Fixing the NYPD: 1980s chaos to modern policing | Wearing the Badge S2E10)

The NYPD was more like a tribal organization at the time. Nobody has a police hat. One guy didn't have a holster. He carried his service weapon in his back pocket. There was a female who wore blue polyester pants, three-inch spiked heels, and a sweatshirt. And you wouldn't know she was a cop, except for the fact that she was sitting in the police car. That's the organization that we kind of inherited. At that point, they were happy if you showed up for work. Yes. And if you were sober, it was better. And it was fun being a cop in a place like that. But being in charge of that controlled chaos is not so cool. Friends would ask me, how long did you work in the 46th precinct as a sergeant? I'd say 14 years. And they'd say, from when to when? I'd say 85 to 87. Dog years. When you're a sergeant in a place like that, it is dog years. Being a police officer and being in law enforcement is truly one of the most noble things that a human being can do in their life. We need to remember that the police are not the problem and recognize that and figure out how to move forward. Eddie grew up in Washington Heights, Manhattan, believe it or not, where I became the precinct commander at one point. Spent two years there. Eddie was long gone. But when I got to that location, you could buy a kilo of cocaine off the hood of a car. But not from me. Not from Eddie. Eddie was gone. He had moved on to bigger passages as a police officer. One of the things that I think about and I talk about frequently that a lot of people need to really know is that our generation in the NYPD hit it just right. We were so fortunate to go on the job when we did. And in just a little history, in the 70s, the NYPD actually was laying police officers off. There were no promotional exams and they started, they gave a test in 1979 and started hiring off of that. Eddie, you went on in 80? No, I went on, I was in the first class. You went on in 79. I went on in 81. And then we had an opportunity. And this is something that's kind of lost to history but needs to be commented on, which is that when Bill Bratton and Rudy Giuliani came to New York and kind of changed the way that we did policing, they had an advantage that a lot of people didn't have, which is our generation successively caught a sergeant, lieutenant, and a captain's test. So that if you take the top 100 or so of our captain's list, there was some very talented, aggressive, forward-thinking people. And we were given the opportunity to succeed. It became what I like to call a meritocracy. It was less about politics and more about performance than anything else that we did. And Eddie and I kind of went up through the ranks at the same time. A couple of funny stories that we'll probably get to. But the first time I met Ed, the sergeant's test was given in 1983, I believe, right? And Ed was in the top of that group also, which kind of surprises me knowing you the way that that's two in a row. I sat behind a smart guy. But Ed was in the top of that group and they had promoted a ton of sergeants. And I was 59 numbers away, which on a list in New York City for sergeant is like being number three. You know what I mean? And in an organization that big. And then the lawsuits got dropped on it and it got blocked for like 14 months. And at the same time, while I'm waiting to get promoted, Ed comes to the four six where I was a police officer. How was that experience? The 46th Precinct in the Bronx is near and dear to my heart as it is Gary's. It's a great place. Back then, it usually led the city of one square mile. So think about one square mile of a heavy urban environment. Good people trying to raise their families for the most part. But a lot of crime, a lot of drugs, a lot of gangs. And then at one square mile, we would always be in the top three or four in the whole city in homicides. Somehow they crammed a lot of murders into that one square mile area. So cops were great for the most part. Great cops, busy cops. I always found that I think Gary would agree. Those places, the cops know what they're doing. They're good. They're solid people. They like they like fighting crime. They like helping people. So I get to the 46th Precinct. I see this vision walk past the desk with not a hair out of place. I didn't bring it here for this. Kind of a cocky little attitude about him. But he was in the anti-crime unit. So if you're in the anti-crime unit in the precinct, that means you wore plain clothes, dungarees, and you're not you're called bad guys. That's what you did. So he was in the anti-crime unit. So right away, that means he's a cop. He's a street guy. He knows what he's doing. Thankfully for me, I was an anti-crime cop in my previous precinct as a cop in Harlem. So it's kind of a camaraderie, a bond that, you know, you know, fellow anti-crime cops, you guys know the deal when it comes to catching bad guys. So I automatically respected him for being in that unit because it was a very, very busy place. So yeah, I forget. I think you did walk by the desk. And I think you made me say hello to you first, if I'm not mistaken. It sounds right. Yeah, that's right. Just like we did today. So go ahead and tell us a little bit about yourself. Thank you for having me, Gary. Yeah, again, Ed Harnett. I had a glorious, blessed career at the NYPD. I did 27 years. I left as a deputy chief. I took about, I told people I took about four days off. And I went just north of the Bronx to the bustling city of Yonkers, New York, which is a cool place. City of about 200,000 people. The whole core section of life has poor, gangs, drugs. And the other side, it has upper end, upscale, wealthy folks and everything in between. Did five years there. I've been in the private world now for the last 10, 12 years. And I don't have a playbook for the career I have now, but it's working out fine. I get to work with some cool people and do some cool projects that I don't necessarily