Speaker 1: The public has had a long held fascination with detectives.
Speaker 1: Detective sy a side of life. The average person is
Speaker 1: never exposed her. I spent thirty four years as a cop.
Speaker 1: For twenty five of those years, I was catching killers.
Speaker 1: That's what I did for a living. I was a
Speaker 1: homicide detective. I'm no longer just interviewing bad guys. Instead,
Speaker 1: I'm taking the public into the world in which I operated.
Speaker 1: The guests I talk to each week have amazing stories
Speaker 1: from all sides of the law. The interviews are raw
Speaker 1: and honest, just like the people I talk to. Some
Speaker 1: of the content and language might be confronting. That's because
Speaker 1: no one who comes into contact with crime is left unchanged.
Speaker 1: Join me now as I take you into this world.
Speaker 1: Welcome to another episode of the Vicatch Killers NYPD. Those
Speaker 1: letters are embedded in my psyche. The New York Police Department,
Speaker 1: for some reason, represents everything there is about policing. I'm
Speaker 1: talking the good, the bad, and the ugly. If you've
Speaker 1: spent twenty years as a cop in New York, you've
Speaker 1: earnt your stripes in policing, that's for sure. Today's guest
Speaker 1: retired NOPD Sergeant John Fariso has done just that, and
Speaker 1: today we have the pleasure of having him on My
Speaker 1: Catch Killers. As you'd expect from a veteran New York cop,
Speaker 1: he has a thousand stories to tell. In two thousand
Speaker 1: and one, he was on duty working at one police plaza,
Speaker 1: just a short distance from where the planes crashed into
Speaker 1: the World Trade Center. He was shaken by the explosion
Speaker 1: and had the horror of seeing people jump from the
Speaker 1: building to their death. Today he's going to give us
Speaker 1: a first hand account of the fear and the chaos
Speaker 1: of what occurred. But that's just part of his story.
Speaker 1: This is how he described his policing career. When you're
Speaker 1: a New York City police officer, you become a social worker, chauffeur,
Speaker 1: human relations consultant, and a tour guide. You're expected to
Speaker 1: do all those things while stopping crime as it occurs,
Speaker 1: preventing crime, and keeping the peace in a city that
Speaker 1: never takes a break. Today to hear his stories, John Fariso,
Speaker 1: welcome to I Catch Killers.
Speaker 2: Thank you great to be here.
Speaker 1: Well, I've got to say you're the first New York
Speaker 1: cop we've had on I Catch Killer. Someone a bit
Speaker 1: excited about that because policing in New York is poleacing
Speaker 1: at the sharp end. And yeah, we've touched on New
Speaker 1: York crime. I had Michael Francis as a guest, the
Speaker 1: Mafia Kappa a guest on there, and I've also had
Speaker 1: Joe Pistoni, the real Donnie Brasco on.
Speaker 2: Great. Thank you for having me here. This is my
Speaker 2: first podcast outside the US, so I appreciate you having
Speaker 2: me on. I plan on doing more outside of the US,
Speaker 2: but this is the first one. I'm doing.
Speaker 1: Oh, very good, very good. Well. I think there is
Speaker 1: a fascination about policing in New York. I don't know
Speaker 1: what it is. Whether it's we sort of grow up
Speaker 1: on hearing stories of New York and if something happens
Speaker 1: in New York, the news news travels fast. I suppose
Speaker 1: there's also from my point of view, I was even
Speaker 1: when I was in the Cops, I was watching MYPD Blues,
Speaker 1: grew up watching Serpi k the movie, and Donnie Brasco
Speaker 1: American Gangster. It's all very New York related.
Speaker 2: Definitely. I'm glad you mentioned Surproco. I mentioned that a lot.
Speaker 2: That's probably one of the top two best corp movies
Speaker 2: ever and definitely betrays New York City during the time.
Speaker 1: Yeah, they were different, different times, and we'll talk on that.
Speaker 1: We've had in New South Wales police. We've had the
Speaker 1: corruption and everything that comes with policing, but it's just
Speaker 1: part and parcel of the job. One thing that I
Speaker 1: noticed reading up and preparing for the podcast here when
Speaker 1: we go to work in New South Wales cops we
Speaker 1: go we've got a shift or we're going to work.
Speaker 1: You guys call it a tour, like each day is
Speaker 1: a tour. What now that conjures up images of Yeah,
Speaker 1: you do a tour of war, you do a tour?
Speaker 1: Is that? Do you think that reflects what policing is
Speaker 1: New York is all about?
Speaker 2: Well, I guess, being that there's thirty thousand New York
Speaker 2: City Police officers, I guess that tour would make sense.
Speaker 1: Yes, yeah, thirty thousand.
Speaker 2: I'm not sure the number now, but there's thirty thousand
Speaker 2: when I was there.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, that's incredible. Like we've got New South Wales
Speaker 1: Police I think between fifteen and twenty thousand, and that's
Speaker 1: a pretty big police forces across the globe. But New
Speaker 1: York eclipse is that clearly I want to talk about
Speaker 1: your career. I'm fascinated about your career and what happens,
Speaker 1: but I also want to talk about the September eleventh
Speaker 1: when the planes crashed in the twin towers. Can you
Speaker 1: just describe to me that day? And I've read your
Speaker 1: piece that you wrote on it, and I just found
Speaker 1: it fascinating how you started the day off because it
Speaker 1: was just a typical day. Do you want to just
Speaker 1: take the listener on that journey, just up until the
Speaker 1: point where things changed dramatically forever.
Speaker 2: Sure, it was a perfect day. The weather was perfect.
Speaker 2: I woke up in the morning and z eating my
Speaker 2: breakfast at home. I didn't have kids yet. I was married,
Speaker 2: but didn't have kids' children yet, so my main concern
Speaker 2: that day was to how to get fitted for a
Speaker 2: suit for a wedding. So that was the first thing
Speaker 2: I thought about when I woke up that morning. I
Speaker 2: had no clue that within two hours everything I knew
Speaker 2: would be turned upside down. And what I say and
Speaker 2: whenever I talk about September eleventh is that I think
Speaker 2: about it every single day. There has not a day
Speaker 2: gone by in all these years I haven't thought about
Speaker 2: it in one way or the other, not in a
Speaker 2: bad way. It could be something simple, but I think
Speaker 2: about it. Things trigger it. Construction crews, large crowds of
Speaker 2: people in the city, low flying planes, a lot of
Speaker 2: things that make me think about it. So after I breakfast,
Speaker 2: I got on the bus went to work, and ironically,
Speaker 2: my bus did past Twin Towers. I called the Twin
Speaker 2: Towers because that when we grew up in New York City,
Speaker 2: that's what we called it. We saw it from Queens
Speaker 2: in the distance. So to us, that was the Twin Towers,
Speaker 2: and that was a very New York thing. And there
Speaker 2: was a shadow from the towers that went down low
Speaker 2: Manhattan and you would walk past the shadow, and that
Speaker 2: shadow made it pretty far. And my office was, well,
Speaker 2: in the US it's a half mile I'm not sure
Speaker 2: on kilometers, maybe point six point eight kilometers, yea, I
Speaker 2: found correct on that. And then so the shadow made there.
Speaker 2: I walked to the building and you know, I went
Speaker 2: inside it and I was still thinking about my suit,
Speaker 2: and I was thinking about, you know, my day. And
Speaker 2: I was at a temporary assignment at the time, and
Speaker 2: I really if September eleventh didn't happen, this assignment would
Speaker 2: probably never even made it to my book. But so
Speaker 2: I had a temporary assignment, and you know, I went
Speaker 2: to the office and you know, the cop humor began
Speaker 2: because that was very common in police work. As cop Humi.
Speaker 2: There was twenty of us that were ready to get
Speaker 2: promoted to sogeant. So we were all just always joking around,
Speaker 2: talking about making sergeant. And I sat at the desk.
Speaker 2: I read the newspaper. It was something trivial in it.
Speaker 2: And then we used to do data entry. This is
Speaker 2: going back to two thousand and one. You know, we
Speaker 2: just did data entry. It was a basic assignment. So
Speaker 2: I was ready to get promoted. So basically you did
Speaker 2: this data entry until you got promoted to sergeant. I
Speaker 2: was just a cop at the time. I didn't do investigation. Yet,
Speaker 2: I didn't do anything. So you know, I sat at
Speaker 2: the table with all the other cops and like I said,
Speaker 2: we were doing the cop huma. We were joking. Everybody
Speaker 2: was laughing, and guys started to go to their desks
Speaker 2: one by one to do their data entry. And I
Speaker 2: was getting ready to go and my lieutenant approached me
Speaker 2: and he said, John, he goes, uh, you need to
Speaker 2: get these reports going. You need more reports done. So
Speaker 2: I was the depression. I was doing all my reports.
Speaker 2: I'm like, yeah, boss, lieutenant, I'll take care of it,
Speaker 2: no problem, get those reports done for you. So I
Speaker 2: sat at my desk and I forgot about it. And
Speaker 2: then I was doing my data entrying these reports. Kevin
Speaker 2: but coming back to me, and I'm saying, you know,
Speaker 2: what was he talking about? Why is he asking me
Speaker 2: about these reports? I says, I know what I'm gonna do.
Speaker 2: I'm gonna wait till I get a closer to lunch time.
Speaker 2: I'm gonna walk into the tenant's office. I'm gonna ask
Speaker 2: him directly, what are you talking about with these reports?
Speaker 2: What do you need done? I'm doing my job here.
Speaker 2: I got a future here, future outside of this office.
