1
00:00:15,432 --> 00:00:19,894
These are real experiences,
actual detailed events that happened.

2
00:00:26,568 --> 00:00:29,946
This is the biggest murder
that we had ever caught.

3
00:00:31,406 --> 00:00:34,409
Thousands of people were killed
in this attack.

4
00:00:35,118 --> 00:00:36,453
We weren't prepared.

5
00:00:37,328 --> 00:00:41,750
We weren't prepared as human beings,
not even talking about professions.

6
00:00:42,333 --> 00:00:46,254
I didn't feel in control like I was
when I was doing an investigation.

7
00:00:47,464 --> 00:00:50,759
I felt more like
I was just trying to survive the day.

8
00:00:51,509 --> 00:00:53,887
You find out what you're really made of.

9
00:00:53,970 --> 00:00:57,348
You find out
what it is to be a team player.

10
00:00:57,432 --> 00:00:59,726
You find out who your partner is.

11
00:00:59,809 --> 00:01:02,020
You find out how important life is.

12
00:01:03,146 --> 00:01:06,024
I think half the city
knew somebody or had a relative

13
00:01:06,107 --> 00:01:08,401
who died in the Trade Center.

14
00:01:08,485 --> 00:01:09,652
But time has gone by.

15
00:01:10,695 --> 00:01:13,740
Some people now haven't experienced
something like that.

16
00:01:13,823 --> 00:01:17,494
They haven't seen what it's like
when tragedy really hits.

17
00:01:18,328 --> 00:01:20,830
And the whole city came together.

18
00:01:22,123 --> 00:01:25,835
It didn't matter
what background, nationality you were.

19
00:01:25,919 --> 00:01:28,338
We were all humans that day.

20
00:01:29,756 --> 00:01:31,841
Twenty-five years later,

21
00:01:32,509 --> 00:01:35,428
that will always be the date
that divides my life.

22
00:01:36,054 --> 00:01:39,057
The world that existed
on September 10th, that's gone.

23
00:01:40,058 --> 00:01:42,644
It led into 20 years of warfare.

24
00:01:44,896 --> 00:01:46,231
My whole world was changed.

25
00:01:47,732 --> 00:01:49,859
The whole world was changed.

26
00:01:56,282 --> 00:01:59,869
Our job is to make sure
you can go home and sleep at night.

27
00:02:01,121 --> 00:02:04,332
It's so important for a family
to know who murdered their relative.

28
00:02:05,750 --> 00:02:09,379
Compassion for the victims,
that's the most important thing.

29
00:02:09,963 --> 00:02:12,173
I've always liked
the peek behind the curtain.

30
00:02:13,133 --> 00:02:14,384
What really happened?

31
00:02:15,802 --> 00:02:18,138
You want to find out the truth.

32
00:02:18,221 --> 00:02:19,848
That's what detectives do.

33
00:02:20,348 --> 00:02:23,268
Your instinct is to help people.

34
00:02:23,977 --> 00:02:27,564
In New York City, the NYPD…

35
00:02:29,858 --> 00:02:30,692
this is it.

36
00:02:45,707 --> 00:02:49,544
It was the most amazing thing,
looking at the towers from below.

37
00:02:49,627 --> 00:02:53,006
You know, especially as a kid,
you'd just go like this.

38
00:02:53,089 --> 00:02:56,509
And it just keeps going and going,
like a stairway to heaven.

39
00:02:58,011 --> 00:03:01,097
My Aunt JoAnn,
she worked in the World Trade Center.

40
00:03:01,181 --> 00:03:03,933
She worked in the North Tower,
103rd floor,

41
00:03:04,017 --> 00:03:05,685
and then also the 105th floor.

42
00:03:06,311 --> 00:03:09,772
She was working for Cantor Fitzgerald,
a brokerage firm.

43
00:03:09,856 --> 00:03:11,566
She started working there when she was 18.

44
00:03:12,233 --> 00:03:15,737
She ended up becoming vice president,
partner.

45
00:03:16,654 --> 00:03:20,158
So JoAnn, she was my aunt,
but she was more like my sister.

46
00:03:20,241 --> 00:03:23,661
Always took care of me,
made sure I wasn't getting into trouble.

47
00:03:23,745 --> 00:03:25,455
She was only 13 years older than me.

48
00:03:26,664 --> 00:03:28,666
When she first started working there,

49
00:03:28,750 --> 00:03:32,378
she brought me to the Trade Center
for the first time.

50
00:03:32,462 --> 00:03:34,505
As a five-year-old, you know,

51
00:03:34,589 --> 00:03:38,134
you get excited about things
that you've never seen before.

52
00:03:38,843 --> 00:03:43,014
And here I am getting on the elevator,
and it was like a rocket ship.

53
00:03:44,974 --> 00:03:48,895
You're up there in a couple of minutes,
a hundred-somewhat stories.

54
00:03:48,978 --> 00:03:51,231
Your ears are popping. You get out.

55
00:03:51,314 --> 00:03:56,110
And once you stepped up near the windows,
it was actually kind of like, "Ooh."

56
00:03:56,194 --> 00:03:57,904
It was a long way down.

57
00:03:58,571 --> 00:04:01,324
A hundred and ten floors in each tower.

58
00:04:01,908 --> 00:04:05,536
It could be upwards of 50,000 people
on any given day.

59
00:04:05,620 --> 00:04:07,664
The buildings had their own zip code.

60
00:04:08,706 --> 00:04:10,792
That's something that-- Just think that--

61
00:04:10,875 --> 00:04:14,963
Wherever you live in the United States,
there's an area that has a zip code.

62
00:04:15,046 --> 00:04:17,215
These two buildings
had their own zip code.

63
00:04:17,298 --> 00:04:22,470
They had designed it
to withstand high winds, storms,

64
00:04:22,553 --> 00:04:26,057
lightning strikes, planes hitting it.

65
00:04:26,140 --> 00:04:28,977
It was perceived to be
somewhat indestructible.

66
00:04:30,895 --> 00:04:34,065
A bomb killed five
and injured more than 1,000 others

67
00:04:34,148 --> 00:04:36,484
in the blast
that rocked the World Trade Center

68
00:04:36,567 --> 00:04:39,279
and sent Lower Manhattan
into a state of complete chaos.

69
00:04:39,862 --> 00:04:43,032
February 1993,
there was a terrorist attack.

70
00:04:44,033 --> 00:04:46,995
International terrorists
put explosives into a van

71
00:04:47,078 --> 00:04:49,831
and parked it
into a, you know, subterranean garage.

72
00:04:50,540 --> 00:04:53,459
It blew up, but the damage was so minimal.

73
00:04:54,460 --> 00:04:57,797
Someone near me was saying,
"Man, these towers are amazing."

74
00:04:57,880 --> 00:05:01,217
"They can withstand this huge blast.
I can't believe it."

75
00:05:03,136 --> 00:05:06,848
I never really thought
that the Twin Towers were a target

76
00:05:06,931 --> 00:05:09,976
of international terrorists
until that day.

77
00:05:10,059 --> 00:05:13,062
And then I realized
that they were a symbol of strength.

78
00:05:13,146 --> 00:05:14,897
They were a symbol of pride.

79
00:05:14,981 --> 00:05:18,943
Something that, you know,
when you flew across the Atlantic Ocean,

80
00:05:19,527 --> 00:05:21,279
you could see the Twin Towers.

81
00:05:23,114 --> 00:05:27,285
The following year,
they put up cement guards

82
00:05:27,368 --> 00:05:29,912
so that nobody could get close

83
00:05:29,996 --> 00:05:35,293
with a truck or a car
filled with any kind of explosive device.

84
00:05:35,877 --> 00:05:39,630
Then you felt like,
"Okay, this won't happen again."

85
00:05:47,472 --> 00:05:48,890
It was a Tuesday.

86
00:05:50,850 --> 00:05:52,060
Beautiful weather.

87
00:05:53,353 --> 00:05:55,480
I don't remember
seeing a cloud in the sky.

88
00:05:57,357 --> 00:05:59,192
And I had to go to court.

89
00:05:59,776 --> 00:06:01,903
I was in the Anti-Crime Unit.

90
00:06:01,986 --> 00:06:04,530
I was going to trial
for a pickpocket case.

91
00:06:05,239 --> 00:06:07,200
So I would travel in by ferry.

92
00:06:09,077 --> 00:06:12,080
I get off the boat on the Manhattan side.

93
00:06:12,163 --> 00:06:14,707
I started walking
towards the train station.

94
00:06:15,666 --> 00:06:18,795
As I'm walking,
only steps away from the ferry,

95
00:06:18,878 --> 00:06:20,630
I hear a bunch of explosions.

96
00:06:22,882 --> 00:06:25,968
Sounded like…

97
00:06:26,052 --> 00:06:28,721
And I actually said,
"What the fuck was that?"

98
00:06:28,805 --> 00:06:30,765
But I continue to walk.

99
00:06:31,349 --> 00:06:34,060
I get on to the subway
towards the courthouses.

100
00:06:34,143 --> 00:06:35,686
I had to be there at nine o'clock.

101
00:06:38,856 --> 00:06:40,817
I woke up in the detective's dorm

102
00:06:40,900 --> 00:06:42,068
in the 13th Precinct.

103
00:06:42,652 --> 00:06:44,153
In the police department,

104
00:06:44,237 --> 00:06:46,155
sometimes you don't go home
for a couple of days.

105
00:06:47,407 --> 00:06:52,203
I signed in, and I remember it was…
ABC News was on.

106
00:06:52,286 --> 00:06:57,375
And I saw that the Twin Towers
had been struck by a plane.

107
00:06:57,458 --> 00:07:00,628
It sounded like a missile,
not an airplane.

108
00:07:00,711 --> 00:07:02,630
Then there was a loud explosion.

109
00:07:04,590 --> 00:07:08,010
Dispatcher called me,
and says there's a small Cessna

110
00:07:08,094 --> 00:07:10,304
that just crashed
into the World Trade Center.

111
00:07:11,264 --> 00:07:14,767
And I can see
from the West Side Highway that

112
00:07:14,851 --> 00:07:17,353
that was not a small Cessna.

113
00:07:17,437 --> 00:07:19,772
That was a big-ass jet.

114
00:07:20,606 --> 00:07:22,358
Holy shit!

115
00:07:24,652 --> 00:07:26,112
I went into my police mode.

116
00:07:27,405 --> 00:07:29,365
I knew, with something like that,

117
00:07:29,449 --> 00:07:32,368
it was gonna be a mass-casualty incident.

