Op-Ed: NYPD Hero Represented Real New Yorkers

Text and photos by George Molé

(An edited version of this article appears in the July 20, 2017 issue of The Riverdale Press.)

Less than a mile from the now-hallowed location on East 183^rd Street where Detective Miosotis Familia lost her life is the five-story Bronx walkup where I was raised. Both are in troubled neighborhoods near the Grand Concourse, the faded but still regal boulevard lined with Art Deco architecture that once symbolized middle-class elegance.

Coming of age in the Bronx, I knew that most of its residents were workers and strivers, people trying to get bills paid and kids schooled, and maybe get a little bit ahead tomorrow or next year or someday. That remained true even as communities “changed”—to use the standard euphemism—with many of the long-time Irish-American and Jewish and Italian-American residents finding better lives in the suburbs as the old neighborhoods sank into violence and squalor.

And it was still true later when I worked those same and similar areas on an EMS ambulance or wearing an NYPD uniform. To the casual observer, the rough crowd loitering on the streets at all hours may seem to be the face of the neighborhood; but the people who really make the community work are less visible, seen only when trudging to or from bus stops or subway stations on their daily or nightly commutes, or holding their children’s hands on the walk between home and school.

One of New York’s best-kept secrets is the high level of support for law-enforcement by residents of crime-afflicted predominantly-minority neighborhoods. In my years serving such communities, I’ve rarely attended a public meeting or had a conversation where folks demanded that cops be less assertive; almost invariably, they implore the police to address the quality-of-life issues that plague them, and to remove the hoodlums and drug-dealers from their hallways, from in front of their buildings, and from the parks where their kids play. And they are thrilled when they see results.

But those who appreciate the police don’t get much press, sadly, being too busy taking care of their families to become protesters or activists. And, perhaps, because they don’t fit the anti-cop narrative that dominates so much of the media. They’re just ordinary New Yorkers.

We all know now, of course, having learned much about her since her death, that Det. Familia was an ordinary New Yorker herself, striving to support and nurture her family as a working mother in the Bronx.

Det. Familia’s wake and funeral took place at the World Changers Church, which occupies the old Loew’s Paradise Theatre on the Concourse, one of New York’s stunningly ornate golden-age movie palaces. The name of the church, and its majestic setting, were fit for laying to rest a warrior queen whose example may yet change the world.

At a Sunday vigil in front of the nearby 46^th Precinct, and the next day at her wake, the community was out in numbers to pay respects, holding up candles at the vigil or lined up for hours to file past her casket in the church. And on the day of her funeral, as thousands of cops from across the world filled the Concourse for a final salute, and police helicopters and motorcycles shook the wide boulevard, the people were there too, coming out to say goodbye to a martyred protector who was also an ordinary New York woman.

A tradition at a police funeral in our city is that the legendary NYPD Pipes and Drums, making no sound but a muffled drumbeat, their instruments covered in mourning drapes, leads the procession as it leaves the church, bound for the cemetery where the hero will rest. But when they’ve keened a farewell dirge, and the procession is on its way, the band turns and parades back again, past the rows of mourners, bringing renewed spirit with them. And so they marched strong up the Concourse on that Tuesday, swagger back in their step, wailing old songs of lament and resilience—“Hard Times Come Again No More,” prays one—into the weary Bronx streets.

We prevail, the music says; death doesn’t win. We’re better because she lived, and because we knew her, and stronger for what we’ve endured.

She lived, we knew her, and we endured. Good reasons to work for a better, stronger city.

New York: Fried dumplings and Five Points

Text and photo by George Molé

Many of my friends in New York law-enforcement (Manhattan's courts being rather close by) will know the storefront on the right in this photo:  FRIED DUMPLING.

It's on Mosco Street, Chinatown, New York City, USA. Behind the counter in the closet-sized restaurant, a couple of Chinese ladies crank out delicious dumplings by the hundreds, all day long, and sell them at five for a dollar. You can get them to go, or perch on stools along a narrow shelf and eat there.