worry about the financing of or the revenue generated from it. It's just I get to work with good people and things I want to do. Very happy to be here tonight. And I have to say, because we're going to probably have a little back and forth here and some shenanigans. But I did want to start off by saying that I'm proud of you. You've done a lot. And our mutual friends back in New York are going to kill me for saying this. But you've been through a lot. It was a tough go along the way. You've excelled everywhere you went. A lot of bumps in the road along the way, but you survived. I'm very happy that you're out here doing well. So I'm proud of you, brother. All right. We're good. We can stop now. Eddie, thanks. That's embarrassing. And it's the same thing vice versa. The thing that Ed's not saying is being a cop in those places, in my mind, is a wonderful thing to do because you're actually helping people. You're making a difference. You make a gun arrest and you can be saving somebody's life. Right. And there were a lot of guns that we were taking off the street. But the NYPD was more like a tribal organization at the time. And I'll never forget the first time that I did a 12 to 8. So I looked down the row and one guy's got a six foot long red scarf. Nobody has a police hat. Couple of guys are wearing skullcats, which, by the way, are authorized in many departments today. But they say something like NYPD or CPD. This was different. One guy didn't have a holster. He carried his service weapon in his back pocket. There was a female who wore blue polyester pants, three inch spiked heels and a sweatshirt. And you wouldn't know she was a cop except for the fact that she was sitting in a police car. So that's that's the organization that we kind of inherited. And as I like to say, and it's not necessarily true, but I think it's kind of funny, is that at that point, they were happy if you showed up for work. Yes. And if you were sober, it was better. Right. Because we had a lot of people who probably spent a little too much time hanging out before they came to work. Some of those old timers. And I like to say, when Ed got to a place like the 4th 6th, it was similar to when I went to the 44th precinct, which was right next to the 4th 6th in the same conditions, except now I'm a lieutenant. And it was fun being a cop in a place like that. But being in charge of that controlled chaos is not so cool. And as I said, I would as a young sergeant in the 46th precinct, again, I loved it. But I would turn out on a 4-12, maybe 40 cops. And it would just be me out there as a sergeant trying to rein them in if at all possible. And I tell people, they said, friends would ask me, how long did you work in the 46th precinct as a sergeant? I'd say 14 years. And they'd say, from when to when? I'd say 85 to 87. It's dog years. When you're a sergeant in a place like that, it is dog years. It's exhausting. But it was exhilarating. It was exhilarating. It was exciting to be there. And you were part of something. But just in general, in places like Harlem, the Bronx, back in the 80s, into the 90s. And keep in mind, in the early 90s, New York City reached about 2,200 homicides in the city. So we all thought we were doing a good job as cops and sergeants running around, locking people up. But downtown at headquarters, there was nobody orchestrating anything. There was nobody paying attention to anything. There was nobody tying all the dots together. It was just like, we're out there running around, running amok, basically, locking up a bunch of people with doing bad things. But there was no cohesiveness coming from downtown. And more importantly, there was no message coming from downtown about how to do it better. Until Bratton and Giuliani came in. And just to put a point on that, when I was a young cop in patrol, it was frowned on to make a narcotics arrest because that was a corruption hazard. Yes. Right? Narcotics was up to the narcotics division. And that was all it was to it. I remember one time I came in with, I think it was like six pounds of marijuana, which today is probably OK. But back in the early 80s, it was frowned upon. And when the desk officer asked me, well, how did this happen? I explained the circumstances. He says, well, you can't do that. I said, oh, OK. And I started taking the handcuffs off the prisoner. He says, what are you doing? I said, well, I'm letting them go. He said, I couldn't do that. That's the insanity that was going on. If you remember, you had to fill out a separate form. Yeah. Basically saying why you as a uniformed officer made a drug arrest. Because going back, like the movie Serpico and the Knapp Commission and all that stuff, they basically saw that uniformed cops and drugs are certainly, as Gary said, a corruption hazard. So the best way to remedy that is make sure they don't make drug arrests. I mean, a terrible message when you think about it, but that's how paranoid they were about corruption. Especially when all of a sudden, starting in about 1984, the crack epidemic hit New York City. I remember the first time that I came across crack. We thought it was like caramel candy in a pan that came out of an oven. And we were going to throw it away. And somebody was like, no, no, no, no, no. That's crack. I'm like, well, what do we do with it? Well, other people smoke it. We're not going to do that. And that was the first time I saw crack. And I was with a friend of mine who I went to high school with. That's why I can date it, because I know when we work together. But the NYPD really had an unbelievable run. Certainly, I mean, in the early 90s, crime started to actually go down before Bratton and Giuliani came in. And that had a lot to do with the national COPS grants that were being given out. We were able to hire a lot more people. But as things went down the road, where'd you go as a lieutenant? I was with Bill Taylor. I was in the applicant processing division, which is a whole different aspect of the job that