118
00:07:33,411 --> 00:07:37,748
I had just dropped my kids off
at PS 116, my two boys,

119
00:07:37,832 --> 00:07:39,959
when I heard it come over the radio.

120
00:07:40,042 --> 00:07:43,087
A major disaster is occurring
in New York City this morning.

121
00:07:44,755 --> 00:07:48,134
Being a detective commander in Manhattan,

122
00:07:48,217 --> 00:07:51,137
probably the only one in the NYPD
that lived in Manhattan,

123
00:07:51,220 --> 00:07:52,972
I knew I'd be expected to respond.

124
00:07:53,598 --> 00:07:56,642
So I went home and changed,
probably one of the few people

125
00:07:56,726 --> 00:07:59,479
that put a suit on to respond
to the World Trade Center,

126
00:07:59,562 --> 00:08:01,063
because I got in trouble in May

127
00:08:01,147 --> 00:08:04,108
responding to a triple homicide
not wearing a suit.

128
00:08:07,236 --> 00:08:11,073
I'm in the 19th Precinct
in the patrol borough of Manhattan North.

129
00:08:11,949 --> 00:08:13,659
This one was off the charts.

130
00:08:13,743 --> 00:08:17,163
So they will mobilize people
across New York City

131
00:08:17,246 --> 00:08:18,998
to respond to the Trade Center.

132
00:08:21,542 --> 00:08:26,631
I was a police officer
in the 19th with Pete Panuccio.

133
00:08:26,714 --> 00:08:31,636
The desk is calling
for the first one-in-eight mobilization,

134
00:08:32,220 --> 00:08:34,472
eight officers with a sergeant.

135
00:08:34,555 --> 00:08:38,184
We're heading down
towards One World Trade Center.

136
00:08:38,267 --> 00:08:41,938
Joanne Dowd was with the first group
of cops in the 19th Precinct

137
00:08:42,021 --> 00:08:43,147
that left in a van.

138
00:08:44,315 --> 00:08:47,318
All of us were supposed to meet
at Church and Vesey.

139
00:08:47,818 --> 00:08:51,614
I was there with the lieutenant.
I says, "Let's just grab a car."

140
00:08:51,697 --> 00:08:53,199
"We'll go down there."

141
00:08:57,119 --> 00:08:58,621
I'm on the train.

142
00:08:59,747 --> 00:09:03,834
I get off at the municipal building,
which you always see on Law & Order.

143
00:09:04,418 --> 00:09:08,172
And as I'm walking
towards those iconic pillars,

144
00:09:08,256 --> 00:09:10,591
everybody's just, like, looking up.

145
00:09:12,843 --> 00:09:15,263
My eyes go to what they're looking at.

146
00:09:17,098 --> 00:09:20,101
And I see that big, gaping hole
in the North Tower.

147
00:09:21,185 --> 00:09:22,728
Those towers were huge.

148
00:09:23,229 --> 00:09:25,940
Tens of thousands of people
in each building every day.

149
00:09:26,023 --> 00:09:27,483
I know so many people there.

150
00:09:29,193 --> 00:09:32,863
Immediately, I call 212-938-5029.

151
00:09:32,947 --> 00:09:35,908
It's JoAnn's office number.

152
00:09:35,992 --> 00:09:40,580
And I hear beep, beep, beep.
It wasn't the typical busy sound.

153
00:09:41,330 --> 00:09:44,083
It's like an "out-of-service"
type of beep tone.

154
00:09:45,209 --> 00:09:47,295
It's nine o'clock. She should be at work.

155
00:09:47,378 --> 00:09:48,838
Now I'm like, "Oh shit."

156
00:09:50,506 --> 00:09:51,882
We gotta get over there.

157
00:09:52,717 --> 00:09:53,926
And all of a sudden…

158
00:09:55,303 --> 00:09:58,973
that first sound
that I thought I heard echoing,

159
00:10:00,057 --> 00:10:03,102
I hear it without the echo.

160
00:10:03,185 --> 00:10:04,478
Just a big explosion.

161
00:10:04,562 --> 00:10:05,646
Boom!

162
00:10:07,773 --> 00:10:09,609
Then I literally hit the pavement.

163
00:10:11,861 --> 00:10:13,362
It was a second fucking plane.

164
00:10:18,951 --> 00:10:21,454
We're on the 78th floor
of the South Tower.

165
00:10:21,537 --> 00:10:24,665
The only reason I'm here now
is because we were standing

166
00:10:24,749 --> 00:10:27,335
on the other side of the building
from where the plane came in.

167
00:10:33,007 --> 00:10:37,303
I wound up face down on the floor.
And I had no idea why.

168
00:10:37,803 --> 00:10:39,055
Everything went dark.

169
00:10:41,807 --> 00:10:43,768
There's people crying and screaming.

170
00:10:45,144 --> 00:10:47,730
The woman next to me, who I knew…

171
00:10:47,813 --> 00:10:50,524
Pushed her a little bit
and I said, "Are you okay?"

172
00:10:51,150 --> 00:10:53,444
I didn't get any response,
so I knew she was gone.

173
00:10:54,779 --> 00:10:57,114
There's dead people
laying all over the place.

174
00:10:57,948 --> 00:11:01,494
It was a very ugly, chaotic scene,
and nobody knew what was going on.

175
00:11:03,788 --> 00:11:06,499
The homicide squad,
along with everybody else,

176
00:11:06,582 --> 00:11:10,169
was involved in an emergency mobilization
down to that area.

177
00:11:11,545 --> 00:11:17,093
Two of my partners and I, we were driving,
lights and sirens, from the 13th Precinct.

178
00:11:18,010 --> 00:11:22,598
The next thing we knew, there was smoke
billowing out of the South Tower.

179
00:11:22,682 --> 00:11:26,060
Then you realize
that something hit the other tower.

180
00:11:28,604 --> 00:11:31,774
-Oh my goodness. Another one.
-Oh God.

181
00:11:31,857 --> 00:11:34,443
-Oh my God.
-My goodness.

182
00:11:35,611 --> 00:11:39,323
We all looked at each other in the car
and said,

183
00:11:39,407 --> 00:11:41,701
"This is no fucking accident."

184
00:11:44,912 --> 00:11:47,373
First thing that popped into my head
is my wife.

185
00:11:48,416 --> 00:11:51,836
She was working for a company
called Salomon Smith Barney.

186
00:11:51,919 --> 00:11:53,379
I knew she was in the city.

187
00:11:53,462 --> 00:11:56,006
I also knew that she had a client core

188
00:11:56,090 --> 00:11:59,051
that was in
one of the Trade Center buildings.

189
00:11:59,802 --> 00:12:02,388
And I knew that
she often spent time there.

190
00:12:03,681 --> 00:12:06,267
So I was consumed by that.

191
00:12:07,351 --> 00:12:10,104
I had a cell phone,
like an old fucking flip phone,

192
00:12:10,187 --> 00:12:13,274
like a StarTAC
or whatever they were called.

193
00:12:13,357 --> 00:12:16,610
And I remembered
trying to call her at work,

194
00:12:16,694 --> 00:12:21,073
trying to call her cell phone,
and, um, I couldn't get through.

195
00:12:21,157 --> 00:12:22,491
It was just dead air.

196
00:12:22,575 --> 00:12:26,162
There was just, like,
no signal, no nothing.

197
00:12:28,706 --> 00:12:31,167
It was mayhem in the city.

198
00:12:32,793 --> 00:12:37,757
People are abandoning their vehicles
in the middle of intersections.

199
00:12:37,840 --> 00:12:39,759
Forget about the damn car! Let's go!

200
00:12:41,051 --> 00:12:44,597
We are now trying
to get to where we're supposed to be,

201
00:12:44,680 --> 00:12:46,682
which is Church and Vesey.

202
00:12:46,766 --> 00:12:50,978
And we got to the middle of Maiden Lane,

203
00:12:51,061 --> 00:12:52,438
and we couldn't move.

204
00:12:53,189 --> 00:12:56,025
We left the van and we got out.

205
00:12:56,108 --> 00:12:59,779
And we start running
towards the World Trade Center.

206
00:13:02,531 --> 00:13:07,828
And as we're approaching the towers,
we look up.

207
00:13:08,412 --> 00:13:12,541
And people are hanging out on the girders.

208
00:13:14,293 --> 00:13:17,087
And black smoke is billowing out.

209
00:13:17,588 --> 00:13:20,174
People are sending notes down.

210
00:13:20,257 --> 00:13:23,844
"Help me.
I'm on this floor or that floor."

211
00:13:24,470 --> 00:13:25,346
It's…

212
00:13:25,429 --> 00:13:26,597
You're like…

213
00:13:29,350 --> 00:13:32,561
Just beyond belief.

214
00:13:33,145 --> 00:13:37,149
And your sergeant is going, "Let's go.
Keep moving. Let's just keep moving."

215
00:13:37,233 --> 00:13:39,944
"We have to get to where we have to go."

216
00:13:40,027 --> 00:13:42,655
"And they will tell us
what we have to do."

217
00:13:45,449 --> 00:13:49,787
The fire that was happening
on the 78th floor was unbelievable.

218
00:13:51,539 --> 00:13:54,625
You could hear this cracking noise,
and you didn't know what was going on,

219
00:13:54,708 --> 00:13:56,836
but the fire just kept getting worse.

220
00:13:57,503 --> 00:14:00,506
Something from the ceiling
came down next to my head.

221
00:14:01,465 --> 00:14:04,844
And you're like, "You gotta be kidding me.
I gotta get out of here."

222
00:14:04,927 --> 00:14:08,722
I'm thinking, "I'm on the 78th floor
of a building that's on fire,

223
00:14:08,806 --> 00:14:10,307
and I don't know how to get out."

224
00:14:12,893 --> 00:14:16,897
Your instinct is to help
these people who are running at you.

225
00:14:18,274 --> 00:14:20,317
So I went to go,

226
00:14:20,401 --> 00:14:24,029
and my sergeant grabbed me
by the nape of the neck

227
00:14:24,113 --> 00:14:25,281
and pulled me back.

228
00:14:26,991 --> 00:14:28,826
And somebody jumped…

229
00:14:29,952 --> 00:14:31,495
and landed in front of me.

230
00:14:34,790 --> 00:14:37,251
And killed somebody in front of me.

231
00:14:38,586 --> 00:14:40,296
It was brutal.

232
00:14:40,921 --> 00:14:42,423
Brutal to watch.