Speaker 2: So what are we going to do? And then I
Speaker 2: was sitting at the desk and then I heard this
Speaker 2: unbelievable sound. It was a boom, but it wasn't like
Speaker 2: an explosion boom. I would describe it as someone took
Speaker 2: something like a giant rock and throw it into a
Speaker 2: dumpster and it echoed an echo boom. And I thought
Speaker 2: a piece of construction equipment fell off the roof of
Speaker 2: the building. Because there was construction going on, so we
Speaker 2: all turns. I turned to the left and I could
Speaker 2: see the window. And I turned to the left and
Speaker 2: one of the sergeants was looked at the window and
Speaker 2: he said, I do know exact words, but it was like,
Speaker 2: oh my gosh, I can't believe this. You got to
Speaker 2: see this, And he was pointing out the window, and
Speaker 2: being in New York City police officer and living in
Speaker 2: New York that is not calm and nobody gets, you know,
Speaker 2: stunned by anything we see. That was like something we
Speaker 2: all knew something was going on. Yeah, that's when everything
Speaker 2: changed at that moment.
Speaker 1: Okay, well, let's we'll stop it there because I want
Speaker 1: to lead up and find a little bit more about
Speaker 1: yourself before we talk more detail about that day. A
Speaker 1: couple of things there. When I was reading your piece
Speaker 1: about that day and you touched on it there the
Speaker 1: cop humor, I felt like I was in the office.
Speaker 1: I know exactly what that's about. You having a go
Speaker 1: at your fellow workers, as we say in this country,
Speaker 1: taking the piss out of each other, a bit of laugh,
Speaker 1: bit of banter, getting about your stuff. There's usually some
Speaker 1: bosses says something that you know, you dig in you
Speaker 1: think what's said about so I fully understand that that
Speaker 1: environment going in there. But let's wind it back a
Speaker 1: little bit. Where did you grow up?
Speaker 2: You grew up in New York, Yes, Queens, New York,
Speaker 2: outside of Manhattan and could see the skyline from where
Speaker 2: I grew up in Blue Carlor neighborhood.
Speaker 1: And what steered you towards policing? Was it something you
Speaker 1: always wanted to do or is it something you fell into.
Speaker 2: I always knew it at a very young age. I
Speaker 2: remember in kindergarten talking about it and I remember writing
Speaker 2: about it. And I had two incidents that happens when
Speaker 2: I was a kid that really propelled me to police work.
Speaker 2: And one was actually the son of Sam investigation.
Speaker 1: Because I remember that one. Yeah, yes, tell us a
Speaker 1: little bit about that.
Speaker 2: Yeah he was, so you know, you're aware, a son
Speaker 2: of Sandy Cereal killer, so very interesting person if anyone
Speaker 2: doesn't know about him, he's very interesting serial killer. So
Speaker 2: I was a little kid grown up in Queens and
Speaker 2: a lot of people in my neighborhood were police officers.
Speaker 2: It was a lot of cops find in sanitation. It
Speaker 2: was just you know, we were the people that worked
Speaker 2: in Manhattan but lived in Queen's and it was very
Speaker 2: common in the seventies. So it was the summer of
Speaker 2: seventy seven, and I remember that summer was a heat wave.
Speaker 2: It was hot, so we were always outside. So I'd
Speaker 2: sit on the stoop and you know, the adults would
Speaker 2: come out and they'd say, all right, make sure everybody
Speaker 2: goes inside. The son of Sam is around, or some
Speaker 2: people called him the forty four caliber killer. So I
Speaker 2: was only seven years old, and I'm like, I was
Speaker 2: being told as a serial killer in my neighborhood. Not
Speaker 2: only was he in the neighborhood, he murdered three people
Speaker 2: walking distance from my house.
Speaker 1: So you say, in the think of it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, he he did it all over. A lot of
Speaker 2: people don't know this, but he didn't, you know, hit
Speaker 2: midtown Manhattan. He didn't hit the affluent areas. He went
Speaker 2: to the out of burrows and almost like where he
Speaker 2: grew up, because he grew up in the Bronx. And
Speaker 2: you know, he shot two people in a car close
Speaker 2: to my house, I know the exact location, and he
Speaker 2: shot another woman walking. And these were the two in
Speaker 2: the car and the woman walking with separate incidents and
Speaker 2: close enough to where my parents were like, you know,
Speaker 2: make sure you come in. You know, there's a something.
Speaker 2: They didn't use the term serial killer. They you know,
Speaker 2: in the seventies, adults talked to us like we were adults.
Speaker 2: They were like the forty four caliber killers here. So
Speaker 2: when the street lights go on and it gets dark,
Speaker 2: get off the stoop and come inside.
Speaker 1: So I grew up with that.
Speaker 2: And then the newspapers would come into the house in
Speaker 2: the morning and there would be a front page headline
Speaker 2: of what this guy did, which was graphic, you know,
Speaker 2: descriptions of people shot and cause. So at a young age,
Speaker 2: I knew there was danger out there. And I remembered
Speaker 2: when they caught him because I remembered my sister talking
Speaker 2: about it. She was older than me and once again
Speaker 2: talking about it, like, you know, I should understand this
Speaker 2: at seven, and she said they caught there was a
Speaker 2: gun in the car a parking ticket. So I knew
Speaker 2: people were afraid of this guy, and I was amazed
Speaker 2: that the cops did investigative work and they caught him.
Speaker 2: And at a young age, I knew I saw a
Speaker 2: good versus At a young age, I just saw that
Speaker 2: as the cops went out and they caught that bad guy,
Speaker 2: and it's real. It was on the news every day,
Speaker 2: and it was in the newspapers and it was talked about.
Speaker 2: And that really made me think about police work at
Speaker 2: a young age.
Speaker 1: Okay. It's funny how those things just register in your
Speaker 1: mind and get locked in at that early age. But yeah,
Speaker 1: I do remember that that crime. Okay, so you've decided
Speaker 1: to join the police. My understanding new York Police, and
Speaker 1: this is limited understanding, but just in my own experience,
Speaker 1: I've spoken to people from New York and yeah, when
Speaker 1: I've been traveling overseas and you mentioned you're a cop,
Speaker 1: and there's two reactions you tend to get with people
Speaker 1: from New York. They if you like you for it,
Speaker 1: or they look at you and just sort of and
Speaker 1: the energy just get sucked out of the room. It
Speaker 1: seems to be a polarizing career in the city of
Speaker 1: New York. Am I am I misreading it?
Speaker 2: No, not at all, You're correct. Do you either get
Speaker 2: people that want to hear everything, or they take a
Speaker 2: step back and they look at you and you know
Speaker 2: they're thinking about something and you just don't ask. It's
Speaker 2: interesting at a barbecue when that happens, because we were
Speaker 2: warned about that in the police academy. The instructors would
Speaker 2: come out and say, we'll watch. When people know what
Speaker 2: you do, you're going to get either no one wants
Speaker 2: to talk to you, or we want to tell you
Speaker 2: everything that went wrong and you're to blame. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Well, I picked that up in my travels that people
Speaker 1: from New York definitely had a strong view one way
Speaker 1: or the other about cops, either love them or hate them.
Speaker 1: They didn't seem to be that in between. How old
Speaker 1: were you when you joined the cops.
Speaker 2: I was twenty three. I was in college, and like
Speaker 2: I said, I knew I was going to do it.
Speaker 2: A few of my friends I grew up with we
Speaker 2: used to play stickball on the street and we should
Speaker 2: just basically take a rub a ball with a stick,
Speaker 2: you know, was a cross between a bat and a stick.
Speaker 2: And we bought them and we just hit it and
Speaker 2: that's what we played. And I think out of the
Speaker 2: six of us, four of us became cops. So I
Speaker 2: kind of knew it. And I was twenty three years old.
Speaker 2: I had one more year in college, and I just said,
Speaker 2: you know, I knew the PD was going to call me.
Speaker 2: So I went into the NYPD in nineteen eighty three.
Speaker 1: The training. Did you enjoy the training? Did you like
Speaker 1: it's I talked from my experience in policing. I was
Speaker 1: working in the building trade and then went into policing.
Speaker 1: And I know the moment I hit the academy, it's
Speaker 1: a glove that just fitted. I thought, I found what
Speaker 1: I want to do it. It just felt right from
Speaker 1: the moment I walked in the door. How did you
Speaker 1: find it?
Speaker 2: Yes, I found it that way. Also, I liked the discipline.
Speaker 2: I like the quasi military structure. I didn't mind being
Speaker 2: yelled at if you weren't standard street. You know, I
Speaker 2: learned how to salute and stand street and standard attention,
Speaker 2: and you know, they made a standard attention for sometimes
Speaker 2: thirty minutes, and you know, I think they were at
Speaker 2: times just massive wordess. But the times we were just
Speaker 2: being goofballs and they were like, Okay, now you're going
Speaker 2: to stand attention to thirty minutes. And I understood the
Speaker 2: discipline of it, and I liked the academy. I had
Speaker 2: come from college, so the work in the books was okay,
Speaker 2: and the physical I was ready for that too, So
Speaker 2: I enjoyed the police academy.
Speaker 1: Did you what was your family's attitude to join the police,
Speaker 1: Like policing is across the world, is a dangerous occupation
Speaker 1: in New York, I think it probably arises a little bit,
Speaker 1: a little bit hard. Were they happy with you going
Speaker 1: down that path?
Speaker 2: Well, my mom was not. She was wanted me to
Speaker 2: do other things, and I kept telling her, Mom, this
Speaker 2: is what I want to do. And I'm sure she
Speaker 2: knew because I was watching all these cop shows at
Speaker 2: such a young age and talking about police work, So
Speaker 2: I think she always knew anyway up against it. Yeah,
Speaker 2: she just had to say what she needed to say.