The park you see at the end of the block, Columbus Park, occupies what once was the heart of the infamous Five Points slum, made famous in the movie "Gangs of New York." If you follow Mosco Street into the park, and follow the street's trajectory to the other side of the park, you will be at the formerly-five-pointed intersection that gave the area its name.

In the 1800's, Five Points was notorious throughout the nation as a place squalid and violent beyond imagination. A photojournalist named Jacob Riis wrote a book called "How the Other Half Lives," and focused so much attention on the area's conditions that the center of it was razed and replaced by the park. But on the streets surrounding the park, you can still see rows of tenements old enough to have witnessed it all.

This area is one of the very best places to get a feel for old New York. And be sure to have some dumplings while you're there.

Cops: 2014 NYPD Holy Name Society Breakfast educates and uplifts

Text and photo by George Molé 

Below are the Pipes & Drums of the NYPD Emerald Society, one of the best pipe bands in the nation, arrayed this morning on Sixth Avenue, in front of the New York Hilton, for the annual NYPD Holy Name Society Mass and Breakfast.

This annual event begins with Mass at St. Patrick's Cathedral, often presided over by New York's Cardinal, as it was this morning.  His Eminence, Timothy Cardinal Dolan, was his usual warm and gracious self as he acknowledged the members of the NYPD in attendance who, with their family and friends, filled much of the great cathedral.

NYPD Emerald Society Pipes & Drums

After Mass, a few blocks of Fifth and Sixth Avenues were closed to allow the entire assemblage to march from St. Pat's to the New York Hilton for breakfast, led by this very same pipe band.  Last year's Breakfast featured two amazing speakers--Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia and former Senator James Buckley--who would have been hard to top.  Nonetheless, this year's speakers were excellent, and addressed related themes.  A detective from the NYPD Cold Case Squad recounted the successful investigation into the years-old Baby Hope murder case.  And a nun from the Sisters of Life order described her group's ongoing battle against the institutionalized murder of babies through the abortion industry.  Moving, thought-provoking, uplifting, this event, almost 100 years old, always is, and was again today.

The funniest moment came from legendary talk-show host Joe Franklin, who appears at the breakfast every year, upon receiving a plaque to show the organization's appreciation.  "I'd just like to say that out of all the awards I've ever received, this one is the most recent."

And, yes, whenever I attend this event, I can't help but remember one of the greatest privileges I've yet had in life--attending in 1998 and hearing the late, great John Cardinal O'Connor incorporate into his homily at Mass an article I had written on the challenges and satisfactions of police work.  I hope to have a copy of that homily with me at the Pearly Gates, just in case there are any quibbles about my getting in--and here's the digital version.

Cops: Sgt. Kevin O'Rourke, R.I.P.

Text and photos by George Molé

Kevin O'Rourke, a retired NYPD sergeant working as a civilian contractor in Afghanistan, was killed in a firefight on Saturday, September 29.

I learned of his death on the following day, on the homeward leg of a bus trip to a football game.  I checked my Facebook page on my phone, only to see a posting about the "green on blue" incident--an attack from ostensibly friendly forces--that took him.  And I was awash in sadness.

Kevin was a former coworker of mine, and one of my favorites.  I can't pretend to a close friendship with him, but I liked him a lot.  I had the good fortune of working with him in the 23rd Precinct in East Harlem for about two years, more than a decade-and-a-half ago.  He was there when I arrived as a newly-promoted sergeant in late 1995, and was still assigned there when I transferred out in mid-1997.

As a brand-new supervisor, I depended on the advice and guidance of those who had more time in that position.  Being a boss in the NYPD is more an art than a science, I discovered, and quite a challenging art if one cares about doing it well.  There are some who attain pretty high rank without ever really getting the hang of it.  Many people were helpful to me as I worked to learn what I had to know, but I soon found that Kevin's feedback was always particularly incisive, thoughtful and sincere, and given without a trace of judgmentalism--even if now and again, or more than that, I wasn't quite clear on the best way to handle some fresh bit of craziness.