233
00:14:43,591 --> 00:14:45,509
There was nothing we could do.

234
00:14:48,429 --> 00:14:52,933
It's not the image
as much as it is the sound.

235
00:14:56,228 --> 00:14:57,396
I'm sorry.

236
00:15:05,654 --> 00:15:07,531
When a body falls…

237
00:15:09,033 --> 00:15:10,743
from that great height,

238
00:15:11,869 --> 00:15:14,496
it sounds like broken glass.

239
00:15:17,625 --> 00:15:19,835
And it is brutalized.

240
00:15:27,843 --> 00:15:31,388
I'm a New York City
homicide detective, so I've seen death,

241
00:15:32,222 --> 00:15:34,058
horrific murder scenes,

242
00:15:34,141 --> 00:15:36,435
violence, things like that.

243
00:15:37,394 --> 00:15:42,149
One of the most disturbing things
that always stayed with me, stuck with me,

244
00:15:43,359 --> 00:15:47,821
is just the fact that these poor people
would rather jump to their death

245
00:15:47,905 --> 00:15:49,365
than burn alive.

246
00:15:50,282 --> 00:15:51,492
Not much of an option.

247
00:15:58,040 --> 00:16:01,377
When I was on the 78th floor,
I thought to myself,

248
00:16:01,460 --> 00:16:05,714
"I have two boys who need me,
but I don't know how to get out of here."

249
00:16:05,798 --> 00:16:09,510
There's just too much debris,
and you definitely feel the heat.

250
00:16:09,593 --> 00:16:12,930
I ran into two women,
and these two guys came over,

251
00:16:13,013 --> 00:16:14,723
and we found an empty stairwell.

252
00:16:15,224 --> 00:16:17,017
We got to about the 75th floor,

253
00:16:18,394 --> 00:16:23,649
and there was two New York City firemen
who were coming up the stairs.

254
00:16:23,732 --> 00:16:27,903
They both had big tanks on their back.
They were laden with all this equipment.

255
00:16:27,987 --> 00:16:30,990
We said, "You gotta get up to 78,
because it's really bad."

256
00:16:31,073 --> 00:16:32,825
I remember these guys saying to us,

257
00:16:32,908 --> 00:16:36,078
"Don't worry about us.
Just worry about yourselves."

258
00:16:36,161 --> 00:16:38,956
"Get out. We'll take care
of what's going on on 78."

259
00:16:39,039 --> 00:16:42,418
And it was really kind of an eye-opener
into how people think,

260
00:16:42,501 --> 00:16:46,296
and how first responders
really respond to situations like that.

261
00:16:46,880 --> 00:16:47,965
Let's go!

262
00:16:49,925 --> 00:16:55,597
The Lower Manhattan precincts were
already in the buildings removing people.

263
00:16:56,390 --> 00:16:59,518
All the Upper Manhattan precincts
were with us.

264
00:17:00,060 --> 00:17:01,937
We moved to Park Place,

265
00:17:02,021 --> 00:17:05,024
about a half a block up
from the World Trade Center.

266
00:17:05,107 --> 00:17:10,904
And they start to assign four to a floor
to assist in the evacuation.

267
00:17:12,990 --> 00:17:17,119
Going down, we did encounter some debris

268
00:17:17,202 --> 00:17:21,832
that we managed to climb over
to get to the 40th floor.

269
00:17:22,499 --> 00:17:26,003
And there was a police officer
in that elevator, saying,

270
00:17:26,086 --> 00:17:27,963
"Get in here. I'll get you out."

271
00:17:29,757 --> 00:17:31,383
We got down to the first floor.

272
00:17:31,467 --> 00:17:34,803
The first floor was nothing but dust
and stuff all over the place.

273
00:17:34,887 --> 00:17:37,973
It was amazing. You could hardly see
anything in front of you.

274
00:17:39,349 --> 00:17:41,185
We walked out the door.

275
00:17:42,352 --> 00:17:44,980
I really didn't understand
what was going on.

276
00:17:45,064 --> 00:17:47,066
The best word to describe
any of this was "chaotic."

277
00:17:50,110 --> 00:17:53,572
From a triage standpoint,
I guess I looked as bad as anybody,

278
00:17:53,655 --> 00:17:56,617
so an officer came along and grabbed me.

279
00:17:56,700 --> 00:17:59,078
I didn't know her.
I didn't know anything about her.

280
00:17:59,161 --> 00:18:01,455
All I know is that somebody
was helping me out.

281
00:18:01,538 --> 00:18:03,415
Then somebody was taking my photograph.

282
00:18:05,417 --> 00:18:08,212
The police officer took me
to sit me down on the sidewalk.

283
00:18:08,295 --> 00:18:10,798
That's when they took me to the ambulance.

284
00:18:11,507 --> 00:18:14,009
Then she just went back into the building.

285
00:18:21,975 --> 00:18:24,394
I drive down to the World Trade Center.

286
00:18:26,021 --> 00:18:27,898
When I first show up at the scene,

287
00:18:27,981 --> 00:18:30,442
there's a plane engine
in the middle of the street.

288
00:18:30,526 --> 00:18:34,113
And I thought I'd try
to pull a serial number off it,

289
00:18:34,196 --> 00:18:36,031
help identify the airplane.

290
00:18:36,615 --> 00:18:38,117
Frankly, under the stress,

291
00:18:38,200 --> 00:18:42,412
I flipped into detective mode
when I should have flipped into boss mode.

292
00:18:43,622 --> 00:18:47,000
I kind of had to snap myself
out of the situation.

293
00:18:47,084 --> 00:18:50,629
And I walk over
to a temporary headquarters

294
00:18:50,712 --> 00:18:53,757
that is across the street
from the South Tower

295
00:18:53,841 --> 00:18:57,136
to make a call to my higher headquarters.

296
00:19:00,222 --> 00:19:02,349
I'm almost to the World Trade Center.

297
00:19:03,058 --> 00:19:06,270
I'm standing there by myself.
I'm like, "What do I do?"

298
00:19:08,063 --> 00:19:10,315
We never trained for this
in the police academy.

299
00:19:10,399 --> 00:19:11,650
They never taught us this.

300
00:19:12,860 --> 00:19:14,945
I'm 27 years old.

301
00:19:15,028 --> 00:19:16,989
Or 28, one of the two.

302
00:19:17,489 --> 00:19:20,200
I was still relatively
a young kid at the time.

303
00:19:21,160 --> 00:19:23,662
What do I do?
I'm like, "How the fuck am--"

304
00:19:23,745 --> 00:19:25,747
"How am I getting up there
to get her out of there?"

305
00:19:28,876 --> 00:19:31,712
Since I was young, JoAnn was always there.

306
00:19:32,504 --> 00:19:34,298
She was proud of my career.

307
00:19:34,381 --> 00:19:36,633
She was there
when I graduated the police academy.

308
00:19:38,093 --> 00:19:40,721
When I bought my first house,
she lent me 3,000 bucks.

309
00:19:42,264 --> 00:19:43,724
I could always count on her.

310
00:19:44,558 --> 00:19:47,352
Now, how the hell am I gonna help her?

311
00:19:50,272 --> 00:19:52,524
You know, I was looking for that guidance.

312
00:19:55,027 --> 00:19:58,030
Eventually, I ran into
my lieutenant at the time.

313
00:19:59,406 --> 00:20:03,243
We're walking south,
so we're in front of the Verizon Building.

314
00:20:03,785 --> 00:20:05,037
I'm hearing this rumbling.

315
00:20:11,501 --> 00:20:13,462
The cell phones are not working.

316
00:20:13,545 --> 00:20:15,839
I'm talking on a landline.

317
00:20:15,923 --> 00:20:20,385
The phone starts shaking
and going across the table.

318
00:20:20,886 --> 00:20:22,804
I'm thinking it's the subway system.

319
00:20:24,056 --> 00:20:26,808
I felt the ground move.

320
00:20:26,892 --> 00:20:29,228
The rumble got bigger.

321
00:20:29,311 --> 00:20:32,064
We thought it was
an explosion. It was that loud.

322
00:20:32,898 --> 00:20:36,652
But it was like rolling…
like a rolling, loud sound.

323
00:20:38,237 --> 00:20:40,572
It was like…

324
00:20:43,283 --> 00:20:46,245
And all I see,
from like the 30th floor down…

325
00:20:49,081 --> 00:20:51,250
Oh my God! Oh my God!

326
00:20:55,712 --> 00:20:57,839
-Get down!
-Get over there!

327
00:20:57,923 --> 00:21:00,300
A couple blocks from the Trade Center,

328
00:21:00,384 --> 00:21:05,430
I just saw white smoke billowing
from where the South Tower was.

329
00:21:06,014 --> 00:21:08,308
Oh my God! Oh my God!

330
00:21:09,017 --> 00:21:12,229
And it was coming
right towards my partner and I

331
00:21:12,896 --> 00:21:14,690
at a rapid pace.

332
00:21:16,608 --> 00:21:20,237
Two of us instinctively
just looked at each other and started,

333
00:21:20,320 --> 00:21:22,614
as we call it, "assholes and elbows."

334
00:21:22,698 --> 00:21:27,119
And we were hightailing it to safety
inside Syms department store.

335
00:21:27,703 --> 00:21:31,373
And my lieutenant
at that very moment says,

336
00:21:31,456 --> 00:21:32,749
"Fucking run!"

337
00:21:32,833 --> 00:21:34,501
Get out of here!

338
00:21:34,584 --> 00:21:37,546
-Go, go, go!
-Come on!

339
00:21:39,464 --> 00:21:42,968
And then all of the cops who were with me

340
00:21:43,051 --> 00:21:46,305
lining up to assist in the evacuation

341
00:21:46,388 --> 00:21:49,850
were coming at me like a herd of bulls.

342
00:21:50,726 --> 00:21:54,479
And I face-planted into the sidewalk,

343
00:21:54,563 --> 00:21:57,774
and they proceeded to run on me.

344
00:21:59,484 --> 00:22:02,821
And, I mean,
you can't blame them, I guess.

345
00:22:03,655 --> 00:22:05,490
Although I was pissed.

346
00:22:06,199 --> 00:22:09,745
I heard my knee pop, my back pop.

347
00:22:10,370 --> 00:22:13,665
I was in pain immediately.

348
00:22:14,207 --> 00:22:18,795
And I was literally crucified
to the sidewalk.

349
00:22:20,922 --> 00:22:22,215
I couldn't move.