I learned a lot. But it was a crazy place to work. And then I went back to narcotics as a lieutenant after that. I ended up, like I said, I wanted to stay in the Bronx. My boss kept me in the Bronx, and he put me in a place that was as bad, if not worse, than the 4-6. But the stories that come out of there are fantastic. You just can't make them up. And a lot of really, really good cops. When I was deputy commissioner, my office was filled up with people who I worked with in the 4-4. Sergeants, lieutenants, police officers, and so on, because they were people you could rely on, and you knew it. Yeah, known commodities, and it's actually flattering, too, when you go somewhere and somebody calls you up and says, I want to come, before you even call them up, they ask them to come. So that's always a good feeling. After that, when did you make captain? The end of 93, I guess. I was in Manhattan South Narcotics as a lieutenant, and then I made captain. Yeah, I think the end of 93. I think it might have been 92. I made captain in 92. Yeah, it was the end of 93. It was about the same time. Yeah. But being a captain now, the interesting thing is that captain is the last civil service test in New York City. Up to that point, you take a test, you get promoted. It's that simple. After that, the highest-ranking four-star chief in the NYPD is technically a captain and acting as chief of department. So being nonpolitical, I basically became a duty captain. I went to Internal Affairs, because we had the Malin Commission scandal, and they made promises. And guys who we went up the ranks with, guys like Joe D'Amico and Tom Belfiore, also went to Internal Affairs, because at the same time, they had given us a contract where we weren't really going to get paid. We took a $10,000 pay cut to make captain because we gave up our paid overtime. And then it took seven years to get to top pay, and the last step was the big one. Up till that point, it was like $100 raises. $100 a year for four years. Yeah, which was insane. So we took that promise, and then the administration changed. And the promises meant nothing, right? And the promise was that we were going to get a promotable command. In other words, a police precinct or district where there are three levels in the NYPD. There's captain's commands, there's deputy inspectors, which is the equivalent of commander here in Illinois. And then there's, the top is the A-House, which is a full inspector, which is equivalent to a colonel in the military. And lo and behold, I get a C-House, right? I get a captain's command on the Upper West Side of Manhattan. But you ate well. I did gain some weight, right? But I also met some really good people. I learned a little bit about, that's when we started Comstack at the same time. Comstack is kind of, I think, what Eddie was leading up to, where it kind of was the cohesion. It was the engine and the roadmap for the NYPD to carry out its mission of reducing crime and violence, and the fear of crime, and reduce police-related shootings. Everything that you could think of. It's business management of policing, right? And we were fortunate that we were young captains, baby captains, when the Comstack process and Bill Bratton came in and handpicked key people to elevate them sometimes two and three ranks above where they were, because he knew they'd be on the team. I always likened Bratton, and I do some work with him. I'm fortunate enough to do some consulting work with him now. I likened him to an orchestra leader. He didn't want to play the piano. He didn't want to play the violin. But he knew how to find a guy who could play the piano and the violin. So he picked these people that were the engine of this whole Comstack really cultural change. As he says, it's like turning an aircraft carrier around in the Hudson River. Takes a while, but you get it quick enough, and you start going in the right direction, things happen. And it was remarkable how quickly things turned around. And again, for us being kind of at the front row seat as young captains, it was perfect. So we had buy-in right away. They fought a lot with some of the old guard. The old guard, all they cared about was corruption. They didn't care about the community. They certainly didn't care about crime. Some of them were good guys. I'm not saying they were all terrible, but they dug in. They were not going to tolerate this. They said, this guy Bratton with his Boston accent and came from the transit police. They're never going to let us. They're going to be gone in a year and a half. Then we'll go back to the old ways of doing things. Well, he outlasted them. Some of them retired. Some of them sued him. It was crazy, but he got rid of them. If they didn't want to be on the team, he made it clear that you go back to being a captain someday. They weren't going to go back to being captains. So they slowly roared off into the sunset. Well, another saying in the NYPD is the second time you make captain, it's not as much fun as the first time. Because first time you're on the way up and second time you're on your way down. I can't think of anybody who accepted it. I mean, it's crazy. If you're a chief and all of a sudden they bump you down three or four levels, you're not taking that. Well, the other thing that I really liked was an old timer said, you know, I was doing really good in a rat race. And then they brought in faster rats. And that was us. Yeah, that's it. And you can throw a dart at the top hundred on that captain's list and you're going to have a really competent individual. And that was, there's a maturation process there, even though it happened very quickly. You went from station to station to station and you got more and more responsibility along the way. And in my case, I went to that sea house. I spent two years there. Then I went to what's known as a B house where a commander runs it, where you used to live in Washington Heights. And then I went to an A house where, you know, that story we'll