Many others received the benefit of Kevin's knowledge and experience as well.
 
One day, a story goes, a young female officer, trying to subdue a rowdy prisoner in the holding cell, discharged a blast of pepper spray.  Any cop can tell you how that worked out; the spray covered the officer herself, the other cops who were trying to assist her, the other prisoners--everyone but the intended target.

After the original problem had been placed under control and instructed in the error of his ways, after all the crying and blinded cops and perps had been cleaned off as well as possible, Kevin considered the situation.

"Do you think we have to do a big report?" another sergeant asked him.  He thought about it.  "No, just another day in the office," he said in his low-key manner.  "But it's really not a good idea to use pepper spray in the cell.  There are better ways.  I'll talk to her about it."

But before he could have that conversation with the cop who sprayed the spray, she took the other sergeant aside.  "Is Sgt. O'Rourke mad at me?" she asked nervously.  But Sgt. O'Rourke wasn't mad at her.  How could he ever be mad at fellow cops trying their best to do the job, but making the occasional mistake?

Help them?  Yes.  Teach them?  Absolutely.  Care about them?  Always.  But be angry at them?  In Kevin's world, unthinkable.  "Did Sgt. O'Rourke ever talk to you?" she was asked later.  She smiled.  "Yes, he explained what I should do when something like that happens."

I'm still in the NYPD, a captain now, and Kevin continues to be one of my role models as a police supervisor.

In a way, I knew Kevin before I met him.  I had worked with, and liked, similar people in both the New York City Emergency Medical Service and in the NYPD.  Indeed, I was one of them, and still am on most days.

Kevin was a buff.

A buff, as I use the word, is someone who still thinks the job of helping people is fun and exciting--someone for whom cynicism hasn't replaced idealism.  A buff hears the radio dispatcher announce that some big, crazy, dangerous incident is taking place at this very moment out in the untamed streets, perks up like a hunting dog, looks at his or her partner...and goes.  Maybe smiling a little bit--because here is an opportunity to apply years of training and experience, and a whole lot of passion, to solve a problem, to get someone out of trouble, to protect someone.  This was Kevin when I knew him.  And, from what I've read about the way he spent the remainder of his life, it continued to be him.

I recall Kevin telling me that he had been in the Emergency Service Unit at the police officer rank, and hoped to get assigned there again as a sergeant.  ESU is a combination SWAT team, rescue squad, hazmat unit and all-purpose bunch of problem-solvers--they're the ones we cops call when things really get ugly.  "It's hard to get back there as a boss," he said, because there were so few openings, but he planned to keep trying.  And, if he made it, not to take any more promotional exams, because another promotion would mean having to leave again.  "I'll retire with an 'E' patch on my arm," he said.  And he did.

After I left the 2-3, I saw Kevin only once more, running into him when I was out at Emergency Service headquarters at Floyd Bennett Field in Brooklyn for some training.  He had finally made his way back to Emergency, and seemed to be having a fine time.  We chatted a bit, and he paid me a compliment that meant a lot to me then, and means more now.  Since I had seen him last, I had written an article called "Why I'm Still Proud to be a Cop," which had appeared in the New York Daily News.  "I saw your article," Kevin told me.  "It was great.  I hung it up in my locker."

I'm moved today to know that Kevin read that piece and liked it.  Because, in a way, though I didn't realize it at the time, it was about him.  The values I was trying to describe--the beauty and meaning of our profession--are the values he lived.  And the big reason I was, and am, proud to be a cop is that I've gotten to work with people like Kevin O'Rourke.

Rest in peace, brother.  And thanks for everything.

In Kevin's memory, reproduced below is the article that he told me he liked the last time I saw him.  Those who knew him will recognize instantly that every word describes the way he worked as a cop, and the way he continued to live his life after his retirement from the NYPD.  This piece originally appeared in the New York Daily News on Thursday, August 28, 1997.  (The reference to "the accused Brooklyn officers" concerned the Louima incident, which was in the news at that time.)