350
00:22:23,759 --> 00:22:27,304
And two guys from the 23rd Precinct,

351
00:22:27,387 --> 00:22:29,598
who I never got their names,

352
00:22:29,681 --> 00:22:31,516
same thing happened to them.

353
00:22:32,184 --> 00:22:35,896
They were like, "Can you walk?"
I was like, "I can run. Let's go."

354
00:22:35,979 --> 00:22:37,189
Come on, come on!

355
00:22:37,981 --> 00:22:40,275
We tried to get ahead of the debris,

356
00:22:40,359 --> 00:22:41,360
but we couldn't.

357
00:22:41,985 --> 00:22:45,238
So we just whipped onto Broadway,

358
00:22:45,322 --> 00:22:46,990
and knelt down,

359
00:22:47,074 --> 00:22:49,451
and tried to cover as best we could.

360
00:22:54,831 --> 00:22:57,292
We're trying to get into 7 World Trade,

361
00:22:57,376 --> 00:23:01,463
which is directly north
of the actual Twin Towers themselves.

362
00:23:02,005 --> 00:23:04,549
That looked like the safest shelter
we could find.

363
00:23:06,718 --> 00:23:08,220
The doors were locked.

364
00:23:08,929 --> 00:23:12,349
I was actually gonna pull my gun out
and start shooting the glass.

365
00:23:12,933 --> 00:23:15,060
I did not want to be caught on the street.

366
00:23:16,228 --> 00:23:20,023
Somebody pushes the door open
from inside, screaming,

367
00:23:20,107 --> 00:23:21,483
"Get in here! Get in here!"

368
00:23:22,275 --> 00:23:23,193
We ran in.

369
00:23:23,902 --> 00:23:27,280
You're in basically a glass atrium,
two, three stories high.

370
00:23:28,949 --> 00:23:32,744
The glass is breaking inside,
you know, the front lobby,

371
00:23:32,828 --> 00:23:36,289
and the place just instantly fills
with dirt and dust.

372
00:23:39,751 --> 00:23:45,215
That really was truly
the most terrifying moment of my life.

373
00:23:45,298 --> 00:23:47,300
And I've been in some…

374
00:23:47,384 --> 00:23:50,137
couple of hairy things
over the course of my career.

375
00:23:51,721 --> 00:23:54,516
But all of a sudden
you get this realization that…

376
00:23:55,308 --> 00:23:56,810
"I'm gonna die here."

377
00:24:04,234 --> 00:24:07,737
It seems like some things slow down
while other things speed up.

378
00:24:07,821 --> 00:24:10,407
It's amazing what the brain can process.

379
00:24:11,741 --> 00:24:14,035
I'm not an overly religious person.

380
00:24:14,536 --> 00:24:19,124
But if you think you're gonna die,
better square your shit away real fast.

381
00:24:19,207 --> 00:24:20,917
And that's what I'm like…

382
00:24:21,001 --> 00:24:22,127
I said, "God…"

383
00:24:23,462 --> 00:24:25,839
I was 14 years sober at that time.

384
00:24:27,466 --> 00:24:29,468
The thing that popped in my head was,

385
00:24:29,551 --> 00:24:32,721
"You know what, God?
Thank you for the last 14 years."

386
00:24:34,556 --> 00:24:36,308
"Take care of my family."

387
00:24:37,350 --> 00:24:40,645
And I'm like,
"This is it. You gotta ride this out."

388
00:24:43,148 --> 00:24:45,317
The building I'm in starts filling up

389
00:24:45,400 --> 00:24:47,569
with what I think is smoke.

390
00:24:48,236 --> 00:24:49,779
And I remember

391
00:24:49,863 --> 00:24:53,408
from early on in elementary school
that when dealing with smoke,

392
00:24:53,492 --> 00:24:55,994
you're supposed to
get on your knees and crawl.

393
00:24:56,077 --> 00:25:01,416
Except this smoke is loaded
on the lower end

394
00:25:01,500 --> 00:25:03,502
and thinner on the high end.

395
00:25:04,002 --> 00:25:09,508
And it has me very confused
and questioning everything I learned

396
00:25:09,591 --> 00:25:13,178
from Sister Elizabeth
at Our Lady of Snows in 1968.

397
00:25:15,555 --> 00:25:17,682
It's gone! The whole tower!

398
00:25:17,766 --> 00:25:19,059
It's gone!

399
00:25:19,142 --> 00:25:20,727
Holy crap!

400
00:25:23,939 --> 00:25:25,982
In 7 World Trade,

401
00:25:26,066 --> 00:25:28,610
we didn't get hit with anything,
no major debris.

402
00:25:29,778 --> 00:25:31,112
You're not dead.

403
00:25:32,030 --> 00:25:34,574
Get to work. Be useful.

404
00:25:36,910 --> 00:25:39,538
You can barely see inside this building.

405
00:25:39,621 --> 00:25:42,249
I have some crappy little flashlight
with me,

406
00:25:42,332 --> 00:25:45,043
and I hear people
yelling up the escalator,

407
00:25:45,126 --> 00:25:46,586
so I go up there.

408
00:25:47,087 --> 00:25:49,172
I'm the only guy in uniform there.

409
00:25:50,006 --> 00:25:51,341
This guy, he's a building…

410
00:25:51,424 --> 00:25:54,177
I don't know if he was
a fire marshal or security guard.

411
00:25:54,803 --> 00:25:56,805
He goes,
"Oh, thank God, the cops are here."

412
00:25:57,973 --> 00:25:58,974
I'm like…

413
00:26:00,433 --> 00:26:04,479
"Yeah, the cavalry's arrived,
and it's me, and that's not much."

414
00:26:07,023 --> 00:26:08,733
South Tower's collapsed.

415
00:26:09,359 --> 00:26:10,735
Now we gotta regroup.

416
00:26:11,570 --> 00:26:14,406
We start walking towards the North Tower.

417
00:26:15,991 --> 00:26:16,866
I see the firemen.

418
00:26:20,829 --> 00:26:23,081
They're pouring water into their eyes.

419
00:26:23,957 --> 00:26:25,667
They're crying.

420
00:26:28,628 --> 00:26:33,049
There's regular civilians
who happened to escape the building.

421
00:26:33,675 --> 00:26:36,511
One guy, I remember, I grabbed him.
I gave him a big hug.

422
00:26:36,595 --> 00:26:40,098
Grown-ass man, much older than me,
probably in his forties…

423
00:26:40,599 --> 00:26:42,350
And he's crying, and, uh…

424
00:26:43,727 --> 00:26:44,936
Again, shock.

425
00:26:45,437 --> 00:26:46,813
I'm… I'm in it.

426
00:26:46,896 --> 00:26:48,481
I said, "It's gonna be all right."

427
00:26:51,401 --> 00:26:53,528
The dust settled.

428
00:26:54,195 --> 00:26:57,532
And we went to what is now known
as "Ground Zero"

429
00:26:57,616 --> 00:27:01,911
to help expedite any kind of evacuation.

430
00:27:04,414 --> 00:27:08,043
And when we got there,
it was just not there.

431
00:27:09,210 --> 00:27:15,550
There was a shard of the building
in the middle of Church and Vesey.

432
00:27:17,844 --> 00:27:21,306
The South Tower,
even though it's hit second,

433
00:27:21,389 --> 00:27:24,851
comes down first,
'cause it was hit at a lower level,

434
00:27:24,934 --> 00:27:27,562
which compromised
the strength of the building more.

435
00:27:29,773 --> 00:27:33,610
After the '93 bombing
of the World Trade Center,

436
00:27:33,693 --> 00:27:37,113
we received training that
a plane could not knock down the tower

437
00:27:37,197 --> 00:27:39,157
from the sheer force.

438
00:27:39,240 --> 00:27:41,701
But now I'm willing
to change my thought process.

439
00:27:42,661 --> 00:27:45,080
Get out of the area.
The second tower is coming down.

440
00:27:45,163 --> 00:27:47,457
-Did they tell you--
-Yes, it's about to come down.

441
00:27:47,540 --> 00:27:50,001
We lined up a bunch of police officers

442
00:27:50,085 --> 00:27:52,504
to keep everybody
further away from the building,

443
00:27:52,587 --> 00:27:55,423
'cause it was obvious
the second building was gonna come down.

444
00:27:55,507 --> 00:27:57,592
-Get the fuck out of here!
-We're going!

445
00:27:57,676 --> 00:28:01,888
I see a bunch of EMS.
I'm like, "Dude, what are you doing?"

446
00:28:01,971 --> 00:28:03,848
He goes,
"We're gonna go back into the building."

447
00:28:03,932 --> 00:28:05,433
I'm like, "You're crazy."

448
00:28:06,142 --> 00:28:09,062
He goes, "No, there's people in there
that need to be removed. "

449
00:28:09,562 --> 00:28:11,398
And I felt like a coward…

450
00:28:13,233 --> 00:28:14,859
that I was gonna walk away.

451
00:28:16,528 --> 00:28:17,987
So I was like, "Okay, fuck it."

452
00:28:18,071 --> 00:28:20,907
"I'm not gonna have a fireman
embarrass me, so I'm gonna stay."

453
00:28:20,990 --> 00:28:22,409
Move it! Come on!

454
00:28:23,243 --> 00:28:25,954
The North Tower had the antenna on top,

455
00:28:26,037 --> 00:28:27,664
and it started to tilt.

456
00:28:28,790 --> 00:28:30,500
We started to hear noises.

457
00:28:30,583 --> 00:28:31,584
I know I did.

458
00:28:32,877 --> 00:28:34,337
It was, like, creaking.

459
00:28:36,339 --> 00:28:38,216
And we're two blocks away.

460
00:28:39,300 --> 00:28:41,761
You hear the rumbling.

461
00:28:43,930 --> 00:28:47,058
And then that's when the tower…
I start seeing it fucking drop.

462
00:28:55,275 --> 00:28:57,026
The tower's coming down!

463
00:28:57,569 --> 00:28:59,946
Get away from it! Get away from it!

464
00:29:02,615 --> 00:29:04,909
When that building was coming down,

465
00:29:04,993 --> 00:29:06,995
I remember seeing my two boys…

466
00:29:13,084 --> 00:29:14,586
…edging me on

467
00:29:15,420 --> 00:29:17,297
to run as fast as I could.

468
00:29:18,715 --> 00:29:21,551
Uh… And to hit the deck.

469
00:29:22,343 --> 00:29:23,553
Get over here.

470
00:29:24,220 --> 00:29:27,599
And I go hide in a curb.