get to. But thank God where I grew up in three, four precincts, the cops were kind of overweight in my precincts. I could run faster than them. So they never caught me. But not that I was doing anything terrible, but every now and then we'd chase you for something. It was the beer. Might've been beer involved. Yeah, they kept the beer. The nice guys kept half the beer and gave us half the beer, but the rest of them took it all. But they didn't do that in the Bronx. That was different. It was Manhattan. It was more elite. I got it. So Eddie and I crossed paths a number of times over the years. And one of the interesting stories that I'll let Eddie actually tell from start to finish has to do with the fact that there were, there were, I think three of us getting promoted to full inspector all at the same time. Yeah. I didn't know at the time I was getting promoted, but yes. And we know because that's getting a little bit higher up in the ranks that you can tell where the openings are, who's going here and who's going there. And at the time I was actually, I had started my master's degree and I was in the three, three precinct in Washington Heights as a commander, deputy inspector. And, you know, doing two precincts is something that some people do, but not everybody, but doing three precincts is something that virtually a very small percentage of people do. And I said to myself, so I'm going to start my master's and, and this is good because, you know, it's always great to have more education. I took two courses and then this happened. Ed, why don't you tell the story? So at the time I'm a deputy inspector, so one rank above captain. I'm the commanding officer of the 109 precinct, which is in Queens. It's, I think even to this day, it's the highest residential precinct in the city. About 200,000 people scrammed into about 13 square miles, mostly property crime, not a lot of violence, but you know, there's always some violence. But so I'm the CO of that precinct. He's the CO in Manhattan, in the 33rd precinct. And he calls me up and he says, guess what? Ray Diaz is, is getting promoted. And I'm like, what does that have to do with me? Turns out this guy, Ray Diaz is moving up and there's going to be an opening in this precinct in South Brooklyn. Now him and I both live one or two towns apart at the time in Rockland County, which is north of the city. Brooklyn South is quite a bit away, geography wise, from where we live. So you're told you have to go down and you have to meet with the police commissioner and he'll tell you, he'll give you the good news or whatever. So I'm going in for my appointment with the police commissioner. He's walking out and he had said to me, one of us is getting the 7-0, one of us is getting the 7-0. Which by the way, the 7-0 at the time, it was number three or four in every crime category in the city. And they had the Abner Louima scandal. That's right. Where a Haitian immigrant was sodomized in the bathroom and a whole bunch of cops. Tortured with a broom handle or something, you know. Yeah. And a whole bunch of cops actually went to federal prison for that. So there was a little bit of problems out there. And it was pretty much of a monster of an assignment. It's undesirable. Beyond the geography, it's an undesirable place that you didn't want to go. You didn't want to say, I want to be there. I don't think you'd ever worked in Brooklyn. I never worked in Brooklyn. So as I'm walking in to see the police commissioner, he's walking out and he says, congratulate me. I'm the new CEO of the 7-0 precinct. Yeah, but the conversation with the police commissioner was pretty funny. Now that I look back on it, I didn't think it was funny then. He said, so Gary, you've done a great job in the 3-3. Howard Safer is the police commissioner and it's time for you to move. And I said, yes, sir. He says, I'm going to move you to the 7-0. I said, okay, great. Thank you, boss. I appreciate that. He says, but I'm going to promote you. I said, oh, that's even better. Thank you. He says, you know, I need you to bring that place back into the police department. And I said, yes, sir. I'll do the best I can. He says, okay. He says, I want you to go down the hall and talk to Pat Kelleher, first deputy commissioner. And as I'm walking out the door, he says to me, by the way, where do you live? He said, I live in Rockland County. He said, oh, he says, you've got quite a commute in front of you. He says, but I think you get a car with that job. I said, think. I said, boss, I need a helicopter. It's like they got out the string. They put it on my house in Rockland. And I said, how far can we send this guy? Well, that's as far as you can go. Once you're a captain, the job does not care about where you live anymore. When you're a police officer, they'll arrange that you get fairly close to home. But once you're a captain, they look upon you as a police executive, and you're in the executive corps, and now you go where you're needed. And I got to tell you something. One day, it took me three and a half hours to get there. I had to go through four boroughs in New York City to get there. And it was a violent place. And it was really funny. In the northern section of it, there were million-dollar crack habits. And in the southern section, there were million-dollar homes. So it was really an interesting, interesting dynamic. A big Hasidim community and a big Muslim community all at the same time. So it was something I had never dealt with before. Great police officers. Everybody was traumatized by that event with Abdel Waleema. And it was one of the most satisfying jobs that I had in the police department, and that it turned around very quickly. You know, he wanted me to bring her back into the police department. We brought her back very quickly. And very, very satisfying. Cops are cops. I find, you know, they write all these textbooks about supervision and management, leadership. You know, an old boss of mine said, as a boss, I don't