Speaker 2: My uncle was a police officer, and when I was
Speaker 2: a little kid, you know, we'd sit around at the
Speaker 2: Italian dinners and you're a cop, let me see your gun,
Speaker 2: and my uncle say, sit out, kid. And you know,
Speaker 2: my uncle never talked about it. He was that generation
Speaker 2: they just didn't talk about it. And then my cousin
Speaker 2: became a cop, so there was two members of the
Speaker 2: service in my family. So I my father went. When
Speaker 2: the NYPD first called me, I said, Dad, I got
Speaker 2: this letter. The NYPD wants me to come down for
Speaker 2: an investigation. My dad's like, all right, let's get you
Speaker 2: a suit. You're going on some interviews. So my dad
Speaker 2: was very pro for it.
Speaker 1: He was for it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, he was all I guess he didn't want
Speaker 2: to support me, and he was happy with it.
Speaker 1: So okay. So you get through the academy and you
Speaker 1: get out of the police academy, you think you know
Speaker 1: what you're doing, because there's a lot of skills you've
Speaker 1: got to learn. You've got to learn your legislation, your
Speaker 1: powers of arrests, you know, handling people, weapons training. There's
Speaker 1: a whole lot that you come out with from the
Speaker 1: academy and you think you're ready to hit the streets.
Speaker 1: But if your experience is like my experience, when you
Speaker 1: walk out on the streets, that's when you actually start
Speaker 1: start learning. And I would imagine in New York it's
Speaker 1: learning on steroids. What was your first times when you
Speaker 1: went out walk the streets as a New York cop.
Speaker 2: Well, you're correct, you know, the academy could teach you
Speaker 2: everything in a book. They could show you movies, they
Speaker 2: could have professionals up there talking and they could do
Speaker 2: scenarios and you could do handcuffing everything. But they tell
Speaker 2: you you're going to learn everything on the street, and
Speaker 2: you're going to learn fast, and I was surprised at
Speaker 2: how fast it came. There's no real transition. They say
Speaker 2: there's a training and this and that, but you know,
Speaker 2: you're working with other carps and other supervisors. You know,
Speaker 2: if the crap it's a fan, they're not going to go, okay, well, rookie,
Speaker 2: you stand there, We're going to take care of this.
Speaker 2: A lot of times, you know, you're the you're the cop,
Speaker 2: and even the people on the street, they don't want
Speaker 2: to hear that you just got there. If they have
Speaker 2: a problem, they're going to get in your face and
Speaker 2: be like, officers, I just got robbed. You can't tell
Speaker 2: them I'm a rookie. I just got here. You can't
Speaker 2: do that. You got to handle it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, very very much. So like there is no you're
Speaker 1: out there, you wear that uniform and you're you're now
Speaker 1: the cop. You can't put put your hand up there.
Speaker 1: Where were you first stationed and what was the type
Speaker 1: of work that you were doing first up?
Speaker 2: Well, everybody goes to patrol right outside the It's not
Speaker 2: like the movies. Movies got it all wrong. And it's
Speaker 2: in the NYPD. I could speak for that. Everybody goes
Speaker 2: right to patrol. You don't really get in a car.
Speaker 2: It's there's so many of us. They put you on
Speaker 2: foot posts, so they give you these crappy posts that
Speaker 2: nobody else wants to take. Guarding the prisoners, bad accidents.
Speaker 2: You got to wait. I mean you mentioned in your
Speaker 2: book the crime scene you're always standing outside the tape,
Speaker 2: not really inside. Yeah, you never really get inside the tape,
Speaker 2: but you do. But you're standing outside the tape, and
Speaker 2: you know, people are walking up to you and asking
Speaker 2: you a questions. You're like, I don't know. I was
Speaker 2: just put at the tape edge. Just don't go through.
Speaker 2: I don't have an answer for you. And so the
Speaker 2: first week I was there, I don't think I saw
Speaker 2: a car. I saw my sergeant, and you know, like
Speaker 2: the first day or two, I think it was my
Speaker 2: In the second day I was there, I was on
Speaker 2: a foot post and I witnessed a fight in the street.
Speaker 2: But it was a very busy foot post, and you know,
Speaker 2: this was everybody gets on the train there and they
Speaker 2: head into the city. And I witnessed a fight and
Speaker 2: I was like, all right, guys, you go this way,
Speaker 2: you go that way. And then one guy got on
Speaker 2: his bicycle and left the other guy, you know, in
Speaker 2: front of everybody, because a crowd gathered, and I guess
Speaker 2: the guy wanted to show up for the crowd. You know.
Speaker 2: He rips his shirt open and he's telling me to
Speaker 2: shoot him, and I'm like, you know, wow, this this
Speaker 2: came fast, you know. So I'm like, you know, I
Speaker 2: was in college waiting on tables a year ago, and
Speaker 2: this is what I'm doing right now. So the guy's
Speaker 2: yelling at me to shoot shoot him, and then he
Speaker 2: had already I think, hit somebody with a garbage pail,
Speaker 2: you know, metal garbage pail. So it was an interesting situation.
Speaker 2: So I actually stepped back because I'm thinking really fast,
Speaker 2: like wow, you know, there's no academy instructor here. This
Speaker 2: is on me to handle it. So he took a
Speaker 2: step towards me. I took out my night stick, and
Speaker 2: you know, I did the whole academy pose, but it
Speaker 2: behind my and my mind's race and saying, well, I'm
Speaker 2: not obviously not gonna shoot him, but if he steps
Speaker 2: close enough then I have to. I will crack him
Speaker 2: with this stick, which I really didn't want to do.
Speaker 2: The second day I was there, and then I think
Speaker 2: he realized that he was going to get hurt, and
Speaker 2: so he just walked away. And all these other cops
Speaker 2: did come by because I think somebody might have told them,
Speaker 2: because there was other cops on the footposts, all the
Speaker 2: other rookies, and I was explaining it and they were like,
Speaker 2: all right, it's good, okay, have a good day by
Speaker 2: And then five minutes later people are asking me directions
Speaker 2: like this never happened. So things get thrown at you
Speaker 2: very fast, and you have to handle it very fast.
Speaker 1: You need to understand, Yeah, the way you describe that,
Speaker 1: like it's a significant thing, it's an incident that you've
Speaker 1: been confronted with so early in your career. But you're
Speaker 1: quite right. The other cops just, well, that's just to
Speaker 1: die in the die in the place. Sure, But and
Speaker 1: it is about ye know, if you go in and
Speaker 1: I think what you demonstrate that they're policing isn't black
Speaker 1: and white, Like you've got to be able to navigate
Speaker 1: your way through situations like yeah, if someone came back,
Speaker 1: you're like that you're entitled to hit him. But if
Speaker 1: you can de escalate, that's the type of thing that
Speaker 1: you've got to try to do as a police officer.
Speaker 1: Did you have role models where the people that you
Speaker 1: looked up to and thought, that's the type of cop
Speaker 1: I want to be, Like, I'm gonna what he or
Speaker 1: she's doing, That's who I want to learn from.
Speaker 2: Yeah, because there's so many, you know, members of the
Speaker 2: I think thirty of us went to the precinct from
Speaker 2: the academy so and there was already probably one hundred
Speaker 2: something already there. So you start to see people's personalities,
Speaker 2: and people come from all walks of life. In the NYPD,
Speaker 2: you get the business type of person, you get the tough,
Speaker 2: gay type of person, you get the social worker, you
Speaker 2: get all tapes. So I started to notice who really
Speaker 2: could de escalate a situation. I noticed who could talk
Speaker 2: somebody down. I noticed who could, you know, see a
Speaker 2: situation and see something wrong. There was times I worked
Speaker 2: with some offices that maybe didn't have a lot of
Speaker 2: time on but one or two years, and they would
Speaker 2: catch something very quickly, like catch something as in, we
Speaker 2: had an accident on the street, and all these people
Speaker 2: started walking up to me talking to me. So I
Speaker 2: was surprised, like, there's a car accident, Why are people
Speaker 2: interested in talking to me? And we sit in the
Speaker 2: car and he goes roll the window up. He goes,
Speaker 2: they're all paid. This guy's paying them to be witnesses.
Speaker 2: I would have never thought of that, but this cop
Speaker 2: with two years on just caught onto it. All right,
Speaker 2: they're paid witnesses. So I'm rolling the window down and
Speaker 2: I'm thinking, you know, he didn't tell me how to
Speaker 2: handle this, So I'm taking their names and writing it down.
Speaker 2: After about the third person, I'm like, I think I
Speaker 2: got enough witnesses. So I realized that, all right, I
Speaker 2: just got to write these names down to make it
Speaker 2: look good. If this motorist wants to pay them, that's
Speaker 2: on him, but I don't have to put them in
Speaker 2: the report. We're just making the report for the accident.
Speaker 2: So I saw talent at places that every day within
Speaker 2: police work, and you learn from those situations, and that
Speaker 2: helps you throughout your career because you will handle that
Speaker 2: same situation again. And I've been on the other end
Speaker 2: when I was the one driving, and I saw the
Speaker 2: paid witnesses step forward, and I'm like, oh, that's interesting. Great,
Speaker 2: you want to help out a total stranger and give
Speaker 2: a statement. Okay, I'll take your statement.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's interesting. But what you said there, you learn
Speaker 1: and you build up your experience. I found that I
Speaker 1: learned something in police in every single day I came
Speaker 1: to work. And the more experience you had when you
Speaker 1: were confronted with something, it's not sort of and I
Speaker 1: think this is where you see these battle hardened old
Speaker 1: cops that nothing's going to FaZe and because they've probably
Speaker 1: been there, done that soon it before. And that's just
Speaker 1: in that experience that you've built up and all the
Speaker 1: little little I won't say tricks, but the instinct you
Speaker 1: have for situations that you pick up the longer you
Speaker 1: spend in the job. Did you have a direction you
Speaker 1: wanted to go in policing? Was there? Did you want
Speaker 1: to go into investigations or tactical or what was your interest?
Speaker 2: Early on? AWD, you know, it's it, that's it. We
Speaker 2: were doing our work and then we would handle reports.