471
00:29:27,682 --> 00:29:30,894
All 250 pounds of my fat ass

472
00:29:30,977 --> 00:29:36,441
squeezed into six inches
of sidewalk to survive this.

473
00:29:37,233 --> 00:29:41,070
Remembering my military training,
I put my feet towards the explosion.

474
00:29:43,072 --> 00:29:45,492
There was, like, hurricane winds.

475
00:29:46,326 --> 00:29:49,537
I look to my right,
and there's a truck on its side.

476
00:29:51,414 --> 00:29:53,708
And then it becomes very dark.

477
00:29:56,419 --> 00:29:57,796
I can't see.

478
00:29:57,879 --> 00:30:00,507
And everything's extremely quiet.

479
00:30:02,842 --> 00:30:04,469
I'm wondering if I'm dead.

480
00:30:05,637 --> 00:30:07,347
I'm not feeling any pain.

481
00:30:10,558 --> 00:30:14,312
And then, all of a sudden,
I could not breathe at all.

482
00:30:15,230 --> 00:30:19,651
And I have to take my hands,
and physically go in my mouth,

483
00:30:19,734 --> 00:30:23,154
and rake out chunks of cement.

484
00:30:24,072 --> 00:30:26,574
And I'm coughing, and I'm on my knees.

485
00:30:27,075 --> 00:30:28,785
A woman grabbed me.

486
00:30:29,369 --> 00:30:32,413
She took me over to a fire hydrant
to clean my eyes out.

487
00:30:32,497 --> 00:30:35,083
She gives me some water.

488
00:30:35,166 --> 00:30:36,668
I can still see her face.

489
00:30:37,377 --> 00:30:40,213
Frankly, it's one of
the more pleasant moments of the day.

490
00:30:40,296 --> 00:30:43,383
It's somebody coming to help me
when I was in need.

491
00:30:46,594 --> 00:30:48,388
I was hopeful that JoAnn made it out.

492
00:30:49,430 --> 00:30:52,475
I was hopeful that the people
that she worked with made it out.

493
00:30:52,976 --> 00:30:55,520
I was hoping most people made it out.

494
00:30:56,521 --> 00:30:58,106
In a state of shock like that,

495
00:30:59,065 --> 00:31:03,611
you're not gonna comprehend
the magnitude of what you're witnessing.

496
00:31:06,865 --> 00:31:08,366
We're in Syms.

497
00:31:08,950 --> 00:31:12,954
The people that had been in there shopping
had looks of panic on their face.

498
00:31:13,037 --> 00:31:15,164
"We gotta get these people out.
We gotta do something."

499
00:31:16,291 --> 00:31:19,544
Whatever was in that smoke,
like my eyes were burning.

500
00:31:20,461 --> 00:31:24,424
So we took men's pocket squares
that were on a display rack,

501
00:31:24,507 --> 00:31:25,842
wet them, start handing them out.

502
00:31:27,302 --> 00:31:29,721
Everybody, the employees,
and the people in there,

503
00:31:29,804 --> 00:31:32,724
we told them to cover their faces
with the pocket squares,

504
00:31:32,807 --> 00:31:36,895
and try and avoid breathing in
whatever it was.

505
00:31:39,689 --> 00:31:44,944
We got everybody, single file,
to walk south towards the water.

506
00:31:45,028 --> 00:31:46,446
Okay, start going on. Come on.

507
00:31:46,529 --> 00:31:49,949
There were ferries set up,
and people with private boats.

508
00:31:50,033 --> 00:31:53,036
They were taking people
to get them off Manhattan.

509
00:31:54,370 --> 00:31:57,332
Myself and my partners
had no intention of leaving.

510
00:31:57,415 --> 00:31:59,667
We were like, "What do we do now?"

511
00:32:00,835 --> 00:32:03,171
I couldn't help
but think about my wife again

512
00:32:03,254 --> 00:32:04,339
and whether she was safe.

513
00:32:04,422 --> 00:32:07,550
And I decided to try her again
on my cell phone,

514
00:32:07,634 --> 00:32:09,969
and, you know, still there was no luck.

515
00:32:10,053 --> 00:32:12,680
I couldn't get through to anybody.
I had no signal.

516
00:32:12,764 --> 00:32:14,432
Just could not make a call.

517
00:32:17,226 --> 00:32:19,103
There was no communications.

518
00:32:19,771 --> 00:32:23,316
One tower had the antenna
that did most of the broadcasting,

519
00:32:23,399 --> 00:32:26,903
most of the cell phones, TV, radio.

520
00:32:26,986 --> 00:32:29,989
So we had no communications
with other agencies.

521
00:32:31,115 --> 00:32:36,079
We do have a point-to-point communication
with the police department.

522
00:32:36,162 --> 00:32:40,458
So you can hear transmissions
from each other.

523
00:32:40,541 --> 00:32:43,044
The command post is north of Vesey Street.

524
00:32:43,127 --> 00:32:44,420
10-4.

525
00:32:44,504 --> 00:32:45,964
But nothing else.

526
00:32:46,798 --> 00:32:50,093
And it is extremely quiet.

527
00:32:52,345 --> 00:32:56,391
All you can hear is the firemen's alarms

528
00:32:56,474 --> 00:33:00,728
for their oxygen
that they wear on their back going off.

529
00:33:01,896 --> 00:33:06,442
And it's ever so quiet, but yet deafening

530
00:33:06,526 --> 00:33:10,571
in the canyon
of what that area of Manhattan is.

531
00:33:13,992 --> 00:33:16,619
One of the things I experienced that day,

532
00:33:16,703 --> 00:33:19,914
in looking back on it in retrospect,
was loneliness.

533
00:33:21,082 --> 00:33:23,626
Being separated
from the people I work with.

534
00:33:24,377 --> 00:33:25,420
For a cop, that stinks.

535
00:33:26,754 --> 00:33:29,924
In a scene of such calamity,

536
00:33:31,134 --> 00:33:32,510
it really became

537
00:33:32,593 --> 00:33:36,723
like almost an overpowering sense,
'cause you're just disconnected.

538
00:33:38,349 --> 00:33:42,186
I says, "Let me go see if I can find
who I'm supposed to be with."

539
00:33:43,521 --> 00:33:45,732
I walk past a bar.

540
00:33:45,815 --> 00:33:46,816
And it's weird.

541
00:33:47,942 --> 00:33:49,736
A thought popped in my head.

542
00:33:50,945 --> 00:33:54,073
Nobody would begrudge you
if you walked behind the bar and…

543
00:33:55,533 --> 00:33:59,495
grabbed that bottle of Johnnie Walker
and poured yourself a shot.

544
00:33:59,579 --> 00:34:02,248
With the disease of alcoholism,

545
00:34:03,291 --> 00:34:05,418
it's just sitting back there saying,

546
00:34:05,501 --> 00:34:08,421
"Hmm, a little toot right here
wouldn't bother you."

547
00:34:08,504 --> 00:34:11,966
These are the conversations going
inside my crazy skull.

548
00:34:12,050 --> 00:34:13,176
And I'm like…

549
00:34:14,677 --> 00:34:17,096
"Not today. I got work to do."

550
00:34:17,180 --> 00:34:18,222
And…

551
00:34:18,931 --> 00:34:22,143
I'm still sober today.
I'm coming up on 38 years.

552
00:34:24,979 --> 00:34:29,609
I was a one-star chief
in charge of Bronx detectives.

553
00:34:30,568 --> 00:34:32,779
We go rushing into the city.

554
00:34:33,654 --> 00:34:35,490
We got to Trinity and Liberty

555
00:34:36,115 --> 00:34:38,451
when the North Tower collapsed.

556
00:34:38,951 --> 00:34:43,122
Now, at Trinity and Liberty, I realize
there's a Burger King on the corner.

557
00:34:43,706 --> 00:34:45,917
So I just took the opportunity

558
00:34:46,000 --> 00:34:49,378
to make the Burger King
a temporary headquarters.

559
00:34:50,797 --> 00:34:53,549
I just started giving out assignments,

560
00:34:53,633 --> 00:34:56,010
and we moved out throughout the day.

561
00:34:57,011 --> 00:35:02,558
Cops just ran into the city from Brooklyn,
from Upper Manhattan.

562
00:35:04,227 --> 00:35:09,232
It was the only time in my entire career
where I didn't want to go to work.

563
00:35:09,315 --> 00:35:12,193
I wanted to be home for my family.

564
00:35:13,027 --> 00:35:16,697
That was my priority,
but unfortunately I had to put that aside

565
00:35:16,781 --> 00:35:20,576
and rush from Queens into Manhattan.

566
00:35:24,038 --> 00:35:25,790
I was coming from the Bronx.

567
00:35:25,873 --> 00:35:27,917
My car was not working that day,

568
00:35:28,000 --> 00:35:30,962
and it was crazy
'cause everything was closed.

569
00:35:31,045 --> 00:35:32,463
The trains were stopped.

570
00:35:32,547 --> 00:35:35,133
Everybody was walking back from Manhattan.

571
00:35:35,216 --> 00:35:38,553
I tried to hitchhike into the city,
but I couldn't get a ride.

572
00:35:39,220 --> 00:35:42,265
So I took a bus on Lexington Avenue
that was packed.

573
00:35:42,348 --> 00:35:46,602
And I remember getting off on 21st Street
and walking to my precinct.

574
00:35:47,645 --> 00:35:50,022
So many people that I knew were missing.

575
00:35:52,024 --> 00:35:53,985
No one knew where anyone was.

576
00:35:55,736 --> 00:35:59,490
NYPD started doing missing person work.

577
00:35:59,574 --> 00:36:01,492
Civilians, first responders…

578
00:36:02,577 --> 00:36:06,080
Many of us went on a list
of everyone that's missing.

579
00:36:06,622 --> 00:36:08,624
Stay off the air for a second.

580
00:36:08,708 --> 00:36:11,043
I got a female down.
Officer down. Stand by.

581
00:36:11,919 --> 00:36:16,132
We're listening for people
who are stuck in the building.

582
00:36:16,215 --> 00:36:19,719
Female officer, where are you?
What was your last location?

583
00:36:20,219 --> 00:36:26,517
I crawled in and out of caverns
trying to get to whoever it may be,

584
00:36:26,601 --> 00:36:32,982
to the point where my shoes were burned
and my arms were burned.

585
00:36:35,610 --> 00:36:37,111
There was a concern about,

586
00:36:37,195 --> 00:36:40,573
"How do we manage
the amount of people that are missing?"