care if you're a sergeant in the street or a captain of a precinct, keep your cops safe, keep them out of trouble. You know, they can have all the textbooks in all the libraries they want. If you're a boss and you do those two things, keep your cops safe, keep them out of trouble, that's most of the game right there. Yeah, and leadership. You know, and I like to talk about the fact that working in a busy, busy command as a police officer, you in the 3-2 in Harlem, me in the 4-6, you get to see a lot. And you get to see good bosses and bad bosses. And you weren't in the 4-6 when Freddie Sherman was there, right? I just missed him. So Freddie Sherman was a sergeant in the 4-6. And he was different. Let's put it that way. And he got into a tragic situation where when we have a big parade in New York, like St. Patrick's Day in this case, we have these details where they bring in cops from all over the city and they move cars to clear the parade route, in this case, 5th Avenue, and they bring in cops from all over the city. Well, Freddie had that detailed the night before. So on March 16th, whatever year that was, it was probably 84-ish because I was still in the 4-6. 85, probably 85. March of 85. He goes down to the detail overnight, the parking detail, and he's drinking all night. With two rookies in the car. Two rookies in the car who naturally were intimidated and didn't know what to do about it. And on the way home, he drove over two people on Park Avenue. Park Avenue, killed one. Killed one and injured another. The guy who got killed was a doctor. So pretty high-profile event. But he doesn't stop. He drives the car back to the 4-6 precinct with brain matter in the windshield. Takes out a hose and hoses it off. Turns in the keys and goes home. Walk down the block. And I came into work the next day. I'll never forget it. And, you know, the precinct, even at 7 a.m., is a bevy of activity, right? Everybody's coming into work. People are leaving. There's all sorts of things going on. And that day, March 17th, I come into the precinct and it's quiet as a mouse. Not a sound. And I walk in through the archway and I look to my left and behind the precinct desk, I see chiefs, people with stars on their shoulders. And I'm like, whoa. So I hightail it up to the locker room and get changed. And I'm like, what's going on? And everybody's like, I don't know. Nobody knew what was going on at that point. And then it came out over the course of the day. He went to jail. He actually died in prison. But, you know, what that does to an agency is indescribable. Whether it's Admiral Louima, a Freddie Sherman, an Amadou Diallo, or any other tragedy that you can think of. And we had one here with the shooting, right? 16 shots. And that resulted in a sea change in the agency. But some places are able to recover from that and some places don't. And the thing that I think about the NYPD is that it continued to be a meritocracy. It didn't revert to politics. And when people ask me about Chicago, all my friends across the country, they say, what's wrong with Chicago? I said, Chicago politics. You know, to this day, because of one bad event, I lost my police career, even though I regained it, right? And people on the street say to me, oh, you're McCarthy, right? Yeah, you got thrown under the bus. And I say, well, why do you think that happened? Well, you know, somebody had to pay for that. I said, why? They said, well, because that's what we always do. And I say, well, how's that working out? And they say, well, not so good. And then I asked them, do you know the definition of insanity? Right? Einstein, I believe, said, I'm doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result. Not learning from it, but all of a sudden throwing everything overboard and starting over again and political appointees. Yeah, the things you mentioned in NYPD and certainly the shooting here in Chicago, you know, these are seismic events. These are seminal moments. And the agency can go either way sometimes afterwards and take a long time to recover. I'm just amazed that, you know, because even when there was other scandals in NYPD, remember the sergeant in Queens, Sergeant Pike? Pike, Prince of Spain. He was torturing prisoners basically to find out where they got their weed so they can go lock that guy up. Ridiculous. It was barbaric and medieval what he was doing to these people. He was using a cattle truck. Yeah. But the way the NYPD, in its infinite wisdom at the time, handled it was, let's go up the line and, you know, bounce this guy, bounce this guy. They went up as far as the chief of patrol, Hamilton Robertson at the time. He was a good man, from what I remember. But they decided to stop at him. Even as a young sergeant at the time, I'd go, who decides where they stop? You know, they went to the precinct command. Okay. Then he went above him. And finally to the chief of patrol. So what made them stop? Why didn't they go all the way up? Or in your case, why did you have to take the fall? I don't know. Let's find out. I'm going to ask some questions. I get to ask some questions too now, right? Yeah. But sometimes it gets draconian where the punishment is amazingly harsh at times. And we've had our experience with that too. Sometimes, again, when I went to Yonkers, the cops were worried that I was going to bring in this harsh NYPD-type discipline. And I said, I'll apply it when it matters, when it's appropriate. But I don't do the blanket approach. And they saw that. Some guys, I had to do some culture change in Yonkers as well. Yonkers is a great place, a great department, good street cops, good detectives, good emergency service cops, some good bosses, not all, but some good bosses. They needed some leadership. They needed some accountability, how to fight crime a little bit better, how to tie everything together. And also, the relationships in some of the communities, especially the African-American community, were quite damaged. And I wasn't the savior, but I