Speaker 2: We'd make reports, so we go to situations and a
Speaker 2: lot of times I would take these reports for you know,
Speaker 2: like a really bad robbery that just happened and somebody
Speaker 2: was assaulted nothing like murder or nothing like that. I
Speaker 2: would take these reports and I would call my supervisor say, yeah,
Speaker 2: this is a legit robbery. This person was robbed, they're injured.
Speaker 2: Here's the description, here's that. And I would take the report.
Speaker 2: And so I was like, all right, great, your report's done.
Speaker 2: All right, drop it off in the priests and bring
Speaker 2: it to the detectives upstairs. And I would go in
Speaker 2: and I would bring it to the detectives upstairs. And
Speaker 2: you know, it was it was like the movies to me.
Speaker 2: I walked into this detective squad and it was the
Speaker 2: old fan blowing. You know, no one cleaned the fan
Speaker 2: in five years. There was you know, a couple of
Speaker 2: typewriters typing away because this was the nineties. There was
Speaker 2: a couple of giant computers. And then you got a
Speaker 2: cop what is you know, a detective with his you
Speaker 2: know tie half on, and he's looking at you like,
Speaker 2: why are you coming in this here to talk to us?
Speaker 2: And yeah, you were a little nervous, but you can't
Speaker 2: show it to them. See you hand them the report
Speaker 2: and they're like, robbery kid, huh what do you got?
Speaker 2: And they're like oh wow. And then all of a sudden,
Speaker 2: I would hear them talking and I'm like, I think
Speaker 2: these guys already know who did this robbery. They would
Speaker 2: look at the report and go I had a feeling.
Speaker 2: I watched their wheel spin and I'm like, They're gonna
Speaker 2: go out and grab this guy now. And I'm like, wow,
Speaker 2: you know what these detectives. They're doing something here that's
Speaker 2: beyond patrol. And I knew very early on I was
Speaker 2: going into detective bureau.
Speaker 1: Yeah. The way you describe that, John, it is so
Speaker 1: similar to my experience. You're young, you're keen, you're in uniform,
Speaker 1: as we call it over here, and you get that
Speaker 1: report and you've got to get the detective's office, and
Speaker 1: it was intimidating just to walk in there. Why it
Speaker 1: was intimidating, I don't know, but at first they're the
Speaker 1: detectives very much. So you just described what. I'd walk
Speaker 1: into the office of typewriters. There'd be ashtrays, they'd be
Speaker 1: people with their feet up on the desk. Sometimes they'd
Speaker 1: be playing cards. If you go in there at lunchtime
Speaker 1: and it's almost look at you, what what do you want?
Speaker 1: And you walk out you feel humiliated, but quite curious
Speaker 1: about what's going on in there, so I understand where
Speaker 1: you're coming from, but it has has an attraction. Okay,
Speaker 1: let's talk about well fast forwar, because I want to
Speaker 1: come back and talk in depth, and we'll probably do
Speaker 1: that in part two about your career and different different
Speaker 1: things that you saw and did, and investigations that you're on,
Speaker 1: in particular missing persons. I'm very curious about having a
Speaker 1: chat with you about that. How long had you been
Speaker 1: in the cops before September.
Speaker 2: Eleventh, ninety three to two one? Nine years?
Speaker 1: Nine years? Okay, so almost at that veteran stage. You're
Speaker 1: in an experienced police officer. You've been there, done that,
Speaker 1: seeing things. You told us at the start of the
Speaker 1: podcast when you heard that explosion, then you saw someone
Speaker 1: look out and call you to the window. Can you
Speaker 1: take us from there? Because to get the first hand
Speaker 1: we watched it over here obviously, as the whole world did,
Speaker 1: but to have someone that was on the ground and
Speaker 1: experience what was going in there, the chaos and the
Speaker 1: panic and everything else that goes into play on that day,
Speaker 1: just take us through it if you could.
Speaker 2: Sure I could take it through it. I remember that day.
Speaker 2: I remember everything about it. There's like every little minute detail.
Speaker 2: Maybe because I was rating at the time and I
Speaker 2: wrote about it, but either way, I could remember that
Speaker 2: entire day. I remembered when I heard that explosion, that
Speaker 2: sound didn't sound natural, not that explosion sound should, but
Speaker 2: it definitely sounded something was really off with this. And
Speaker 2: when the other supervisor yelled at the window, of course,
Speaker 2: human nature, you've got to go see what's going on.
Speaker 2: So I went to the window and I saw one
Speaker 2: of the towers and I saw a hole in it,
Speaker 2: and I saw it looked like destruction, like a black
Speaker 2: hole in there. And one the first thing I noticed
Speaker 2: was there was papers shooting out of the hole in
Speaker 2: the building. Not only were they shooting out, they were
Speaker 2: shooting straight out and going straight up. I guess the
Speaker 2: wind or something. I don't know. I didn't see any
Speaker 2: flames yet. So I looked at it and I said,
Speaker 2: this is no accident. This is a bomb. Somebody put
Speaker 2: a bomb in that building, because you know, don't forget,
Speaker 2: you know, somebody put a bomb in the building in
Speaker 2: nineteen ninety two in the basement. So we were told
Speaker 2: about that in the academy. That happened and wasn't far
Speaker 2: off from people's memory at that time, so I knew
Speaker 2: it was no accident. I said, what do I gotta do.
Speaker 2: The first thing I said is this was two thousand
Speaker 2: and one. I didn't I have a cell phone. So
Speaker 2: if any of you listeners know what it's like to
Speaker 2: not have a cell phone, it's a different time. It
Speaker 2: was no cell phones. I had to go to a payphone,
Speaker 2: and the only payphone was downstairs in the lobby. Because
Speaker 2: my wife had worked in Midtown Manhattan, I knew I
Speaker 2: had to call her because you know, I would assume
Speaker 2: something else would happen. So I went to the payphone,
Speaker 2: and you know, old school, I took the court or
Speaker 2: put it in the phone dial toub work number, and
Speaker 2: she got on the phone like, Hi, I'm like, somebody
Speaker 2: just put a bomb in the tower. So she paused
Speaker 2: and she said what I said, somebody put a bomb
Speaker 2: in tower and I didn't know it was yet, I
Speaker 2: just assumed it was. And she's like, oh my gosh,
Speaker 2: what happened. So she had the TV on and it
Speaker 2: was live on TV. Now I couldn't watch TV because
Speaker 2: we didn't have one there and nobody had cell phones yet.
Speaker 2: Nobody had iPhones. So I remember what I told her,
Speaker 2: and this will be a big part to the story.
Speaker 2: I said, Okay, I'm very close to the towers. I said,
Speaker 2: they're going to send us there. After I'm done at
Speaker 2: the towers, I'll call you back. And I left it
Speaker 2: at that, and then I went back upstairs, walked up
Speaker 2: the stairs, and I went back and then I saw
Speaker 2: more people at the window. Other people from the building
Speaker 2: had I guess we had one of the better views,
Speaker 2: if you could call it, because we were directly in
Speaker 2: front of it and you had to look straight and up.
Speaker 2: I think I was on the ninth of the eleventh
Speaker 2: floor of my building. And then as I'm looking out,
Speaker 2: I see something coming from across the sky. And well
Speaker 2: before that, I had another part to the story. As
Speaker 2: I was watching the first tower, I saw stuff falling
Speaker 2: from the building, and I was like, wow, debris falling.
Speaker 2: And I start a helicopter. So I'm like, what's falling
Speaker 2: from the towers? And as I watched closer. I wrote
Speaker 2: about this a lot in the book, and I got
Speaker 2: a little more elaborate. There was no debris falling. I
Speaker 2: was watching people jumping from the towers and I just
Speaker 2: couldn't believe that that's what I was witnessing, and I
Speaker 2: was like, Wow, that's when reality hit. I says, there
Speaker 2: are people in those towers that are not going to
Speaker 2: make it home today. So I had to step back.
Speaker 2: I couldn't watch any further. I wrote more about it
Speaker 2: in the book, some of the images that I still
Speaker 2: think about.
Speaker 1: Just on that. I've pulled out a quote from your
Speaker 1: book about that, because it's as bout as confronting as
Speaker 1: a thing that you could see, and as a cop,
Speaker 1: you've seen a lot of stuff, but that I just
Speaker 1: read out a short, short passage here from your piece
Speaker 1: you wrote about. I soon horrified that what I was witnessing.
Speaker 1: People were jumping from the tower. Tiny figures with arms
Speaker 1: and legs flailing, were hurtling themselves out of the smoke
Speaker 1: filled windows. Some looked as if they were doing somersaults
Speaker 1: down the side of the building. I was now frozen
Speaker 1: with a dead stare at those towers. Yeah, what can
Speaker 1: you say about that? This is something people shouldn't see.
Speaker 2: No, it's definitely not something people's and it's nothing I
Speaker 2: ever believed they would see. It was unbelievable, and I
Speaker 2: didn't know it was going to continue. So I was
Speaker 2: watching that, and you know, it's something that you just
Speaker 2: can't it's already in your memory and it's like an accident.
Speaker 2: You just got to eventually stop looking. So I went
Speaker 2: back to my desk and I sat down and I
Speaker 2: just tried to get my composure. And then I said
Speaker 2: to myself, this is the same desk that only twenty
Speaker 2: minutes ago, I was ready to talk to my lieutenant
Speaker 2: about some bull crap report.
Speaker 1: I'm like, that was a big issue in your life.
Speaker 2: Yeah, everything, yeah, yeah, everything just got turned upside down.
Speaker 2: And so sure enough, I went back to the window.
