FROM SUPPORT YOUR LOCAL POLICE TO FUCK THE POLICE

As a retired NYPD officer of 29 years, I watched the city turn on us 

 

By Scott Welsh

 

New York Post

March 10, 2022

 

 

Scott Welsh served on the NYPD for 29 years and watched the city's attitude toward its police change

 

Mayor Eric Adams was elected largely based on his promise to return order to New York City. While early indications point to his moving in the right direction, I fear that factors beyond his control will hinder reaching that goal.

I recently retired as a sergeant after serving 29 years with the NYPD. I grew up in Queens and attended Franklin K. Lane High School in Brooklyn. I still live in the city. I spent my entire career on patrol and in plainclothes Anti-Crime and Street Narcotics Enforcement Units (SNEU) in the South Bronx and Harlem.

I came on the job in 1991 when the city had more than 2,000 homicides. In the South Bronx 44th Precinct where I worked, mothers routinely put blankets and pillows in the bathtub and had their babies sleep there for fear of stray bullets coming through the windows in the night. The shellshocked people of the city begged Mayor David Dinkins for help. The Post exemplified this with the famous headline “DAVE, DO SOMETHING!!”

And he did. Mayor Dinkins pushed through the Safe Streets/Safe City program, putting 6,000 new cops on the street. Then, with the election of Rudy Giuliani and the appointment of Bill Bratton, there was a seismic shift in the NYPD.

Patrol cops, who were previously prohibited from narcotics or gambling arrests in a post-Knapp Commission fear of corruption, were encouraged to arrest drug dealers in their sectors. Quality-of-life violations were aggressively enforced. Precinct commanders were held accountable for crime. And it worked. Crime, especially homicides, plummeted. The city came back. Construction and tourism soared.

 

Welsh served on 9/11, and in the plainclothes Anti-Crime and Street Narcotics Enforcement Units

 

While there have always been those who vilify the police and criticize any enforcement at all, the vast majority of New Yorkers supported us. When I ran an SNEU unit in Harlem, everyone from mothers with babies to senior citizens who’ve lived there for 50 years would beg us to do operations on their blocks. People routinely stopped us on the street to thank us.

I really loved the job and loved being on the street. When the department eliminated SNEU units, I was given the option of a desk job. I chose to go back to uniformed patrol because I really enjoyed helping people.

However, in the last few years there has been another seismic shift — this one against the police. Even those who once supported us seem to have turned against us. I realized this while on patrol in Harlem.

One morning my partner and I were flagged down by a young woman. She told us that a male whom she didn’t know had walked up to her and repeatedly punched her in the face, breaking her nose. We called an ambulance for her, got a description, and went looking for the perpetrator. We spotted the perp, a white male, a few blocks away. As soon as we exited the car, he attacked us. After I got one cuff on his wrist, he managed to get out of our grasp and punched me in the head with my own handcuffs, opening a laceration on my forehead. We managed to get him down and cuff him, but he was still trying to fight.

So as per procedure, we called for an Emergency Service unit to bring leg restraints. As we were waiting for ESU, a crowd gathered. Building supers, people on their way to work, mothers with strollers, the people whom I was there to help and protect. And they began verbally abusing us. Yelling about police brutality as I was holding down a struggling perp with blood pouring out of a cut on my head. Calling us racists despite the fact that both myself and the perp were white. Yelling “Let him go” despite not knowing that he was being arrested for assaulting an innocent woman for no reason.

 

Mayor Eric Adams has promised to restore order to the city through the NYPD

 

As I waited in St. Luke’s emergency room to get stitches in my head, I was far more troubled by the reaction of the community than I was by the cut on my head. That day, for the first time, I began contemplating retirement.

I hate to admit it, but just before I left, I ignored people who I knew based on my experience were probably carrying guns. I knew that as soon as I, a white police officer, stopped a black person, 10 people would whip out cellphones and start recording as they shouted about racial profiling and hurled abuse at me.

So while Mayor Adams can do his part to back the NYPD, unless we can get our communities on board, we will never be able to restore public safety.