Why I'm Still Proud to Be a Cop

by George Molé

New York Daily News
Thursday, August 28, 1997 

I still remember why I became a cop:  I wanted to walk down a dark street and make everyone feel safe.  I wanted to see the kids crowd around, and the girls smile, and the hoodlums slink off the corners, and the old people unlock their doors and come outside on a summer night.  All because I was there.

Every good cop starts with that enthusiasm, that heroic vision of police work--but it's not always easy to hold on to.  The maddening bureaucracy of the job, the lack of support from the public and courts and politicians, and the distorted view of the police often presented by the media can disillusion the most idealistic cop.

And the great, tragic scandals that at long intervals roil the department--like the ongoing horror at Brooklyn's 70th Precinct--can shake a cop's sense of pride, the confidence of being respected by law-abiding people.

But I have worn an NYPD shield for seven years, and every day makes me more, not less, proud to be a New York City police officer.  Because every day I see my co-workers doing the world's hardest job with skill and humor and extraordinary grace.

Although I don't speak for anyone but myself, I believe that most cops are, like me, attempting to keep an open mind about the innocence or guilt of the accused Brooklyn officers.  But the horrible allegations against them--false or true--are so far outside anything I've seen in my career as to seem the stuff of fiction.

Here's what I have seen:

Cops of all races and both sexes work together with a mutual respect and affection that should be an example for the rest of society.  Cops know that the ethnicity of the person who's watching your back in a dark alleyway or on some desolate rooftop is quite unimportant.

Cops will go out of their way to talk to or play with or comfort a child.  Perhaps thinking of their own children, they try constantly to counter the negative influences, the lack of love and guidance, that many of our city's kids experience.

Cops will almost always, even at the risk of their own safety, try to resolve a situation with words instead of force.  "Let's talk about it..." or "Try to calm down, pal..." are always preferred to a stick or a gun.

And sometimes, while they're doing their jobs, they die.  Unexpectedly, violently, painfully.

If cops ask for respect, or the benefit of the doubt when they take action, that request has been paid for, many times over, in blood.

I think of Police Officer Vincent Guidice, killed last year with shards of broken glass while trying to protect a battered woman.  Don't bet the rent money that Al Sharpton will organize a march to protest his death.

Guess what:  Cops are people.  They're subject to the same weaknesses, temptations and dark impulses as anyone else.  But what's remarkable is not that, on rare occasions, they succumb to them--but how rare those occasions are.

So let's condemn the very few corrupt or brutal cops.  I do.  But then let's salute the rest of my 37,000 brothers and sisters in blue, who humble me with their patience and bravery, their incredible decency.

Because right now, somewhere in the city--maybe even in the 7-0--a cop is handling some tense, potentially violent situation, keeping everything cool with cynical wisdom and a sense of humor, common sense and the right words.

He or she wears the NYPD uniform, and so do I.  Nothing could make me prouder.

Molé is an NYPD sergeant and freelance writer.

In memory of Sgt. Kevin O'Rourke, New York City Police Department (retired).
1959-2012.  Rest in peace.

George's Greatest Hits: "Harlem Rally, Through Cop's Eyes" (originally published in the New York Daily News, Wednesday, September 16, 1998)

Introduction:  This past Saturday--August 13th, 2011--I had the occasion in my professional capacity to make the scene at an event in Harlem billed as the "Million Youth Rally."  A long stretch of Lenox Avenue had been reserved for the million youths--from the stage at around 112th Street all the way up to 125th, the authorities were ready with rows of metal barricades to close as many blocks as necessary to accommodate the crowds.

But despite the inclusion of a few crowd-pleasers--poet Amiri Baraka recited his vaguely anti-Semitic poem about 9/11, with sax backing, and Louis Farrakhan himself closed the show with a rambling speech about Libya--the entire audience barely filled a block or two.