Speaker 2: And as I got back to the window, what I
Speaker 2: was saying earlier is I saw something coming from across
Speaker 2: the sky. As I looked out the window and the
Speaker 2: towers were in front of me. So I did not
Speaker 2: see the actual plane, but I saw I don't know
Speaker 2: what it's called, when the wings have the uh the
Speaker 2: jet stream going down and it makes like a smoke line.
Speaker 2: I saw the two smoke lines coming across the city,
Speaker 2: and I was like, I went to say, what is
Speaker 2: And before I said that, I saw it hit the
Speaker 2: rear of the building. And this was the other tower
Speaker 2: that wasn't struck the second plot second plane, and not
Speaker 2: only did it hit the building, it went into it
Speaker 2: and shot out the the front. I saw pieces of
Speaker 2: it shootout the front, and I was frozen. And then
Speaker 2: with strangers, I didn't hear anything, and then all of
Speaker 2: a sudden, I heard the boom again, different sounding this time,
Speaker 2: but I heard it. And the shockwave hit like five
Speaker 2: seconds later, and the building my windows were shaking where
Speaker 2: I was standing, and I was like everything. I would
Speaker 2: describe it like a movie that you could not hit pause.
Speaker 2: It was like I was being forced to watch a
Speaker 2: movie I didn't want to sit through and I could
Speaker 2: not hit pause. That's the best I could describe it.
Speaker 2: And I looked to the left, I looked at the right.
Speaker 2: I said, we gotta get out of this building. I said,
Speaker 2: because I would assume that something else was coming, and
Speaker 2: I still didn't know what it was. Even though I
Speaker 2: saw I could to explain it now at the time,
Speaker 2: I really didn't comprehend it. It wasn't until later, so
Speaker 2: I went to the stairs. I knew enough not to
Speaker 2: take the elevator. I learned enough. You don't get in
Speaker 2: elevators in bad situation. The last thing I wanted to
Speaker 2: do is stuck in an elevator. So I went to
Speaker 2: the steps, and I remembered there was two detectives and
Speaker 2: they had high heels on and they were moving it
Speaker 2: down those stairs, and I ran with them, and I
Speaker 2: remember touching the handrail a few times, but I don't
Speaker 2: remember touching the steps.
Speaker 1: Man.
Speaker 2: I went down those nine flights in record speed, and
Speaker 2: I got to the front of the building, and then
Speaker 2: I ran past that pay phone I was at and
Speaker 2: then I saw I saw like chaos in front of
Speaker 2: the building. I saw people running in different directions, and
Speaker 2: I saw some cops briefly talking and running towards the towers,
Speaker 2: and I saw other cops dumbfounded. I saw some police
Speaker 2: recruits just not knowing what to do. And there was
Speaker 2: a police recruit and she sat on the floor and cried,
Speaker 2: and I walked over to her. I said, just get up,
Speaker 2: just stand up, and that's all I could tell. I
Speaker 2: had nothing else to tell her. I didn't know what
Speaker 2: to say, so I really know what to do. When
Speaker 2: I was watching the towers, and it was, like I said,
Speaker 2: there was mobs of people besides the building I was in.
Speaker 2: It seems like all Lower Manhattan instantly was out. It
Speaker 2: was like an ant hole and you just shook it
Speaker 2: up and all the ants took off. So a guy
Speaker 2: who worked with came up to me, goes, John, where
Speaker 2: are you going? I said, I don't know. He goes,
Speaker 2: what do you want to do? I said, listen, let's
Speaker 2: get a little uptown where there's no big buildings and
Speaker 2: we'll figure it out. So he goes, all right. So
Speaker 2: we did a very fast walk uptown. And as we
Speaker 2: were walking uptown, there was a lot of people to
Speaker 2: left to me, a lot of people to the right
Speaker 2: of me, and they were all walking and we were
Speaker 2: walking fast. And there's a federal courthouse in Low Manhattan
Speaker 2: with big giant Gothic cement steps. I was by the
Speaker 2: Federal Courthouse and the floor started rumbling, so I didn't
Speaker 2: know what it was. I thought something was coming from
Speaker 2: the sky, so I looked around. I didn't see nothing,
Speaker 2: but the floor is rumbling under my feet, and so
Speaker 2: instantly I dove under a parked car and I hit
Speaker 2: like next to the wheelwell, and then there was a
Speaker 2: woman under the car. I don't know if she followed
Speaker 2: me and doved or she was already there, and she
Speaker 2: was an elderly woman and we looked at each other
Speaker 2: and she had fear in her face and I couldn't.
Speaker 2: I didn't know what to tell her, and she I
Speaker 2: don't even know if she knew as a cop because
Speaker 2: I didn't have uniform on. I had my kakis on
Speaker 2: in my polo shirt. And a man walked by and
Speaker 2: looked at me and goes, what are you doing? It's
Speaker 2: just a subway. I'm like what. So I looked outside
Speaker 2: the wheel well and I saw the smoke coming from
Speaker 2: Lower Manhattan. Now I don't it's not smoke. This was
Speaker 2: a curtain of debris. It was thick, it was black,
Speaker 2: it was ugly, it was rolling, and it was wavy,
Speaker 2: and it was coming up the block towards us. So
Speaker 2: as I looked, that guy that just said that to
Speaker 2: me had his briefcase and he was hauling it down
Speaker 2: the street, he took off. You I think he realized
Speaker 2: that it was no subway. So I got up and
Speaker 2: I didn't know what to do. I just ran. So
Speaker 2: I ran north. I saw the guy worked within the
Speaker 2: crowd and I lost them. And I'm a pretty quick runner.
Speaker 2: I'm athletic. I was moving. I had my dress shoes on,
Speaker 2: but I was moving, you know. And like I said,
Speaker 2: I had my polo shirt on. I was ready to go.
Speaker 2: So I ran uptown and all of a sudden, nothing
Speaker 2: happened behind me. It was quiet. I saw the smoke
Speaker 2: in the debris, but it was in the distance, and
Speaker 2: it was like a wall, like if you look downtown,
Speaker 2: you could see a wall of smoke and just people
Speaker 2: from that direction walking towards you. I'm not talking people
Speaker 2: a few, I'm talking in the thousands walking in my direction.
Speaker 2: So the cop and me said, John, don't go in
Speaker 2: the subway. Stay where you're at. And there was a
Speaker 2: woman standing next to me, and I was just talking
Speaker 2: to her briefly and I said, I don't know what's
Speaker 2: going on today, but you are never going to forget
Speaker 2: to today. She goes, no, I'm not and just walked away.
Speaker 2: And then something told me to go back. So I
Speaker 2: saw these crowds of people in the thousands walking towards me,
Speaker 2: and I walked downtown while everybody was walking uptown. So
Speaker 2: I said, I have to get back to my building.
Speaker 2: I wasn't that far. I was walking distance, couldn't see it.
Speaker 2: I ran pretty far. So as I was walking, people
Speaker 2: started letting me through. I guess they just knew I
Speaker 2: had to get through. Maybe they knew it I was
Speaker 2: a cop. I don't know. So people were partying and
Speaker 2: I was walking, and I was walking through the crowd,
Speaker 2: and I saw a woman in my building. She was
Speaker 2: a civilian, and I said, what's going on with police plaza?
Speaker 2: She goes, no, everybody just ran out of a building. There's
Speaker 2: nobody in there. So I said okay, and I kept walking. So,
Speaker 2: like I said, there was a partying in the crowd,
Speaker 2: and I saw that Federal courthouse. When I got to
Speaker 2: the Federal Courthouse, I heard screaming and yelling, actually not screaming,
Speaker 2: and there was a gentleman trying to get back in
Speaker 2: the building, and the court offices were in full uniform.
Speaker 2: I watched them physically throw him down the stairs. He
Speaker 2: rolled down the cement stairs right in front of me,
Speaker 2: landed on the floor in front of me, and he
Speaker 2: just brushed himself off and wan one direction. And then
Speaker 2: the court offices ran towards me and they said, where
Speaker 2: you going. You can't go downtown. So I took out
Speaker 2: my identification under my shirt showed it to him. They're like, okay,
Speaker 2: they said, why don't you go behind the building? So
Speaker 2: I said, all right, So I actually took a short cut,
Speaker 2: went behind the building, and I went back to one
Speaker 2: police plaza. But I didn't get directly back to one
Speaker 2: police police plaza. I'm not exactly sure how it ended
Speaker 2: up here, but the smoke was to the right of me,
Speaker 2: and like I said earlier, it was not smoke. This
Speaker 2: was a giant black curtain.
Speaker 1: And when you were running from that, because we're seen
Speaker 1: the images and all that you were running with, you
Speaker 1: did not know what was coming. You were running for
Speaker 1: your life literally on when that big curtain of smoke
Speaker 1: and debris was rolling down.
Speaker 2: The streets correct and the fun for me didn't even
Speaker 2: start yet, because you know, I was there was still
Speaker 2: one tower standing. So I walked down on this street
Speaker 2: and there was New York City pigeons, just dozens of them,
Speaker 2: walking at my feet. It was the strangest thing. I
Speaker 2: can't describe it. I've never heard animals describe it. I
Speaker 2: think the pigeons probably couldn't fly from Lower Manhattan. They
Speaker 2: got hit with the caked and the dust, so they
Speaker 2: came to where they was because the debris was about
Speaker 2: not the debris, the wall of smoke was about a
Speaker 2: block ofitud of me, the right where the Brooklyn Bridge was,
Speaker 2: and I would periodically see people on the bridge and
Speaker 2: then smoke would overtake them. People say so. Then I
Speaker 2: walked down one block and it was near a high
Speaker 2: school and there was all these high school kids sitting
Speaker 2: on the floor and I don't know if they just
Speaker 2: ran from the scene or they were there already. And
Speaker 2: there was two EMS trucks and the EMS trucks maybe
Speaker 2: because the MS trucks people congregated that they were giving
Speaker 2: people oxygen one at a time, and I saw people
Speaker 2: with the oxygen and I was standing there and I
Speaker 2: didn't know what to do. I was looking at the
Speaker 2: EMS people and looking to the right, and I kept
Speaker 2: looking at the Brooklyn Bridge. I was very focused on
Speaker 2: the bridge. And a woman walks up to me and
Speaker 2: she said, I'm pregnant. I do not want to have
Speaker 2: my child here. So I looked at her and I
Speaker 2: didn't know what. I had nothing to tell this woman.
