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Lucas Miller

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Posted Wednesday, Sept. 26, 2001, at 11:30 PM ET

I got a call as I was leaving the office yesterday from a friend of mine at ground zero. Joe was my sergeant when I went to Narcotics seven years ago. He used to give us pep talks and say, "I will never ask you guys to do anything that I wouldn't do myself." This was not reassuring, because we all knew that Joe would do anything for a case. He has the greatest work ethic of anyone I have ever met. We would be tailing some dealer deep into Queens, 20 miles from where the case started, 10 hours past the time we were supposed to go home with the overtime budget empty, and he would be calling up headquarters for permission to leave the city, in case the dealer kept going. Joe's mettle could be traced to his father, a well-respected chief in the fire department.

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Since then, Joe had been promoted to captain—no surprise. I haven't worked for him for five years, but we keep in touch. He has been assigned to ground zero since the attack. I found him last week, covered with soot, supervising hundreds of police rescuers, with an EPA air-quality monitor strapped to his back.

He didn't see me walk up beside him, so I grabbed his arm and pointed to the EPA monitor. "Captain, don't move. A small robot has jumped onto your back. Hold still, I will kill the little bastard."

My humor was lost on him. He grabbed my hand. "We have to get these sightseers out of here. I caught some guy who brought his girlfriend down and she was posing on the wreckage." He was yelling even though we were in a quiet spot.

In the years that I have known him, I have never heard him complain about having to work. I think that yelling was the closest he could come. We exchanged concern about each others' families. He was also working on getting flowers sent by various precincts to the Police Memorial, which still stands almost directly west of the World Trade Center along the Hudson River. He told me that his father had lost a lot of friends. Then he stalked off to find his lieutenants.

He called my cell phone yesterday on his way home. He told me how he had just found the body of a woman who had been on the 82^nd floor. I asked him what he was going to do today. He told me he thought he would take the day off—his first since the 11^th.

On my way in to the station house this morning at 4, I got a cup of coffee from the buffet table that has become a permanent fixture on the ground floor. A restaurant had just sent over a giant bag of bagels, really good ones, still hot. The man from the restaurant apologized that he couldn't bring anything tomorrow because it is Yom Kippur. He assured us he would be back on Friday. There is a group of mostly women who come to the precinct every day to offer massages to cops and other rescue workers.

In the wake of this horrible, horrible time, the city is in the midst of a love affair with the NYPD. The city has always been one of my great loves. Cops sometimes debate the extent to which the public appreciates us. Some of us feel quite strongly about it. I have always felt that the majority of New Yorkers like us, even if they are not as vocal about it as our detractors, but never in my wildest dreams did I think I would encounter the kind of affection that we now enjoy.

The Yankees and Mets show up to ballgames with NYPD caps on. I saw a waiter the other day wearing an Organized Crime Control Bureau T-shirt. I received a call this morning from a narcotics detective from the San Antonio Police Department. He didn't know anyone in the NYPD. I don't know if he had ever been to New York, but he wanted to tell someone here that he felt for us, and mine was the first phone number he found. I passed a Miami police officer directing traffic on 23^rd Street. Last week, in Fenway Park, there was a giant "I love New York" banner. Several huge bags of teddy bears arrived at the station house from children in Oklahoma City. I don't know if they are for us or for children somewhere. The detective who sits across from me has one on her desk. I guess I am only cataloging some of the many ways in which the country is coming together in this tough time, but I don't think I am missing the significance when I say that I don't want it to end.

I recognize that as police we have made sacrifices this month that touch people across the country. But the NYPD that I know has always been ready to make those sacrifices. Those guys following dogs around the site, digging first for survivors and then for bodies, are the same plainclothes cops who are so unpopular in the Bronx for stopping and frisking people. The bravery that cops showed running into a doomed building last week is the same bravery that they showed the week before running after some mutt with a gun. My friend Joe has always been willing to forgo his days off.

I also understand that we bring some of our unpopularity on ourselves. We screw up sometimes. We make mistakes of the head and sometimes of the heart. Some of our mistakes have had tragic results. We are also not so great at communicating. But for a little while now, we are forgiven. The tragedy of the World Trade Center is obviously too big a price to pay for this, but I don't want it to end.

The attack on New York has been heartbreaking, but the appreciation of New York and the rest of the country has made a huge difference to me. Maybe it won't end. Maybe cops will manage to go back to enforcing the law in the city without alienating too many people. Maybe the civilians will continue to respond to the police with the same goodwill that they have all month. Maybe the press will give us a break. I know that when this love affair does come to an end, it will break my heart again.