Perhaps the low turnout can be blamed on the absence of Al Sharpton--guarding his newly-won mainstream credibility as a mother wolf guards her cubs, he was nowhere to be found.

Nonetheless, I couldn't help but reminisce with a sort of warm nostalgia about the original Million Youth March, at the very same location, in September of 1998.  Now that was the real deal.  It had it all--Sharpton; huge crowds; hours of racist and anti-Semitic speeches; the late Khalid Abdul Muhammad whipping everyone up to a froth; and the oppressive sense of imminent violence.  And me, who wrote this swell piece in the New York Daily News (Wednesday, September 16, 1998) about the whole thing.

-George Molé
  08/17/2011

Harlem Rally, Through Cop's Eyes

by George Molé

New York Daily News

Wednesday, September 16, 1998

Recently, I stood with a group of my fellow police officers on Lenox Ave. in Harlem at the controversial rally known as the Million Youth March and listened as Khalid Abdul Muhammad told the crowds that surrounded us to kill us.

Soon after, the rotors of police helicopters made a cleansing wind that blew Muhammad’s foul words from the New York streets.

Cops turned off the sound system and cleared the stage, and the rally was over—at just the time a court had said it must end.

Some have claimed that, despite the court order to end at 4 p.m., the NYPD was overzealous in bringing the rally to a close when it did—that the event was peaceful and should have been allowed to continue.

As one who was there, I disagree.

Although I was not involved in the fracas near the stage and had no hand in planning the Police Department’s actions, I was stationed in the thickest part of the crowd and felt the tension build as Muhammad’s call to arms began to resonate with many of his listeners.  For the safety of everyone present—cops and spectators—the event had to end when it did.

For most of the day the rally had indeed been peaceful.  Much of the language coming from the stage was ignorant and ugly, but the ideas expressed at a rally are not a cop’s business—as long as everyone is safe.  None of the speakers was urging immediate violence, and the spectators were largely orderly.

The mood changed when Khalid Muhammad took the stage.  With rolling cadences that a benevolent clergyman might use to express faith in God or to comfort the oppressed, he urged his listeners to assault and kill cops.  To “disconnect the railing…and beat the hell out of them.”  To “take their nightsticks…and ram it up their behinds and jam it down their damn throats.”  And to “take their goddamn guns from them and use their guns on them.”

Every exhortation contained a conditional phrase designed to allow Muhammad to sound militant to his audience, yet escape criminal liability (a strategy that will not work if those who examine the case exhibit any common sense).  Only brutalize or murder a cop “if they attack you,” he would say.

But what legitimate action by a police officer might a hostile crowd, brought to a boil by a hypnotic speaker, choose to call an “attack”?  The making of a valid arrest, the issuing of a summons—indeed, even a cop asking someone to exit in this direction instead of that one—might have become an occasion for conflict that left someone hurt.

It was not hard to see as Muhammad spoke that his message was being received by many with enthusiasm.  Fists pumped in the air, and glares and curses came our way.

Would the crowd have erupted into violence?  I don’t know.  But history teaches that evil words, persuasively spoken, can cause people to do things they otherwise would not.

When cops stand for many hours in the sun surrounded by people who profess to hate them, they often talk to each other to pass the time.

I spoke for a while with a female officer of Hispanic descent I know, a single mother of two who is also raising her younger brother.  At one point she said, looking around, her voice sad, “I don’t believe in all this race stuff.  I think we’re all just people.”

When Muhammad told his listeners to kill cops, he was telling them to kill her.  Because there is no abstract entity called “cops.”  Just people.

But she went home safe.  As did all the misguided people who came out for Muhammad’s hate rally.

Because, thank God, the law, and not Muhammad, was in control that day.

Molé is an NYPD sergeant and writer.

