THE SHIELD OF GOLD, Ch. 1, Gratitude and Attitude

　

I’m Lenny Golino, and these are my stories, gleaned from twenty-one years on arguably the best police force in the nation, the New York Police Department (NYPD) and a few from my post-retirement private investigator practice.

　

My first story captures the flavor of police work in New York City:

Another first-year cop and I were in our RMP (Radio Motor Patrol), “police car” to civilians. Patrolling our NSU (Neighborhood Stabilization Unit, someone higher-up loves these abbreviations), we were getting 30 to 40 calls each night, usually family disputes, sometimes accidents and calls for help, or the frightening “shots fired.”

　

A call came in, an emergency call--- a child, about eight months old, had stopped breathing. We called for “a bus” (an ambulance) to assist us and raced to the home of the child. The baby boy had turned blue by the time we arrived, and his mother was understandably in a panic. We put her in the back seat, put the little one between my partner and me, and I drove like mad, one-handed, to the nearest hospital, while pumping the kid’s chest with my free hand as my partner gave mouth-to-mouth resuscitation.

　

The Emergency Room erupted into a frenzy of activity, and the baby disappeared behind the automated doors.

　

We waited, with the mother. We waited some more.

　

A doctor emerged and asked, “Who brought this child here?” We acknowledged we had, and we awaited a lecture, some criticism of what we had done.

　

The doctor reached out his hand, shook each of ours, smiled and said, “Congratulations, officers, you just saved one life.”

　

We beamed.

　

The boy’s mother had a different approach, “You’re lucky. If you hadn’t saved him, I’d have sued your asses.”

　

Welcome to policing in the Big Apple.

*****

From THE SHIELD OF GOLD A Candid Memoir by a Former NYPD Detective, by Lenny Golino and Douglas Winslow Cooper, published in November 2012 by Outskirts Press and available from OP and from amazon.com.