587
00:36:40,656 --> 00:36:43,075
"How do we verify
whether they're missing?"

588
00:36:43,159 --> 00:36:45,328
"How do we know
that they're still in the building?"

589
00:36:48,497 --> 00:36:50,458
I leave the 13th Precinct

590
00:36:50,541 --> 00:36:53,794
and head south
to the World Trade Center area.

591
00:36:54,754 --> 00:36:57,673
I went to go see if I could find
my neighbor Bill McGinn

592
00:36:57,757 --> 00:36:59,008
and see if he's okay.

593
00:37:00,259 --> 00:37:02,386
Before I left my apartment that day,

594
00:37:02,470 --> 00:37:04,639
Bill's wife had knocked on my door.

595
00:37:05,223 --> 00:37:07,183
She said Bill was working.

596
00:37:07,266 --> 00:37:09,602
She was calling him.
There was no response.

597
00:37:09,685 --> 00:37:12,355
I said, "When I get downtown,
I'll see if I find him."

598
00:37:14,232 --> 00:37:15,441
We looked around a bit.

599
00:37:15,524 --> 00:37:18,486
I kept asking everybody,
"Anybody see Bill McGinn?"

600
00:37:18,569 --> 00:37:21,614
"He worked in the firehouse
on 10th Street and Greenwich."

601
00:37:22,198 --> 00:37:24,242
"Has anybody seen that company?"

602
00:37:25,243 --> 00:37:27,745
At one point,
I asked one fireman, he went…

603
00:37:28,412 --> 00:37:31,040
Like, "That company is gone."

604
00:37:33,125 --> 00:37:34,752
I felt so bad.

605
00:37:35,253 --> 00:37:37,922
His daughter Cordelia
was about six years old,

606
00:37:38,005 --> 00:37:40,508
and she had come to my house that morning.

607
00:37:40,591 --> 00:37:44,053
She was playing with my son,
and at some point, she says,

608
00:37:44,136 --> 00:37:46,931
"Oh my God, I lost my tooth!"
She lost her first tooth.

609
00:37:47,014 --> 00:37:50,017
She says, "I can't wait till my father
comes home so I can show him!"

610
00:37:50,893 --> 00:37:52,812
Knowing she wanted to show her father,

611
00:37:52,895 --> 00:37:55,815
and knowing that most likely
he wasn't gonna come home,

612
00:37:55,898 --> 00:37:58,234
it really kinda, like,
made me feel really sad.

613
00:38:04,031 --> 00:38:08,411
We ended up off the FDR Drive
by the Manhattan Bridge somehow.

614
00:38:08,911 --> 00:38:13,708
I remember seeing someone yelling,
"Get back! Get back!"

615
00:38:13,791 --> 00:38:17,086
"There's a van on the bridge!
They're gonna blow the Manhattan Bridge!"

616
00:38:19,046 --> 00:38:23,217
Panic overcomes everybody,
myself, my two partners, all the people.

617
00:38:24,427 --> 00:38:27,346
I think to myself,
"What the fuck are we running for?"

618
00:38:29,724 --> 00:38:32,059
Bomb squad went up,
and there was no explosives,

619
00:38:32,143 --> 00:38:33,561
nothing wrong with the van.

620
00:38:33,644 --> 00:38:34,895
It just had been abandoned.

621
00:38:35,646 --> 00:38:37,898
But, uh, initially, it made sense,

622
00:38:37,982 --> 00:38:40,526
because I kept thinking to myself,
"What next?"

623
00:38:40,609 --> 00:38:41,861
We were panicked.

624
00:38:43,863 --> 00:38:45,906
There were rumors flying left and right.

625
00:38:47,033 --> 00:38:50,036
There were something like
eight planes missing,

626
00:38:50,619 --> 00:38:52,204
still unaccounted for.

627
00:38:52,288 --> 00:38:54,707
Rumors, but then
some of these weren't rumors.

628
00:38:56,125 --> 00:38:58,461
We found out that the Pentagon got hit.

629
00:38:59,170 --> 00:39:03,549
We found out about the plane crash
in Shanksville, Pennsylvania.

630
00:39:04,633 --> 00:39:08,012
With all of these attacks
happening in multiple places,

631
00:39:08,095 --> 00:39:10,598
we didn't know
what these terrorists had planned.

632
00:39:11,182 --> 00:39:14,352
We didn't know if they were gonna hit
the Empire State Building next.

633
00:39:14,435 --> 00:39:17,063
We didn't know
if the subways were gonna be hit.

634
00:39:17,146 --> 00:39:21,776
We just knew today was the day,
and it was happening in multiple places.

635
00:39:25,071 --> 00:39:29,200
As we're proceeding
and continuing to help and assist people,

636
00:39:29,700 --> 00:39:31,535
I still had not spoken to my wife.

637
00:39:33,037 --> 00:39:35,456
I make another attempt to call her.

638
00:39:35,998 --> 00:39:40,294
Eventually, I'm able to get through
to the person who we hired for child care.

639
00:39:40,795 --> 00:39:43,714
I asked her had she heard
from my wife, and…

640
00:39:44,757 --> 00:39:47,635
She said, "Yes, she's on her way.
She's in New Jersey."

641
00:39:48,761 --> 00:39:50,388
She was okay, so…

642
00:39:51,430 --> 00:39:54,558
that allowed me to focus a little more,
to help render aid,

643
00:39:54,642 --> 00:39:58,479
and hopefully rescue people that
had been caught up inside those towers.

644
00:40:05,778 --> 00:40:09,198
At this point, I'm in shock.

645
00:40:10,157 --> 00:40:16,247
I am dehydrated,
and I was wandering around alone.

646
00:40:17,540 --> 00:40:20,668
I walk up to the Woolworth Building,

647
00:40:21,252 --> 00:40:25,131
and I happen to see Pete Panuccio,

648
00:40:25,214 --> 00:40:26,882
my sergeant from the 19th,

649
00:40:26,966 --> 00:40:29,093
who I used to work with on the midnights,

650
00:40:29,176 --> 00:40:32,346
and I'm like, "Somebody I know!"

651
00:40:32,847 --> 00:40:36,976
And he's like,
"Oh, my God, Joanne, where have you been?"

652
00:40:38,227 --> 00:40:42,606
To be reunited with a cop
in the 19th Precinct was a huge relief.

653
00:40:42,690 --> 00:40:43,607
She's alive.

654
00:40:43,691 --> 00:40:48,571
And we were maybe just a block
or two away almost the entire time.

655
00:40:48,654 --> 00:40:51,740
That's how chaotic the scene was.

656
00:40:52,450 --> 00:40:54,577
He goes, "You look like hell."

657
00:40:55,077 --> 00:40:57,496
And I was like,
"You don't look so hot yourself."

658
00:40:57,580 --> 00:41:00,291
Joanne was limping badly.

659
00:41:00,875 --> 00:41:03,127
When I saw her knee, I'm like, "Uh…"

660
00:41:03,210 --> 00:41:07,548
I probably would have been
on the floor howling and crying,

661
00:41:07,631 --> 00:41:08,799
and she was like,

662
00:41:09,550 --> 00:41:14,513
"We're good. Let's do what we need to do.
I'll go to the hospital when we all go."

663
00:41:16,807 --> 00:41:18,809
Some boss comes by, and he says,

664
00:41:18,893 --> 00:41:23,189
"We need people on the street
leading down to 7 World Trade."

665
00:41:23,689 --> 00:41:25,065
This thing was in flames.

666
00:41:28,694 --> 00:41:30,905
To me, it gave out a death groan.

667
00:41:35,034 --> 00:41:36,076
We ran.

668
00:41:43,792 --> 00:41:47,171
There was this gigantic cloud of dust

669
00:41:47,254 --> 00:41:50,216
that just blew straight out
across Broadway.

670
00:41:52,927 --> 00:41:55,429
And you're like, "When does this day end?"

671
00:42:08,776 --> 00:42:11,028
When I finally got home,

672
00:42:11,111 --> 00:42:15,616
I couldn't believe that I was home.

673
00:42:15,699 --> 00:42:18,661
My daughter hugged the stuffing out of me…

674
00:42:19,828 --> 00:42:23,040
and literally said,
"I knew you were okay."

675
00:42:23,541 --> 00:42:25,376
"I knew you were okay."

676
00:42:26,377 --> 00:42:30,422
And I literally sat in a bathtub,

677
00:42:30,506 --> 00:42:34,218
and my ten-year-old bathed me.

678
00:42:35,094 --> 00:42:37,221
She was like, "I have you."

679
00:42:38,430 --> 00:42:41,392
"I'm so lucky you came home."

680
00:42:44,395 --> 00:42:49,108
My wife and I were both very emotional,
and we were kissing my daughter.

681
00:42:49,608 --> 00:42:51,443
She slept in the bed with us that night.

682
00:42:52,903 --> 00:42:59,201
Such a, like, feeling
of almost like a dread or something

683
00:42:59,285 --> 00:43:00,786
that had just kind of…

684
00:43:00,869 --> 00:43:03,664
I shed it at that time, just being home,

685
00:43:03,747 --> 00:43:06,041
being in bed, being with my family.

686
00:43:06,125 --> 00:43:08,919
It was just such a relief.

687
00:43:11,255 --> 00:43:13,549
I only slept for about maybe an hour.

688
00:43:13,632 --> 00:43:17,928
Took a shower, fresh clothes,
turned around, and went back to work.

689
00:43:18,887 --> 00:43:20,598
They told us to be back at 4:00 a.m.

690
00:43:24,351 --> 00:43:28,731
As the department organized,
everyone got specific instructions.

691
00:43:29,440 --> 00:43:33,611
Every detective
was utilized somehow, someway

692
00:43:33,694 --> 00:43:36,113
in connection with the World Trade Center.

693
00:43:39,491 --> 00:43:41,368
I was working at the Pile.

694
00:43:44,622 --> 00:43:48,751
A couple of days in,
my commanding officer says to us,

695
00:43:48,834 --> 00:43:52,254
"All the crime guys,
go back to the office, get changed,

696
00:43:52,338 --> 00:43:54,381
put on your civilian clothes."

697
00:43:54,465 --> 00:43:57,009
"You're gonna go out there
and look for looters."

698
00:43:58,093 --> 00:43:59,887
And I shook my head no to him.

699
00:44:00,596 --> 00:44:01,847
I said, "No."

700
00:44:02,348 --> 00:44:05,684
I was crying. I was in hysterics.