George's Greatest Hits: "Racist? We Risk Our Lives for All New Yorkers" (originally published in the New York Post, Monday, April 19, 1999)

Introduction:  The front pages of today's tabloids show the President of the United States making platonic love to Al Sharpton yesterday--smiling, handshaking and delivering a speech to a convention of Sharpton's front group.  Obama is only the latest elected official to participate in the ongoing effort to legitimize the bigoted, clownish thug who has caused so much disharmony in our city.  I couldn't help but remember something I wrote about Sharpton almost 12 years ago--and not much has changed, has it?  This article appeared in the New York Post on Monday, April 19, 1999.

-George Molé
  04/07/2011 

Racist?  We Risk Our Lives for All New Yorkers

by George Molé

New York Post
Monday, April 19, 1999

On the day four police officers were charged with murder at the Bronx County Courthouse, Al Sharpton preening triumphantly for the cameras, another cop was remembered in The Bronx.

A street in that borough was renamed for Police Officer Vincent Guidice, who was killed three years ago on a domestic dispute call—impaled on shards of broken glass while trying to protect a battered woman.

I’ve often thought of Guidice during the ongoing frenzy of anti-cop protests precipitated by the Diallo shooting.

These demonstrations, which focus on what some say is the racism of the NYPD, are organized by Sharpton, who has referred to Jews as “diamond merchants,” and who appeared last year at an anti-Semitic rally in Harlem—actions that would have landed a cop on the unemployment line.

But the media’s uncritical reporting of the protests makes little of these ironies.  And many mainstream figures—such as Bronx Borough President Fernando Ferrer and state Comptroller Carl McCall—disgracefully chose to turn their backs on the decent men and women of the police department and support Sharpton.

As a proud member of the NYPD, who always believed I was serving the community through my work, I’m hurt by the venom directed against police officers by the protesters—and angered by the dishonesty and ugliness of their message.

In my experience, racism—like brutality and corruption—is not common among police officers.  Cops, who see members of all groups at their best and at their worst, have the clearest understanding of everyone’s common humanity—and so are among the least bigoted of all people.

Guidice, an Italian-American cop who didn’t hesitate to give his life protecting an African-American woman, proved that point.

Rather, it is the anti-cop movement that has the smell of racial prejudice.  Many seem to oppose the NYPD at least partly because—although it is quite ethnically diverse—the majority of its members are white.

Manhattan Borough President Virginia Fields, for example, wrote recently of the “intolerable gulf between the way New York’s population looks and the way its police force looks.”

Judging a group by how it “looks”—the ethnicity of its members—is usually called racism.  But apparently it’s acceptable when speaking of police officers.

Sharpton, inserting himself into every tragedy, makes me think of a character in one of Stephen King’s stories—a demon that literally drinks human tears, growing strong on people’s pain and fear.

Now, cloaked in the grief of Diallo’s parents, he cynically exploits understandable public dismay over that case.

I certainly don’t expect people not to be disturbed that the police killed an unarmed man.  Every good cop grieves for that.

But I also hope the public can find some empathy for young people who are given a badge and gun, told they are society’s protectors, and sent out to make life-and-death decisions in a split second on a dark street.

An instant too slow, and they are in a wheelchair, or a grave.

An instant too quick and they are under indictment, called racists and murderers even by our elected officials—and forever have a man’s death on their consciences.

Police officers, still doing their best for our city, need fair New Yorkers of all races to support them, to speak out against the cop haters.

Unfortunately, fair New Yorkers have been silent.  “The best lack all conviction, while the worst are full of passionate intensity,” as William Butler Yeats wrote.  Only the chanting of bullhorns has been heard.

But if you can see a cop as a person, and not as black or white; if you understand that when cops enforce the law in a community, they do it to protect the working folks who live there; if you appreciate what Vincent Guidice, Irma Lozada, Sean Carrington and other fallen cops have given for all of us—this would be a good time to find your voice.

George Molé is an NYPD lieutenant and freelance writer.

