all to a love of bill record.

Speaker 3 (02:00:47):
So there, oh, chum who the son to be longer
the super Safe has

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