Speaker 2: I just like, listen to EMS is here, speak to them.
Speaker 1: I think, and if I just interrupt you there for
Speaker 1: a sec This is what came through when I read
Speaker 1: the piece that you wrote about it got as cops,
Speaker 1: chaos is the norm. Yeah, you go to a chaotic situation,
Speaker 1: you assess the situation, you get it under control. This
Speaker 1: is on the magnitude that no one has experienced. And
Speaker 1: I just found it fascinating that half of you would
Speaker 1: be going, well, i'm a cop, I've got to take
Speaker 1: some control or help, and the other part to be
Speaker 1: going I don't know what's going on, like it just
Speaker 1: what was going through your mind at the time, Like
Speaker 1: I would imagine you were struggling with all sorts of thoughts.
Speaker 2: Well, interestingly enough, I didn't have time to think because
Speaker 2: all you focused on what was going on at the moment,
Speaker 2: I didn't have time to I can't just one hundred
Speaker 2: percent describe it. I don't even know if anybody else
Speaker 2: can think about it. You don't have time to say
Speaker 2: when I can do this? What am I gonna do
Speaker 2: with this? When that you think about at that moment,
Speaker 2: And while I was there, I didn't remember that. Okay, John,
Speaker 2: get yourself back to one, please plasic or figure it out.
Speaker 2: You can't stay here with this pregnant woman. You can't
Speaker 2: stay here with the people taking oxygen, I could breathe fine.
Speaker 2: So when I looked at the Brooklyn Bridge, something was
Speaker 2: telling me to just walk the bridge, go home, just leave,
Speaker 2: and the cop in me was like, no, you can't
Speaker 2: do this. I could describe. The poll to that bridge
Speaker 2: was immense. It's like something was telling me go, go go,
Speaker 2: and something was telling me no. But that poll was
Speaker 2: unbelievably strong, and I knew deep downside I wasn't going
Speaker 2: to do it, couldn't do it. But man, I will
Speaker 2: say it. I wanted to get on that bridge and
Speaker 2: just walk with that crowd. And then I started walking
Speaker 2: back towards one police plaza and one police plaza. It's
Speaker 2: called the plaza because it has a big opened For Manhattan,
Speaker 2: this is considered big. It's a big open area. It's
Speaker 2: cement benches and then the building is a Gothic old building,
Speaker 2: you know, built in the seventies at the end. So
Speaker 2: I walked there and all I saw was one police
Speaker 2: recruit in a gray uniform. I didn't see anybody else,
Speaker 2: I know, I didn't see any of my co workers.
Speaker 2: I walked towards the recruit. As I was walking towards him,
Speaker 2: he kept yelling sir, sir, sir. I said, stop sarring me,
Speaker 2: stop sirring me. I'm just I'm walking towards you. So
Speaker 2: I walked towards him. The smoke was behind him, and
Speaker 2: I don't even know what I was going to say
Speaker 2: to him. He goes, sir, I have a mask for you.
Speaker 2: So he handed me like a paper spackle mask. So
Speaker 2: I picked it up and I heard this very strange sound.
Speaker 2: I can't describe it. Me and him looked over. I
Speaker 2: looked over my right and I saw the one tower
Speaker 2: demonstrating it turned, I believed, to the left, and it
Speaker 2: looked like it might possibly even broke in the middle.
Speaker 2: And then it came straight down onto itself. Now, when
Speaker 2: it came down onto itself, it fell into the actual building,
Speaker 2: So the top fell into the bottom, and instantly it
Speaker 2: was like the hands of time stood still. For me,
Speaker 2: I was just staring, like, what is just happening here?
Speaker 2: I can't believe this. It made this unbelievable rumbling sounds.
Speaker 2: And then when it fell straight down, the smoke and debris,
Speaker 2: which was even thicker now shot straight up and went
Speaker 2: out in my direction. Annihilly did to go in my direction.
Speaker 2: I was watching it go into the side streets as
Speaker 2: it was coming up the block. So I turned around
Speaker 2: and I had that mask in my hands and even
Speaker 2: had a chance to put it on, and I ran
Speaker 2: straight more towards the back of the building, and I
Speaker 2: ran a few blocks, and I could hear the sounds
Speaker 2: behind me. It was like a rumbling, like a giant wave.
Speaker 2: I would describe it, and strangely enough, I could smell it.
Speaker 2: I smelt probably from the first collapse. I could smell concrete.
Speaker 2: I did construction. I know what concrete smells like. It
Speaker 2: was concrete and burnt wires. So I had that eerie sounds,
Speaker 2: that creepy smell, and it was coming behind me, and
Speaker 2: I ran, and I thought I was gonna be overtaken.
Speaker 2: I wasn't. It was coming up towards me, but I
Speaker 2: guess the winds took it in a different direction. I
Speaker 2: was like right at the line, almost where it was
Speaker 2: in the air, but nobody was choking where I was standing,
Speaker 2: and you could see so like I said, it went
Speaker 2: to the right and left, and I ran to a
Speaker 2: parked car, and I was so angry at what just happened.
Speaker 2: And I didn't even understand it yet. I banged my
Speaker 2: fists on the on the trunk of the car and
Speaker 2: I said, the building just went down. I was yelling
Speaker 2: at nobody. It was nobody, and I was just yelling
Speaker 2: to myself. And I turned around and I saw the
Speaker 2: Brooklyn Bridge again and it was almost covered. But every
Speaker 2: once in a while I could see a figure through
Speaker 2: the bridge of somebody walking, and I thought about it.
Speaker 2: Do you leave? Do you go? Nobody'll know? You know.
Speaker 2: I used to read books when I was a kid
Speaker 2: about guys that went off the war and they would
Speaker 2: try to in the trenches. All they wanted to do
Speaker 2: was just go to the go to the rear, get
Speaker 2: out of town. And I used to read these books
Speaker 2: that go, man, I can imagine what it's like to
Speaker 2: be you know, few steps of safety, but a few
Speaker 2: steps is danger. And I thought about that. I said,
Speaker 2: I can't leave. I got to go do something, but
Speaker 2: I had no plan in though to do so.
Speaker 1: I can understand what you're sign there, and that's that's
Speaker 1: you sign up to join join the cops. Yeah, you're
Speaker 1: not conscripts. You volunteer, but there's a responsibility there, and
Speaker 1: you got to own that responsibility. In the situation like that,
Speaker 1: And I dare say, and I'm mainly surmising here, they
Speaker 1: would have been that took the option and went home.
Speaker 1: But I don't think you're doing your job if you
Speaker 1: disappear in the situation like that, it's chaos. But hey,
Speaker 1: that's what you signed up for. Yeah, definitely.
Speaker 2: I mean I signed up for police work, but nothing
Speaker 2: to that magnitude. I didn't think I was going to
Speaker 2: watch the war waged on America, but that's what I
Speaker 2: was doing that day. Apparently that's where I was.
Speaker 1: How far away from the when the second tower collapse?
Speaker 1: How physically how far away were you from it?
Speaker 2: Well, in the second tower collapse, that was the closest
Speaker 2: I was. And I walked towards that recruit. I walked
Speaker 2: past my building, towards the location. I say, half mile
Speaker 2: maybe it's zero point six point eight kilometers.
Speaker 1: Jesus close, isn't it. You see it, you feel it,
Speaker 1: you hear it, you smell it all your senses.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: So, okay, well I'm saw the shell shocked. You have
Speaker 1: the magnitude of what you're talking about, but please continue
Speaker 1: on it. Take us through what happened next.
Speaker 2: Yes, you brought up an interesting point. You know, I
Speaker 2: was interestingly and this is probably why I wrote it.
Speaker 2: You know, there were people who were in the towers,
Speaker 2: who were right there, and they have unbelievable stories. But
Speaker 2: I witnessed it like right. It's almost like I wasn't
Speaker 2: in the front row seat. I wasn't in the second
Speaker 2: road seat, but I was in the third row where
Speaker 2: you get a better view than the first and second.
Speaker 2: That's how close I was where I saw it like panoramic.
Speaker 2: I guess that's the best description i'd give it. So
Speaker 2: I was right there and it was no television, there
Speaker 2: was nothing. I didn't know what was going on. So
Speaker 2: as I walked up a little bit, I started walking.
Speaker 2: Now I realized that, you know, at least that debris
Speaker 2: wasn't going to make it my way. But as I
Speaker 2: was walking, I started gauging the buildings around me, because
Speaker 2: there are some buildings there not that big. I mean,
Speaker 2: all right, I'm gonna say not that big. I'm a
Speaker 2: New Yorker, so they weren't skyscrapers. Put it that way.
Speaker 2: So I'm gauging the buildings. I'm saying, if a plane
Speaker 2: hits that, will it hit me? If a plane hits
Speaker 2: this building. So I'm walking kind of in the middle,
Speaker 2: and I was like, how am I thinking like this?
Speaker 2: How did I go to work today? I think worrying
Speaker 2: about buildings falling on me. And I was concerned that
Speaker 2: if something else happened, because I truly believe something the
Speaker 2: next wave was gonna come.
Speaker 1: Well you're thinking that that time, John, Sorry for just
Speaker 1: interrupt just to qu verify. You're not sure what's happening,
Speaker 1: but clearly this is a deliberate attack, and yeah, what's
Speaker 1: the next thing that's going to come? Is an army
Speaker 1: goan to invide? Like you would not know what was
Speaker 1: going on at this point in time. It's clearly not
Speaker 1: an accident.
