some fairly mean streets, pitiful sights and some downright vicious types. All of which makes the job of the Nineteenth Precinct cop simultaneously challenging, coveted, dreaded and confusing.

I think the cops of the Nineteenth Precinct are the best in the world. Not to an officer, mind you, but certainly as a precinct unit. There are those who drink too much, those who are full of self-pity and those who cut corners. But there are also cops like Tony Ciffo and Jack Clark and John Laffey and Charlie Leinau. Few come better than these.

I spent about a year tagging along with the cops of the Nineteenth Precinct, who were good enough to allow me to be a fly on the wall with pad and pencil. There were times when I was trusted as an outside observer and times I wasn’t and that was the open-ended deal.

All of the incidents in the resultant book are real. Generally, the names of crime victims are changed to protect their privacy. A number of officers portrayed in the book are composites and have fictional names. That doesn’t make their experiences fictional, however, it just makes the balance of their professional and personal lives easier.

Certain editorial changes in identities, dates and circumstances were made in the writing of Precinct 19 in order to protect the integrity of cases pending before the courts. None of these changes alters the essential truths of the total story.

The reader will find, as did I, that the day-to-day life of being a cop in New York is a matter of slogging through violence and tragedy and dreariness and that sometimes the only human response is comedy. The cops of the Nineteenth Precinct are some of the funniest people I’ve ever known. God help us New Yorkers if our cops should ever lose their humanity, if they should one day stop laughing.

I’ve come to the point where I can pick out a cop on a crowded street, even when he’s dressed like everyone else. He’s as easy to spot as a bleeding man. Heavier, it appears, full of other people’s sorrows whether he realizes it or not. And his eyes are always moving, sweeping the street to make note of who belongs and who bears watching.

When a cop starts talking about public perceptions of police officers, there is a certain paranoid tone to his voice. An officer named James Martin of Manhattan’s Midtown North station house told the New York Times:

“This month we were all brutal racists, last month we were all drug addicts, the month before that we were drunks and sex fiends. A lot of times you get the feeling that the city doesn’t care, the public doesn’t care, that your partner and the other cops are the only ones you can count on.

“We’re the most visible, the most vulnerable and the least vocal. Cops don’t talk. They never know when it’s going to be taken out of context, and people aren’t going to understand it anyway. So you just read about it, you watch it, you put on the uniform and you go out and do your job.” I’ve never heard a cop’s lament more succinctly expressed. Here’s a hope that this book might knock a few holes into Officer Martin’s outlook.

Thomas Larry Adcock

New York, N.Y.
November 1983