701
00:44:05,768 --> 00:44:08,187
I said, "I need
to get the fuck back in there."

702
00:44:08,270 --> 00:44:11,815
"All right? I'm not going out
and look for looters. I don't care."

703
00:44:12,608 --> 00:44:15,819
"I'm going in there. I'm looking
for JoAnn. I'm going in there."

704
00:44:17,321 --> 00:44:20,741
And then I see my commanding officer,
and he says,

705
00:44:20,824 --> 00:44:22,826
"You just go back into the Pile."

706
00:44:22,910 --> 00:44:25,954
"Go there for however long you need,
however many days."

707
00:44:26,747 --> 00:44:29,541
He goes, "Just keep in touch.
Let us know you're all right."

708
00:44:33,045 --> 00:44:36,757
When they tallied and whittled down
that "unaccounted for" list,

709
00:44:36,840 --> 00:44:41,553
we learned that 2,976 civilians,

710
00:44:41,637 --> 00:44:44,556
37 Port Authority police officers,

711
00:44:45,557 --> 00:44:49,019
343 New York City firefighters,

712
00:44:49,103 --> 00:44:53,148
and 23 NYPD police officers

713
00:44:53,649 --> 00:44:57,361
in and around those towers had died.

714
00:45:00,739 --> 00:45:04,535
For me, unfortunately,
I knew quite a few of them,

715
00:45:05,035 --> 00:45:06,829
one being Moira Smith.

716
00:45:10,207 --> 00:45:14,586
And I had just saw her in front of
the 13th Precinct desk that morning.

717
00:45:16,213 --> 00:45:19,174
It just hit home, because she was a girl
from my old neighborhood.

718
00:45:19,883 --> 00:45:24,596
And Moira was the only female
police officer that had perished inside.

719
00:45:26,724 --> 00:45:29,727
She was a police officer
that worked in my precinct.

720
00:45:30,227 --> 00:45:33,272
I'm like, "What?"
I know Moira, and she had a little girl.

721
00:45:34,565 --> 00:45:37,443
At times, I would see her daughter
in the locker room,

722
00:45:37,526 --> 00:45:39,486
in the police dorm, the female dorm.

723
00:45:39,570 --> 00:45:41,572
She was really cute
with little red cheeks.

724
00:45:43,407 --> 00:45:44,950
It was very, very hard.

725
00:45:47,119 --> 00:45:52,291
We saw a photo in one of the newspapers
of Moira rescuing a survivor,

726
00:45:53,041 --> 00:45:55,002
bringing him out of the building.

727
00:45:57,838 --> 00:46:00,632
I've never seen a timeframe
of when I got admitted to the hospital,

728
00:46:00,716 --> 00:46:02,551
and when I got downstairs,

729
00:46:02,634 --> 00:46:05,679
but it was, I guess,
around the time the tower collapsed,

730
00:46:05,763 --> 00:46:09,391
so I don't think I had a lot of time
before I wouldn't have been around.

731
00:46:10,309 --> 00:46:12,019
And Officer Smith…

732
00:46:12,102 --> 00:46:14,980
I don't know how many people
she helped out of the Trade Center

733
00:46:15,063 --> 00:46:16,899
before she helped me.

734
00:46:18,108 --> 00:46:22,321
She was true-blue
to her task as a police officer.

735
00:46:22,404 --> 00:46:26,033
She went back into the danger
and tried to rescue more people.

736
00:46:29,578 --> 00:46:32,456
As time went along, my family,

737
00:46:32,539 --> 00:46:35,459
you know, they all realized
that JoAnn wasn't coming home.

738
00:46:36,168 --> 00:46:37,669
Pretty much lost hope.

739
00:46:38,712 --> 00:46:40,589
Reality started to kick in.

740
00:46:41,381 --> 00:46:44,468
So they made arrangements
with the funeral home.

741
00:46:47,387 --> 00:46:51,517
The day that they made these arrangements,
I got home from work.

742
00:46:52,643 --> 00:46:54,228
The phone is ringing.

743
00:46:54,728 --> 00:46:57,022
"Brian, your Uncle Mike's on the phone."

744
00:46:57,105 --> 00:47:01,026
And I could hear it in his voice.
He's a big, burly guy.

745
00:47:01,109 --> 00:47:02,861
All choked up.

746
00:47:02,945 --> 00:47:04,112
He's like, "Yeah."

747
00:47:04,613 --> 00:47:06,448
He goes, "Anybody call you?"

748
00:47:07,199 --> 00:47:08,200
I'm like, "No. Why?"

749
00:47:09,368 --> 00:47:11,787
He was like, "They found JoAnn."

750
00:47:13,497 --> 00:47:15,332
"Oh fuck."

751
00:47:18,293 --> 00:47:19,628
Now she's found.

752
00:47:20,629 --> 00:47:21,630
And…

753
00:47:32,766 --> 00:47:34,601
And it still hurts to this day.

754
00:47:37,938 --> 00:47:39,481
This was at least…

755
00:47:40,440 --> 00:47:41,441
knowing.

756
00:47:42,317 --> 00:47:43,318
Knowing for sure.

757
00:47:44,862 --> 00:47:47,948
Unfortunately, a lot of people
haven't found anybody.

758
00:47:49,199 --> 00:47:51,451
And maybe never will.

759
00:47:52,119 --> 00:47:55,372
We were lucky enough, if you call it that,

760
00:47:55,455 --> 00:47:58,292
to be able to get that
in the first couple weeks.

761
00:47:58,375 --> 00:48:01,587
Right through here, need a bucket line.
Pass it back.

762
00:48:01,670 --> 00:48:06,508
The last rescue
was 27 hours after the collapse.

763
00:48:07,634 --> 00:48:09,928
After that, no one.

764
00:48:10,429 --> 00:48:15,392
And the rescue mission
quickly turned into a recovery mission.

765
00:48:16,852 --> 00:48:21,356
At the medical examiner's office,
we continued the process of identifying,

766
00:48:21,440 --> 00:48:23,525
labeling, doing anything we could

767
00:48:23,609 --> 00:48:26,403
to get these people
back to their families.

768
00:48:29,615 --> 00:48:31,742
Bereavement center was very sad.

769
00:48:32,242 --> 00:48:35,871
I remember one particular family
asking me all kinds of questions

770
00:48:35,954 --> 00:48:39,625
as I'm doing paperwork,
and taking the toothbrush or hairbrush,

771
00:48:39,708 --> 00:48:42,586
and processing it
so we can get DNA off of it.

772
00:48:43,921 --> 00:48:45,464
That was very heart-wrenching,

773
00:48:45,547 --> 00:48:49,259
to see the fear in their face
and the sadness.

774
00:48:51,136 --> 00:48:55,098
2,976 civilians
were murdered that morning.

775
00:48:55,724 --> 00:49:00,187
Twenty-five years later,
60% have been identified.

776
00:49:01,104 --> 00:49:05,025
40% of the families have nothing to bury.

777
00:49:05,108 --> 00:49:07,319
And without answers, you go crazy.

778
00:49:08,820 --> 00:49:10,155
One thing about 9/11,

779
00:49:10,238 --> 00:49:13,158
it helped me
get used to the smell of death.

780
00:49:13,825 --> 00:49:16,078
Working in the morgue,
I saw so much death.

781
00:49:17,120 --> 00:49:20,248
In the beginning, I couldn't even take it.
I was gagging.

782
00:49:20,749 --> 00:49:23,752
But then after a while,
the smell didn't bother me anymore.

783
00:49:25,629 --> 00:49:31,843
We had 11 or 12
refrigerated trucks in an empty lot.

784
00:49:32,844 --> 00:49:36,682
Some women's group came in
and started bringing in flowers,

785
00:49:36,765 --> 00:49:39,101
major wreaths to put
in front of the trucks

786
00:49:39,184 --> 00:49:41,103
to honor the people inside.

787
00:49:42,521 --> 00:49:46,316
We covered that whole area
in a huge white tent,

788
00:49:46,400 --> 00:49:49,277
and that became Memorial Park.

789
00:49:49,861 --> 00:49:52,114
People wrote things on the wall.

790
00:49:53,115 --> 00:49:55,075
They pinned up pictures.

791
00:49:57,119 --> 00:49:59,037
And one such picture…

792
00:49:59,121 --> 00:50:01,206
It was obviously
a kid had scrawled something,

793
00:50:01,289 --> 00:50:04,251
and it said at the top, "Mommy."

794
00:50:05,961 --> 00:50:09,881
And that was a reminder
of who we were looking for.

795
00:50:13,719 --> 00:50:16,555
A few months after the attack,
they did find my neighbor Bill McGinn.

796
00:50:17,848 --> 00:50:20,976
His wife had told me,
"They recovered him last night."

797
00:50:21,810 --> 00:50:25,647
I was at the morgue that day.
I remember they brought two firemen in.

798
00:50:25,731 --> 00:50:27,858
I didn't know he was
one of the people recovered.

799
00:50:27,941 --> 00:50:29,276
I found that out later on.

800
00:50:30,944 --> 00:50:33,739
One thing I always noticed,
when it rained,

801
00:50:33,822 --> 00:50:36,491
he always left his shoes
out of his apartment.

802
00:50:36,575 --> 00:50:40,537
It was Bill's shoes,
Cordelia's shoes, and Liam's shoes.

803
00:50:40,620 --> 00:50:41,997
The kids' shoes were always out.

804
00:50:43,623 --> 00:50:47,919
And then one day after 9/11,
I came home, and it was raining.

805
00:50:48,003 --> 00:50:52,174
I see Liam's shoes and Cordelia's shoes,
but Bill's shoes aren't there.

806
00:50:52,257 --> 00:50:53,717
And then it hit me.

807
00:50:53,800 --> 00:50:56,219
I was saying,
"I can't believe that he's gone."

808
00:50:58,555 --> 00:51:05,187
Any time a first responder was found,
everything would stop.

809
00:51:05,270 --> 00:51:07,689
An American flag would be placed over it,

810
00:51:07,773 --> 00:51:10,609
and we would all get up and salute

811
00:51:10,692 --> 00:51:14,905
as that person would be
brought out of Ground Zero.

812
00:51:15,614 --> 00:51:17,491
It, um… It was…

813
00:51:18,784 --> 00:51:20,660
Brings tears into your eyes.

814
00:51:29,836 --> 00:51:34,466
The full recovery effort after 9/11
lasted about nine months.

815
00:51:34,549 --> 00:51:37,928
It went on until, I believe, May 2002.

816
00:51:39,387 --> 00:51:41,181
I had a tough time.

