Walking a Beat, Then vs. Now

In 1991, I was only 3 years out of high school and standing in front of 1 Police Plaza in a recruit uniform, shoulder to shoulder with 30 other wide-eyed recruits. In my head I was going to be a gritty NYPD cop just like the TV show NYPD Blue. I was going to jump out of a patrol car, slide across the hood and chase the bad guys, with the Cops TV show theme song "Bad Boys" as my soundtrack. And I was going to soak up all the glory that comes with it.

Fast forward 6 months, and life wasn't quite imitating Art.

As a rookie, you are assigned to a training sergeant along with the other rookies. The first few weeks we would all ride around together in a police van responding to jobs, mostly as observers. We wrote summonses and made a few arrests ("collars" in NYPD Jargon), with that sergeant holding our hands throughout the process. Then one day the training wheels came off, and we were assigned foot posts. Time of day didn't matter. The weather didn't matter. That was your assignment for the tour.

My introduction to this glamourous life was standing on the corner on 117^th St. and Lexington Ave. in East Harlem, on a 4 x 12 tour, in the middle of January. If this was your beat and you were lucky, your post would be around the corner from the stationhouse; otherwise you were walking as many as 20 blocks just to get on post, and you were frozen before you even started.

When it's cold, it doesn't matter how many layers you wear, you are going to feel it. Especially in your feet. We wore black leather jump boots, with little or no padding or insulation. Compared to that, today's high-tech footwear—with its padded insoles and collars, Gore-Tex for climate control and comfortable ballistic nylon outer shells—feels like wearing your favorite sneakers. And let's not even get into summertime, wearing multiple layers of Kevlar versus today's lightweight, breathable, moisture-managing body armor. I am not saying we were tougher back then... but we were.

Gear is where the "then vs. now" differences are really stark. If you were assigned to a sector car, you had a place to store some of your equipment, including your nightstick, flashlight and water. Walking a footpost afforded you no such luxury. For example, back in the day you likely had a five-ish pound, four D-cell flashlight that put out a whopping 70 lumens. Today's officers have hundreds or even thousands of lumens at their disposal, in compact, purpose-built duty flashlights that weigh ounces. Nightsticks were equally bulky and cumbersome. I carried a side-handle PR24, just like TV's T.J. Hooker (though for the record, throwing that baton never worked like it did on the show). Officers now have compact, streamlined expandable batons—tactically versatile and effective tools that are much friendlier to your hip after eight or twelve hours. I could go on and on—gun, radio, cuffs, everything has gotten lighter, easier to carry and just better.

As uncomfortable and often miserable it was to walk a foot post back then, there were good reasons for it. First and foremost, visibility and frequency helped reduce and discourage specific crime patterns (drugs, robberies, assaults, etc.). Having a foot post meant you were occupying the bad guy's spot—so you doing your job meant that he couldn't do his job.

If you were assigned to a commercial district, you built relationships with the business owners and helped address their concerns, from crime patterns to parking conditions.

Walking a beat 35 years ago wasn't a walk in the park (unless your beat included a park). But here's the thing—I'm not complaining, I'm reminiscing. I learned valuable professional lessons and life lessons from those early days, including self-reliance, observation skills and the ability to communicate with strangers good and bad. If you had a foot post, you really learned people. I'm sure today's officer is learning those same lessons... though he's probably just a little more warm and comfortable doing it.