brought some of the stuff I learned in the NYPD up there. Plus, I'm a city kid. And I found people in the neighborhood that wanted to like the police, that wanted to talk to the police, that wanted to be invited to community meetings. And sadly, over the years, nobody was listening to them. Nobody was inviting them to anything. So I said, listen, let's invite some of these folks in to talk, and maybe they do have some legitimate beats. But I also said, the excessive force, especially in those communities, has to stop. And I said, there's no moratorium on this. We'll stop now. We're not going to wait until next week. We're stopping it now. And don't make me impose harsh discipline on you, or even worse, if I catch you. And you know what? They're cops. They came around. And I left it a better place, you know, to brag a little bit. I left it a better place than when I found it. Yeah. And you know what? What really still, I almost can't get over, is that the murder rate in Chicago, the year after I was fired, went up by 64%. And it just didn't have to happen. But what they did was they just exploded everything that we put. I was going to say, so did they totally abandon everything you did? Or was it a gradual thing? Or was it immediate? Well, it was said on the fourth floor of 35th Street that we're not going to do that New York ---- anymore. OK. And when that was brought to my attention, I said, wait a second. So we're not going to try to stop people from getting killed? We're not going to try and implement programs that are going to last beyond this political cycle and make the world a better place? You know, one of the interesting things is, like I said, I still get that conversation on a daily basis here in Chicago. And that happened in 2015. And where are we now? 2026, right? So 11 years later, people are still having that conversation with me. And, you know, I spent a lot of time on patrol here. That was one of my favorite things to do, because instead of being a commissioner, I was chief and I could go back to doing those things I did. And some of my best conversations were on street corners with people in the distressed neighborhoods and four o'clock in the morning on street corners with cops, because what am I doing out there? But it was the politicians all at the same time that determined that we were not going to do that anymore. I'm I just don't even know what to say about it. Now, did the unions here, the police unions here get involved in campaign funding and campaign activity and stuff? It's funny that you ask that, because another thing that I was really surprised by when I ran for mayor, the FOP did not make an endorsement of anybody in that mayoral election. Now, I'm a career police officer and the police union decided that they weren't going to get involved. I don't know. But but the the behind the scenes, the the politicking that goes on, they actually the mayor actually violated the process to appoint my successor. There's it's by municipal code that you have to do a national search, come up with 10 candidates that the police board narrows to three that they present to the mayor. And then the mayor makes a decision between those three individuals. It's in a municipal code. What they did was they said the one of the caucuses, which you can probably guess which one of the caucuses went to the mayor and said, well, no, this guy is a good guy. And the mayor said, OK, you're the police superintendent. And no backlash? No. That's Chicago politics. Because funny, the politics of what I was getting at before about the campaigns and stuff is, again, I do get my police fix, as I told you, thankfully doing some projects with Bill Bratton. And I do some on my own as well, smaller, smaller cities sometimes. And so we've been, you know, all over this, all over the country, you know, St. Louis, Baltimore, Oakland, Detroit, L.A., other places. And in one place, you know, without naming it, one of the big things was the cops actively on duty are out putting campaign signs out in uniform, marked cars in uniform. And they were asking us, can they do that? I said, what's your policy? You got to have some kind of policy. So they had some very nebulous, vague policy about it. But I said, listen, I'll take this policy and I'll give you a new policy. Yeah, a new policy is you can't do that. And so, I mean, it was sending the message, but it was it was acceptable that that they were all kind of aside from the union writing campaign checks, they were actively out campaigning in the streets with literature and signs. And I mean, totally, you know, anathema to us. Well, it's it's interesting because I don't think that happens here in Chicago. But by the same token, the teachers union and SEIU basically run the political machine here in Cook County right now. They got Brandon Johnson elected. They support Tony Preckwinkle. And that's why that's happening. And if you look, the teachers union is getting also the mayor actually fired the head of the education system here in Chicago because he wouldn't take a loan that would basically bankrupt the city where they wouldn't be touching the principle of interest on the loan for 20 years. He fired that guy and then had the teachers, the board, elect somebody who he wanted there. And it's like, why do you have these processes in place if you're not going to use them? And why do you have policies in place? Well, how many times have you heard this? Well, what does the policy say? Like you just said, well, the policy says A, B and C, but we don't do that. That's what I heard when I got here. I said, well, guess what? We're either going to change the policy or we're going to do it. Yeah, right. And that's what we do here in Chicago. And there's liability attached to this stuff. No kidding. Right now I'm doing expert witness stuff. I do a little of that too, yeah. And $88 million on one settlement just now where the city admitted liability. Pursuit policies, right? We didn't have pursuit policies when we