Speaker 2: Sure, I was clearly that accident. You know, later on
Speaker 2: I would hear the rumor mill was just it was
Speaker 2: comical the rumors that were coming through, and I knew
Speaker 2: that of them were true. I did think something was
Speaker 2: kind of come from the sky. I truly believe that
Speaker 2: wherever the attack was was from above. So I saw
Speaker 2: a couple of guys that you know, a cops will
Speaker 2: tell you they weren't in uniform. They just knew they
Speaker 2: were cops. If I could tell from you know the
Speaker 2: distance I was. So I walked over to them, and
Speaker 2: I didn't know these guys. I just knew they were
Speaker 2: police officers, and I'm assumed from my building. So I said,
Speaker 2: what's going on? And they all looked at me like,
Speaker 2: we don't know, nobody's here. We don't know what to do.
Speaker 2: So as I was standing there, I started making some
Speaker 2: brief conversation with the guy next to me, and he just,
Speaker 2: you know, he was just one of those people at
Speaker 2: the moment where I couldn't talk. I guess he was
Speaker 2: just a little more shell shocked than I was, and
Speaker 2: he was just staring blankly, and I didn't say anything else.
Speaker 2: I juste he he doesn't want to talk or he can't.
Speaker 2: But he was a cop like me. So I thought
Speaker 2: to myself, my gosh, John, you called your wife and
Speaker 2: you told her you would go into the building. So
Speaker 2: I said, okay, So now I got I want to
Speaker 2: go home. Now, I really want to go home. Now
Speaker 2: I got to get in touch with my wife and
Speaker 2: tell her that I'm not in the building. It's okay.
Speaker 2: So sure enough, the payphones were down, the lights were down,
Speaker 2: all the lines were down. I couldn't get on the
Speaker 2: phone because there was other payphones there. So I heard
Speaker 2: my name called from up the block and it was
Speaker 2: the lieutenant that had asked me about the reports earlier
Speaker 2: in the morning, and he said, John, we're really glad
Speaker 2: you're okay, because you're the only one we were concerned
Speaker 2: where you were. Because I ran into the other guy
Speaker 2: that I ran with, he had already made it back
Speaker 2: before I did, so I said, what are we doing?
Speaker 2: He goes, nobody knows. He goes, just stay here. Let's
Speaker 2: make a perimeter and we make sure no non law
Speaker 2: enforcement could come into the area. And we put up
Speaker 2: some police barriers that we could find. And you know,
Speaker 2: the playbook went out the window. There was no rules,
Speaker 2: there was no this is what you need to do,
Speaker 2: this is what you don't need to do. And as
Speaker 2: I was standing there, I was watching and periodically people
Speaker 2: would run through that wall of smoke into our direction.
Speaker 2: And I watched a woman running and she had the
Speaker 2: high heels on and they were clanking and she was holling.
Speaker 2: This woman was running full force towards me, and sure
Speaker 2: enough I watched her heel break and the women face
Speaker 2: smacked right on the concrete. So I ran over to her,
Speaker 2: and ironically, two other women saw this, two other female
Speaker 2: police officers, so more cops were congregating, and they picked
Speaker 2: her up and they started running with her back away
Speaker 2: from where we were. She ran, and then I watched
Speaker 2: she ran on her own. So there was a lot
Speaker 2: of people coming together at that tragic moment. And I
Speaker 2: stayed where I was because I didn't know where to go.
Speaker 2: I knew I wasn't going to go home, but I
Speaker 2: at least knew that I was going to stay where
Speaker 2: my post was for that was original, and we were
Speaker 2: going to basically ended up. I found this out later.
Speaker 2: We just decided to we were letting the emergency vehicles.
Speaker 2: Because the emergency vehicles showed up very quickly. I watched
Speaker 2: empty New York City buses with people jumping in on
Speaker 2: some type of rescue workers I know, I'm sure who.
Speaker 2: And I saw empty busses coming through. I saw a
Speaker 2: carp on the back of a Holly Davidson where he
Speaker 2: just hitched a ride. I saw people off duty. I
Speaker 2: saw family members of people that had been in Lower
Speaker 2: Manhattan coming very quickly down towards Low Manhattan. So we
Speaker 2: had a courten off that area because if we were
Speaker 2: going to let the emergency vehicles through. We had to
Speaker 2: do it orderly because there was a big road there,
Speaker 2: so we knew we were going to have some type
Speaker 2: of direction within sending people downtown.
Speaker 1: Hi guys, just a quick interruption to let you know
Speaker 1: about the new podcast from the team behind I Catch Killers.
Speaker 1: It's called The Mushroom Cook. It's about a case that
Speaker 1: made headlines around the world last year, the prosecution of
Speaker 1: a Victorian woman called Aaron Patterson over a family lunch
Speaker 1: that left three people dead. The podcast goes deep into
Speaker 1: what we know about those alleged murders in the coming months.
Speaker 1: It will also follow the twists and turns as erin
Speaker 1: who's denied any wrongdoing faces trial. If you subscribe to
Speaker 1: crimex plus, you'll get access to The Mushroom Cook early
Speaker 1: and add through. Just search for The Mushroom Cook on
Speaker 1: crimex Plus on Apple Podcasts. Seeing those towers come down,
Speaker 1: you would have to thought and seeing the people jumping
Speaker 1: and falling out of the buildings. Did you have time
Speaker 1: in that chaos to even take in the magnitude of
Speaker 1: how many lives were lost? Was that going through your
Speaker 1: mind or was everything just rolling through so quickly. You
Speaker 1: were just taking it one step of the time.
Speaker 2: I was taking it one step at a time. But
Speaker 2: being that I didn't call I had called my wife
Speaker 2: and told her I was going to the building that
Speaker 2: was consuming my thoughts at that moment. I guess you
Speaker 2: have to focus on something. With the people jumping from
Speaker 2: the towers, that didn't start to really get into my
Speaker 2: memory until days later. And one person I work with,
Speaker 2: I didn't realize the death magnitude, and because I remembered
Speaker 2: that as that the wall of smoke would clear, the
Speaker 2: sun was so bright, so it was an eerie black
Speaker 2: cloud that would cover periodically cover the sun, and it
Speaker 2: would get very dark, and they would get very bright
Speaker 2: and get very dark and get very bright. It was odd.
Speaker 2: And then someone I worked with walked up to me
Speaker 2: and I don't I think he was listening to his walkman,
Speaker 2: and he said, the fire department just lost a lot
Speaker 2: of people. So that was the first time I realized
Speaker 2: that there are people that got up to work just
Speaker 2: like I did. They got dressed, and they are not
Speaker 2: coming home to see their families. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's heavy, isn't it. Did your wife did you
Speaker 1: get to how did you get to make contact with
Speaker 1: your wife. I know there was a couple of attempts,
Speaker 1: but she must have been going through assuming she would
Speaker 1: have missed you. She must have been going through hell
Speaker 1: wondering whether you did go to the tower on what's happened.
Speaker 1: It must have been a hard time for her.
Speaker 2: Yeah, we talk about it now in the family. It's
Speaker 2: kind of like the ongoing joke that I made that
Speaker 2: phone call and didn't call her back for a while,
Speaker 2: it's still the ongoing joke, you know. I guess when
Speaker 2: you're married to a cop, you have to laugh about things,
Speaker 2: and even to that magnitude, it's still talked about. And
Speaker 2: that's why I talk about it on the podcast, because
Speaker 2: it is it's something I would do. Is I did
Speaker 2: not saying I forgot to call her back, but it
Speaker 2: was I couldn't get to a payphone because every payphone
Speaker 2: I got to wasn't working. So I would tell my coworkers,
Speaker 2: I would say, I have to call my wife. So
Speaker 2: I went a little further uptown and I finally got
Speaker 2: to a phone and I called her office and it
Speaker 2: went to a voicemail, and so, yeah, I could leave
Speaker 2: a voicemail, but she I don't know if she's ever
Speaker 2: going back to work. So I called my house and
Speaker 2: I left a voicemail. Okay, I got somewhere. I called
Speaker 2: my father. He was home at the time, and I
Speaker 2: got him on the phone and I told him so.
Speaker 2: But still, how long would it be before she got
Speaker 2: this message? So I didn't know this at the time.
Speaker 2: She fled her building with her coworkers and they ended
Speaker 2: up running to the fifty ninth Street bridge and they
Speaker 2: ran over the bridge there. So she was more uptown,
Speaker 2: but she had to make her own exit out of
Speaker 2: the city. And she tells me now that you know,
Speaker 2: she kept telling everybody she works with. My husband went
Speaker 2: to the towers. My husband went to the towers, and
Speaker 2: I'm sure there was a lot of people that you know,
Speaker 2: had the thoughts. But so it was important to me
Speaker 2: to get that message to it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I can understand that, but the whole magnitude of
Speaker 1: what happened, it's a city in panic, and we were
Speaker 1: watching it from here. It was the early hours of
Speaker 1: the morning. I got up to go to work and
Speaker 1: put the TV on, or heard it on the radio,
Speaker 1: put the TV on. And when I first saw it,
Speaker 1: as a lot of people say, you didn't think it
Speaker 1: was real. You saw the image of the plane going
Speaker 1: into the tower. But we had because we had a
Speaker 1: wider view of what was going on where the information
Speaker 1: was coming in. You guys on the ground, you would
Speaker 1: have not known what's coming next. Is this just the
Speaker 1: first wave of a full on terrorist attack with more
Speaker 1: waves coming.