George's Greatest Hits: "Why I'm Still Proud to Be a Cop" (originally published in the New York Daily News, August 28, 1997)

Introduction:  The New York papers are full of the tale of Feris Jones, the 50-year-old NYPD officer who got up from her chair at the beauty parlor to shoot it out with a 20-year-old perp who thought he was going to rob the place.  It didn't quite work out as he had hoped--he lost the gunfight and, after a brief time on the lam, he went to the hospital (yes, he survived and will be preying upon us for many years to come), and then to jail.  And she went to Police Headquarters to be promoted to detective by the Police Commissioner and the Mayor.

How did she stay so cool?  "That's my personality," she told the reporters.  "I don't fuss about much."

The newspapers will milk this story for a few days, then go back to writing about how the cops' health coverage and pensions are bankrupting the city and must be cut immediately.  But the media's hypocrisy should not make us jaded--it is she who is the star of this show, not them.  In what she did when she had to--and how she carried herself afterward--she gave New York something to celebrate and someone to look up to.

The following piece appeared in the New York Daily News on Thursday, August 28, 1997--and, man, it's even truer now than when I wrote it.

-George Molé
  10/27/2010

Why I'm Still Proud to Be a Cop

by George Molé

New York Daily News
Thursday, August 28, 1997 

I still remember why I became a cop:  I wanted to walk down a dark street and make everyone feel safe.  I wanted to see the kids crowd around, and the girls smile, and the hoodlums slink off the corners, and the old people unlock their doors and come outside on a summer night.  All because I was there.

Every good cop starts with that enthusiasm, that heroic vision of police work--but it's not always easy to hold on to.  The maddening bureaucracy of the job, the lack of support from the public and courts and politicians, and the distorted view of the police often presented by the media can disillusion the most idealistic cop.

And the great, tragic scandals that at long intervals roil the department--like the ongoing horror at Brooklyn's 70th Precinct--can shake a cop's sense of pride, the confidence of being respected by law-abiding people.

But I have worn an NYPD shield for seven years, and every day makes me more, not less, proud to be a New York City police officer.  Because every day I see my co-workers doing the world's hardest job with skill and humor and extraordinary grace.

Although I don't speak for anyone but myself, I believe that most cops are, like me, attempting to keep an open mind about the innocence or guild of the accused Brooklyn officers.  But the horrible allegations against them--false or true--are so far outside anything I've seen in my career as to seem the stuff of fiction.

Here's what I have seen:

Cops of all races and both sexes work together with a mutual respect and affection that should be an example for the rest of society.  Cops know that the ethnicity of the person who's watching your back in a dark alleyway or on some desolate rooftop is quite unimportant.

Cops will go out of their way to talk to or play with or comfort a child.  Perhaps thinking of their own children, they try constantly to counter the negative influences, the lack of love and guidance, that many of our city's kids experience.

Cops will almost always, even at the risk of their own safety, try to resolve a situation with words instead of force.  "Let's talk about it..." or "Try to calm down, pal..." are always preferred to a stick or a gun.

And sometimes, while they're doing their jobs, they die.  Unexpectedly, violently, painfully.

If cops ask for respect, or the benefit of the doubt when they take action, that request has been paid for, many times over, in blood.

I think of Police Officer Vincent Guidice, killed last year with shards of broken glass while trying to protect a battered woman.  Don't bet the rent money that Al Sharpton will organize a march to protest his death.

Guess what:  Cops are people.  They're subject to the same weaknesses, temptations and dark impulses as anyone else.  But what's remarkable is not that, on rare occasions, they succumb to them--but how rare those occasions are.

So let's condemn the very few corrupt or brutal cops.  I do.  But then let's salute the rest of my 37,000 brothers and sisters in blue, who humble me with their patience and bravery, their incredible decency.

Because right now, somewhere in the city--maybe even in the 7-0--a cop is handling some tense, potentially violent situation, keeping everything cool with cynical wisdom and a sense of humor, common sense and the right words.

He or she wears the NYPD uniform, and so do I.  Nothing could make me prouder.

Molé is an NYPD sergeant and freelance writer.