went on the job. No. John Timoney actually really implemented them during that time when we were a little bit up the ladder. Those things are unbelievable because it's almost with a wink and a nod. Well, was there a pursuit? No, there was no pursuit. Well, let's look at the body cameras. Oh, there's no footage. What? I mean, the body cameras are there for a reason. The pursuit policy is there for a reason. But with a wink and a nod, we're ignoring. And it's being legitimized in some cases by ranking people up the line. And you just can't do that today. You know, the world has changed dramatically from those guys who we met back in 1981 and 79. And use of force, pursuit policies, body cameras should be changing everything. But it seems like we just keep going back to the same stupid thing over and over again. I'm glad you mentioned John Timoney. John Timoney, anybody out there wants to Google him, brilliant police leader, sadly passed away young. But you mentioned how he changed the pursuit policy. He also, he was the chief of department and the first deputy in New York City, ran afoul of Rudy Giuliani. That'll come up if you Google it, too. He wound up being the chief in Philly, and then he went to Miami, and he was the chief down there for several years. Then he wound up doing private work out in the Middle East. But anywhere he worked, like, for example, police shootings, anywhere he worked, he changed the deadly force policy. And numbers, like, were up here, went down. New York, Philly, Miami, wherever it was. With basic stuff. Do you want to hear the most basic one? Our police-related shootings were firing too many rounds too frequently, right? When I looked at the policy, it basically said that you can shoot into a moving car if you feel that you should. And I was like, what exactly does that mean? And I changed the policy on shooting into moving vehicles, very simply, that you don't shoot at a moving vehicle unless deadly physical force, other than a vehicle, is being used against you or another. Guess what? 75% reduction in police-related shootings. And even on the ones when- And just to put a point on it, if ICE had the same policy in Minneapolis, that women would not have been shot. Now, you don't stand in front of cars, but even if you do get that million-dollar kill shot, you've got a 2,000-pound bullet going down the street. And the only thing that was missing in Minneapolis was the grandmother walking the baby across the street and getting run over by the car with the woman. Yeah, that car kept moving. But even in the rare occasions where, if you handle it as a duty captain, or I handle it as a duty captain, where a cop did shoot at a car, it usually resulted in some discipline and retraining. It didn't become a public spectacle. It wasn't a termination offense, usually, unless it was really, really dramatic. But those things work, and those things limit liability for the agency, which is important. People don't see that that aftermath sometimes has a heavy price tag on it. Sure, sure. And the one that finally made me lose my mind on it was when they got out of the way of a moving car, but fired at it from the side. And I'm like, why? Why? Because you were angry? And that changed that. Well, you remember, too, in days gone by, pursuits, I mean, God bless cops, and I was involved in pursuits myself, there's an anger that builds up. Well, there's also- Defying authority. There's also adrenaline. Yes, yes, big time. And when, I mean, back then, when the person got caught, as I think Chris Rock said brilliantly, you know, they're bringing an ass-kicking with them. I mean, and, you know, I mean, sometimes it was crazy. But then I met a kid years ago that I grew up with, and he was involved, and I saw him years later. He was involved in some crazy motorcycle chase. And he said, he said, man, Eddie, because he goes, why were they so mad? Why were they so mad? I said, well, you put their lives at risk. They had to chase you. And he goes, boy, oh, boy, because these guys really roughed me up. So, I mean, that doesn't happen now, I don't think. But, you know, that's, again, where lack of policy was in play. But I think also lack of supervision was in play. Yeah, yeah. And, you know, you made me go back to the 4-6 and think about a shooting and vehicle pursuit that I was involved in that started in Harlem and ended up in Yonkers. And every precinct in between, on a late tour, put cars on the Deegan, chasing this car, and shooting into it. And at the end of the day, there was six cops around the car shooting into it in a circle. And I had, I hit the ground, and there's shards of glass coming over my head all at the same time. So... I think that was, it wound up in Glen Road, in Yonkers, off, like, right by... Bronx River Road, right in front of where I eventually bought my first co-op. Okay, I know where it is. Yeah, right there. So, Eddie, we talked a little bit about our careers. We talked a lot a bit about our careers, but we left so much out in between. We didn't have as many funny stories as we're supposed to have. We'll have next time. By the way, I want to thank you for sending your private jet out to get me. Yeah, that was easy. Gary Force One. Yeah, very nice. Very nice. I didn't have any change for the public toilet, but that's okay. It was a short flight. Why did I bring you here is my greatest question. Because they want me to come back. Grant wants me to come back. So what is it that you're doing now? We talk a lot about things that happen in policing. We talk about the military all at the same time, particularly suicides. And sitting right there in that chair, we've had a number of really strong conversations about officer wellness, which I think that it's a catchphrase that's being used a lot these days. And I think it's just lip service. A lot of it is. For the most part. A lot of it is. Everybody talks about it. And there's extreme examples here in Chicago where officers get involved in incidents, and instead