Speaker 2: That's what we started to realize that, you know, something's
Speaker 2: going on. We more than we could comprehend, whether we're
Speaker 2: being told or not. And what was happening is we
Speaker 2: had no real direction. So I was letting the fire
Speaker 2: trucks through, I was letting the ambulances through. So I
Speaker 2: started directing traffic, and I was a rookie carp directing traffic.
Speaker 2: It was nothing I couldn't do. I just didn't die.
Speaker 2: I would do at this magnitude. So I was in
Speaker 2: the middle street directing people. They would open the barriers
Speaker 2: and the emergency vehicles would come through with debris on
Speaker 2: top of it. So as I'm letting these emergency vehicles
Speaker 2: pass me, I'm waving them in one direction and I'm
Speaker 2: watching the debris fly off it. So I'm like, my gosh,
Speaker 2: I got to get out of the way. So this
Speaker 2: giant like stuff was coming off the top of the ambulance.
Speaker 2: Somebody's ambulances were downtown when it happened, and they were
Speaker 2: getting out with their patients, so I was directing them out,
Speaker 2: and then I was directing people back in. So it
Speaker 2: was a dangerous place to even direct traffic. So as
Speaker 2: of directing the traffic, I hear another sound, and I
Speaker 2: guess my jitters were up. I heard something above me
Speaker 2: again and I looked up. It was a fighter jet
Speaker 2: and we all cheered the fire fighter jets as they
Speaker 2: flew over the Manhattan. So that's when I really realized
Speaker 2: that this is something I never expected to ever see.
Speaker 2: W'ch hearing fighter jets coming over to city was unbelievable.
Speaker 1: And that was a symbol of where farthing back I
Speaker 1: would imagine I felt safe saying that the farther the jets. Okay,
Speaker 1: the whole experience for you just from you did get
Speaker 1: home that night. You had eventually you got home a
Speaker 1: couple couple of hours sleep, and you said that you
Speaker 1: were hearing sounds of sirens in your head when you
Speaker 1: got home and you were looking out the window wondering
Speaker 1: where what was going on now? But they were sounds
Speaker 1: in your head. Correct? Do you want to talk us
Speaker 1: through that?
Speaker 2: Yeah? Yeah, I'm glad you read it. It was one
Speaker 2: of those things you're never going to forget. When I
Speaker 2: went home, I did eventually contact my wife indirectly through
Speaker 2: three different people. So it was another family member of
Speaker 2: mine that I had left a message. I had left
Speaker 2: a lot of messages for people. He had drove to
Speaker 2: my house, saw her in front of the house, told
Speaker 2: her that I was okay. It was not at the towers.
Speaker 2: I was directing traffic where I was the whole time.
Speaker 2: So when once that got off my mind, it was
Speaker 2: a little more. That's when the fear started to go,
Speaker 2: My gosh, look what just happened. And then and then
Speaker 2: it was funny is I had no way to get home.
Speaker 2: So I took the train home on another guy. And
Speaker 2: I'm riding a subway like a commuter after this madness.
Speaker 2: And so I get home and my house was empty.
Speaker 2: But let me tell you, when you get home after
Speaker 2: an incident like that, home is the best place you
Speaker 2: can ever be. It's like something you strive for all
Speaker 2: day long to finally get there. Your home is your castle,
Speaker 2: it's it's your kingdom. At that moment, so I was
Speaker 2: just so glad my wife wasn't home. She ended up
Speaker 2: staying with other family members. So because that's how the
Speaker 2: city had a very strange vibe going on at that time.
Speaker 2: When it comes to that stuff, people were very nervous.
Speaker 2: So I go home and I had to take off
Speaker 2: that close because it was I wasn't caked in it,
Speaker 2: but I knew it was in my clothes, which was
Speaker 2: the debrief in the building, so I knew enough that
Speaker 2: that stuff was toxic. I knew from the smell of
Speaker 2: the burnt plastic. So I threw the clothes outside. I
Speaker 2: just left it there, you know, And I went up
Speaker 2: to my bathroom and I was hearing sirens like I
Speaker 2: had heard them, the sirens when I was walking through
Speaker 2: the city. I heard it on the subway, but I
Speaker 2: just figured it was sirens in the distance. And now
Speaker 2: in my house and I'm in a quiet area of
Speaker 2: Queen's I mean, I mean ailes from Manhattan, so I
Speaker 2: don't know what sirens I was hearing. And they kept
Speaker 2: going to my ear, and I kept going to my ear,
Speaker 2: and the sirens, siren, sirens. So I was taking a
Speaker 2: shower and I was hearing it over the water, So
Speaker 2: I said, this is a normal So I opened up
Speaker 2: my window and I heard it, but there was nothing outside.
Speaker 2: I couldn't see anything. I shut the shower off. I
Speaker 2: walked out in my hallway and the sirens were continuing.
Speaker 2: And then I went in my room and that's when
Speaker 2: I realized the sirens were from me, just hearing them
Speaker 2: constantly throughout the day, and I could not get that
Speaker 2: that siren sound out of my ears. It was just echoing.
Speaker 1: Just em better than you in your psyching. Reflecting on
Speaker 1: it now you talk about it, you've written about it,
Speaker 1: it must still and you said at the start of
Speaker 1: the podcast that, yeah, there's not a day that goes
Speaker 1: by where you don't don't think about it. After an
Speaker 1: experience like that, did you feel like I don't want
Speaker 1: to be part of this anymore? Or did it stir
Speaker 1: something different than you that you thought, Okay, well I
Speaker 1: want to stay and make a difference. What was the
Speaker 1: fear in your head, because I would imagine that a
Speaker 1: cross your mind experiencing something like that. The stuff is
Speaker 1: I'm going to get out of the city. I just
Speaker 1: want to leave a y life of peace. What was
Speaker 1: going through your mind after experiencing what you did on
Speaker 1: met day.
Speaker 2: I didn't really have the time to think about a
Speaker 2: future of my police work at that moment, because what
Speaker 2: I wanted to do was the first thing I did
Speaker 2: was I put on my construction boots and my pants
Speaker 2: and my heavy duty shirt, and I was my gloves.
Speaker 2: I had the heavy gloves on. I was ready to
Speaker 2: dig for survivors. And I went to work the next
Speaker 2: day and somebody I worked with drove me there, and
Speaker 2: I really wanted to get back into it. You know,
Speaker 2: the NYPD didn't have the time to, you know, really
Speaker 2: say Hey, what are you going to do. We're gonna
Speaker 2: do this, We're gonna do that. The playbook was still
Speaker 2: thrown out the window, and there was no playbook. There
Speaker 2: was no like, hey, John, come back at this time.
Speaker 2: I just went right back to the same location I
Speaker 2: was at. And when I went back into the city
Speaker 2: the next day, it was the next day and it
Speaker 2: was still nice out, but it had looked like a
Speaker 2: tornado went through the city, tore everything up, threw it
Speaker 2: in the air, and threw it back down on the floor.
Speaker 2: I looked downtown and I saw the building had these
Speaker 2: the metal you could see it now in old pictures,
Speaker 2: and I saw it directly. The metal structure of the facade.
Speaker 2: There was these four like beam looking things that didn't
Speaker 2: get knocked down, and they just like a fork, stood
Speaker 2: up in the air and there was all debris around it.
Speaker 2: And I couldn't believe that out of all that that
Speaker 2: stood like a relic. Was very odd. So I saw that,
Speaker 2: and then I was we couldn't find a parking spot,
Speaker 2: and then we were looking for parking spots next to
Speaker 2: carse with broken windows and debris filled in it, and
Speaker 2: it was like, wow, really something went through here yesterday
Speaker 2: because we were actually had a park closer than I
Speaker 2: was the day before.
Speaker 1: You you grew up in New York, you were a
Speaker 1: New York boy through and through. You're a cop in
Speaker 1: New York. What was the impact that it had from
Speaker 1: your observations it?
Speaker 2: Like I said, there was there was no madness. It
Speaker 2: was everything in a strange way, calms down, like even
Speaker 2: the subway ride was calm like. The next day, I
Speaker 2: was in uniform and people offered me a seat on
Speaker 2: the subway. That doesn't happen. People don't know what I need.
Speaker 2: City police officer seats on the subway, so I knew
Speaker 2: times were different. And as soon as I got back
Speaker 2: to one police plaza, I you know, the supplies started
Speaker 2: showing up right away. It was like America started grieving
Speaker 2: within the hours. And I saw cases of water. I
Speaker 2: you know. A stranger walked up to me and goes, hey,
Speaker 2: why don't you go down there to this block or upstairs?
Speaker 2: They're cooking steaks on the roof. So I'm like, yeah,
Speaker 2: I'm gonna go. I'll see in ten minutes. I don't
Speaker 2: know what this guy was talking about. I look back now,
Speaker 2: they were, you know, cooking steak for the city workers
Speaker 2: up on their roof, and guys were going taking their
Speaker 2: breaks up there. That was really happening.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's almost like the people understand the time of
Speaker 1: travel like that. Obviously it's probably an understatement, but the
Speaker 1: importance of the emergency workers and all that. So I've
Speaker 1: watched that what you see, you see the shows about it,
Speaker 1: I've read about it and all that, but this is
Speaker 1: the first time I've had the first hand account of
Speaker 1: someone that was there, and you bought it to life
Speaker 1: in the article that you wrote about and what you're
Speaker 1: talking about it. So thanks, Thanks for that we might
Speaker 1: take a break now, and when we come back for
Speaker 1: part two, we're going to delve into life of a
Speaker 1: New York cop because I'm fascinated by it. I've been
Speaker 1: watching those TV shows and those movies my whole career,
Speaker 1: and I've got my own police career over here. But
Speaker 1: there was something about being a cop in New York.
Speaker 1: It seemed to be the sharp end of policing. So
Speaker 1: when we come back for part two, if you could
Speaker 1: take us into the world of a New York cop,
Speaker 1: that would be very much appreciated. Sure, cheers,