of getting support, they're getting destroyed. And, you know, there's a lot of stress involved. We actually had a doctor here who's a sheriff down in Texas and a military veteran. And he explained why we have more heart problems than the rest of the population by percentage. But military and police, a lot of suicides. So tell me about what you're doing now. All right. Yeah. Aside from the business stuff I'm doing, I'm a member of the International Association of Police, as is Gary. I'm the vice chair of a committee called the Private Sector Liaison Section. So we do some cool projects. You know, we've done things on workplace violence, an active shooter. Bobby Tracy did a great job on the drones, use of drones. So some cool stuff about target hardening. We do some alarm stuff. So it's a pretty good eclectic group. So sadly, police suicide obviously is still a big problem. We've made great strides as a profession in dealing with police suicides. But a phenomenon I'm looking at now is it's perplexing. It's very complex. But it's retiree police suicide. So sadly, in 2023, a mutual friend of ours who had, quote, everything to live for, he retired. He was the head of our union. He had a wife, two daughters, a lovely home. He had a thriving financial planning business. And out of nowhere, he committed suicide. So it started me to think, I know at least five guys that I worked with over the years that kill themselves sometimes years later. Sometimes they've retired. They've relocated. They've started a second career. And so I'm starting to wonder, how big is this problem? And I can't get an answer yet. So I'm kind of like a dog with a bone. I'm trying to figure out how to do this. And again, there's a lot of peer support for the active duty members. But there's nothing like that in the retiree world. When you think about it, police suicide, a lot of it is you've got the regular stresses of life. Then you've got the stresses of the job and the horrible things they see. And then you have easy access to a firearm. So that combination there can be deadly. But one thing you do have on the positive side is you do have the locker room, the camaraderie, the support of your friends and colleagues in the precinct or in the unit, wherever you are. So you look at the retiree who's moved on now 10 years, 20 years later, whatever. He still has the stresses of life. He still holds those memories of the horrible things he saw when he was a police officer. He still has, most of the time, easy access to that firearm. But he doesn't have that camaraderie, that support group in the locker room, from the precinct club and from playing golf with the guys and playing basketball with the guys. He may not have that anymore. So I think that's part of it. But it's like, I started to look at this and nobody's tracking it. The military has a horrible problem with suicide. But at least they have the Veterans Administration. So there is a clearinghouse. There's a pot that all this stuff goes into where they can look at it and maybe start tracking it better. There's nothing similar in law enforcement. So I'm hoping that I can get some police think tanks involved and maybe some private entities that want to throw some resources into this thing. I don't want to be the poster boy for this, but I will push this as best I can. And I'm doing shows like this. I'm doing podcasts. I'll go on a street corner if I have to, to talk about it. But it's something, like I said, that I think is important enough that needs some attention. And I thank you and I thank your audience for this. Yeah, well, I mean, I hate to end this on a downer like that. But I'm sure it has to do with maybe their bodies are breaking down at the same time. Like you said, they don't have that camaraderie where, you know, police love is kind of breaking your chops, not really saying, hey, you OK? Yeah. And believe it or not, that makes a big difference. It does. Right? Some of some of my best friends are the ones who are most critical of me and breaking my chops. And that's how I know they love me. And they probably lose that too. And they get isolated, right? All at the same time. And then you're talking to failed relationship here and there and maybe some financial issues, maybe some gambling issues, whatever, substance abuse, maybe a sick kid, who knows? But what we have to do is you've identified a problem. Now we have to identify solutions. We have to, we can identify reasons relatively easily. Right now, we have to come up with solutions and ways to prevent the next time. Yeah. And right off the bat, you got to start, how do you track them? How do you track these things? Where are they happening? And maybe do almost like a comp stat on it. How's this happen? Why is this happening? What could be, what's the plan? Yeah. What's the plan, right? Yeah. How many times do we hear that? Jack Maple, no plan is, a bad plan is better than no plan. That's right. The bad decision is better than no decision. Unless every decision you make is bad. And I'm seeing that. Once again, another show of wearing the badge. And I thank my friend, Eddie, for coming in from Naples now. A little bit better weather down there. Should have brought you up in February. But once again, I have to finish with, you know, you look at a guy like Eddie, who is getting a little long in a tooth like all of us are. And at the end of the day, he still has the passion to do something to make a difference in the world. And that's what makes law enforcement one of the most noble things that a human being can do with their lives. So thank you for watching. Please continue to watch Wearing the Badge. I don't even know what number we're up to at this point, but we got a lot of shows. And you know what? Sit down, get some popcorn and binge on it. But make sure that you pay attention to what we're doing. Because I think that some of these discussions like this one are different than most discussions that you're going to hear. Thank you for watching.