817
00:51:41,681 --> 00:51:45,268
I spend time at work
where I can't function.

818
00:51:45,352 --> 00:51:48,772
I am, like, crying, and…

819
00:51:49,856 --> 00:51:52,192
like, in the fetal position.

820
00:51:52,901 --> 00:51:57,739
Because I'm trying to recount what I did,
and different things, and…

821
00:51:57,823 --> 00:52:01,076
Like, that's truly when I became scared.

822
00:52:02,035 --> 00:52:05,997
Finally started thinking about the shit
that happened, I guess. I don't know.

823
00:52:08,083 --> 00:52:10,085
Murder kept going on, right?

824
00:52:10,168 --> 00:52:13,630
People kept dying
outside the World Trade Center.

825
00:52:13,713 --> 00:52:18,009
So we had to maintain
a full investigative staff on the streets.

826
00:52:19,136 --> 00:52:23,849
It brought back a little bit
of normalcy to your everyday routine, but…

827
00:52:23,932 --> 00:52:26,393
we were not excused
from the recovery efforts.

828
00:52:27,477 --> 00:52:29,813
At one tour or another,
somebody from our squad

829
00:52:29,896 --> 00:52:33,942
was assigned
to the medical examiner's office,

830
00:52:34,025 --> 00:52:37,070
and sometimes two of us
were at the recovery efforts

831
00:52:37,154 --> 00:52:39,281
at the landfill in Staten Island.

832
00:52:41,658 --> 00:52:46,496
Fresh Kills was a retired
New York City dump in Staten Island,

833
00:52:46,580 --> 00:52:49,291
and they would remove the debris
over to there.

834
00:52:49,791 --> 00:52:52,627
So that was
the detectives' bureau's responsibility,

835
00:52:52,711 --> 00:52:56,464
to go through this debris
and try to recover body parts

836
00:52:57,215 --> 00:53:00,552
or items that belonged to individuals.

837
00:53:01,136 --> 00:53:04,347
First, they gave you a rake
and said, "Go through it."

838
00:53:04,431 --> 00:53:07,267
"If you come up with any ID
or what you think is a bone,

839
00:53:07,350 --> 00:53:09,561
put it in these buckets."

840
00:53:10,854 --> 00:53:13,106
I volunteered to work there,

841
00:53:13,190 --> 00:53:15,233
and that was tremendously satisfying

842
00:53:15,817 --> 00:53:19,112
because you're hopefully
giving some information

843
00:53:19,196 --> 00:53:21,698
to some family member
somewhere along the line.

844
00:53:23,241 --> 00:53:25,493
After a while, they got wise.

845
00:53:25,577 --> 00:53:28,205
They started issuing Tyvek suits,

846
00:53:28,288 --> 00:53:32,209
boots, gloves, and masks
as you went through the debris.

847
00:53:32,834 --> 00:53:35,921
Unfortunately, that's probably
where I get my cancer.

848
00:53:38,006 --> 00:53:40,217
I've been diagnosed with prostate cancer.

849
00:53:40,300 --> 00:53:43,511
I'm very fortunate.
They caught it in the early stages.

850
00:53:43,595 --> 00:53:46,348
The majority of the people
that worked down there

851
00:53:46,431 --> 00:53:50,602
end up with some related 9/11 illness.

852
00:53:52,270 --> 00:53:58,735
Back in 2021, I got a message
on my fucking phone that I had cancer.

853
00:53:59,569 --> 00:54:01,571
It was a urological cancer, very rare.

854
00:54:01,655 --> 00:54:03,657
One in four million men get it.

855
00:54:03,740 --> 00:54:06,868
I felt sorry for myself for about,
you know, maybe ten minutes,

856
00:54:06,952 --> 00:54:10,288
and I went from feeling
a little bit like a victim

857
00:54:10,372 --> 00:54:13,583
to feeling like, "I'm ready. Let's go."

858
00:54:13,667 --> 00:54:16,086
"Let's do this. Get this shit out of me."

859
00:54:16,169 --> 00:54:17,712
And that was it.

860
00:54:21,841 --> 00:54:24,010
I got skin cancer on my face.

861
00:54:25,262 --> 00:54:28,640
When I found out, I was scared.

862
00:54:29,391 --> 00:54:35,772
To date now, more people
have died from 9/11-related illnesses

863
00:54:35,855 --> 00:54:39,317
than actually died
on the day of the attack,

864
00:54:39,401 --> 00:54:42,779
which is… extremely alarming.

865
00:54:44,072 --> 00:54:49,077
I think that the terrorists
wanted initially to take out those towers

866
00:54:49,160 --> 00:54:51,454
because of what they symbolized.

867
00:54:51,538 --> 00:54:54,374
And I think they got
more bang for their buck

868
00:54:54,457 --> 00:54:57,085
because the tragedy just keeps going on.

869
00:55:01,423 --> 00:55:03,717
We're going 25 years.

870
00:55:04,759 --> 00:55:09,472
I have buried at least 50 friends.

871
00:55:10,473 --> 00:55:12,225
Friends! Not even…

872
00:55:13,351 --> 00:55:14,602
people I don't know.

873
00:55:15,228 --> 00:55:16,896
There's more than that.

874
00:55:22,152 --> 00:55:25,155
-Here's all the boys.
-What's going on here?

875
00:55:25,238 --> 00:55:27,157
-Good to see you, brother.
-You look great.

876
00:55:27,240 --> 00:55:28,325
Thanks! So do you, bro!

877
00:55:28,408 --> 00:55:29,826
-How you doing?
-Roger.

878
00:55:30,744 --> 00:55:32,787
Every single one of us…

879
00:55:34,122 --> 00:55:35,749
should just talk.

880
00:55:35,832 --> 00:55:38,960
Me and Pete talk.
Every year, we would talk about it.

881
00:55:39,044 --> 00:55:40,837
Hello, darling.

882
00:55:42,172 --> 00:55:43,340
Relive the hurt.

883
00:55:43,423 --> 00:55:45,717
-How are you?
-I'm okay.

884
00:55:45,800 --> 00:55:48,303
It's so good to see you. You look so good.

885
00:55:48,386 --> 00:55:49,596
And it helped.

886
00:55:49,679 --> 00:55:51,264
It helped until it didn't.

887
00:55:52,015 --> 00:55:54,476
And I needed to seek counseling.

888
00:55:55,226 --> 00:55:56,603
Look at Manhattan.

889
00:55:56,686 --> 00:55:57,771
Yeah.

890
00:55:57,854 --> 00:55:59,814
How are you feeling up here?

891
00:55:59,898 --> 00:56:01,149
Yeah, I know.

892
00:56:01,232 --> 00:56:03,068
-It's a little weird.
-Yeah.

893
00:56:03,151 --> 00:56:05,195
The new building is nice, though.

894
00:56:05,278 --> 00:56:07,906
It's the first time
I've been in the new buildings.

895
00:56:07,989 --> 00:56:09,032
Really?

896
00:56:09,741 --> 00:56:11,743
MacLeod, that fucking hick.

897
00:56:12,702 --> 00:56:14,704
-Leave my brother alone.
-Why?

898
00:56:14,788 --> 00:56:16,039
Calm down, champion.

899
00:56:16,122 --> 00:56:17,415
Yeah, man.

900
00:56:20,585 --> 00:56:23,338
I would wake up
with these horrific dreams.

901
00:56:28,551 --> 00:56:30,387
That's the worst part.

902
00:56:30,887 --> 00:56:33,765
You go to bed, and you feel like
you're being buried alive.

903
00:56:35,433 --> 00:56:39,062
There isn't a cop out there, I'm sure,
that doesn't feel the same thing.

904
00:56:40,397 --> 00:56:42,273
And I nearly had a breakdown.

905
00:56:42,857 --> 00:56:47,070
Then the 9/11 Foundation kicked in
and said, "We got you."

906
00:56:48,780 --> 00:56:50,657
"We will help you."

907
00:56:50,740 --> 00:56:53,493
I can tell
you're a little bit, like, upset.

908
00:56:53,576 --> 00:56:55,995
-Shaken? A little bit.
-Shaken, yeah. It's all right.

909
00:56:56,830 --> 00:56:58,581
I was scared, coming.

910
00:56:59,374 --> 00:57:04,796
I'm a big advocate now
for guys getting mental health checks.

911
00:57:04,879 --> 00:57:08,258
Just do it. We have the coverage. Do it.

912
00:57:08,925 --> 00:57:10,802
It doesn't hurt to talk.

913
00:57:13,805 --> 00:57:16,182
I don't enjoy…

914
00:57:17,767 --> 00:57:20,145
being here at… at the site.

915
00:57:20,645 --> 00:57:24,441
I don't like it up here.
I love that I'm with all of you.

916
00:57:24,524 --> 00:57:27,861
I feel protected because you get it.

917
00:57:27,944 --> 00:57:32,157
We know things that no one else
on this earth will ever know

918
00:57:32,240 --> 00:57:34,159
and probably never should.

919
00:57:34,242 --> 00:57:36,953
Never dealt with it, me personally.

920
00:57:37,036 --> 00:57:38,746
My daughter wasn't even two yet.

921
00:57:38,830 --> 00:57:42,375
She just wanted to know where Dad was
all of the days that I came to work

922
00:57:42,459 --> 00:57:45,128
to get the fuck away from these memories,

923
00:57:45,211 --> 00:57:50,091
just to not have to relive this shit
every fucking day of my life.

924
00:57:53,303 --> 00:57:55,555
My life was never the same.

925
00:57:55,638 --> 00:57:58,308
Just like a lot of other people's.

926
00:57:59,392 --> 00:58:01,102
I didn't have any way

927
00:58:01,936 --> 00:58:06,024
to identify what I was dealing with,
'cause I didn't see it.

928
00:58:06,691 --> 00:58:08,109
I didn't understand it.

929
00:58:09,611 --> 00:58:13,448
It was a horrendous attack
on our nation. It's a crime scene.

930
00:58:14,032 --> 00:58:16,367
For many months afterwards,
it was a graveyard.

931
00:58:17,243 --> 00:58:18,953
My mind is racing right now,

932
00:58:19,037 --> 00:58:22,707
and I'm seeing photos
of Pete and Joanne that day.

933
00:58:23,374 --> 00:58:26,336
I'm seeing photos of Roger
in the Pathmark parking lot

934
00:58:26,419 --> 00:58:28,046
pouring water over your head.

935
00:58:28,129 --> 00:58:29,380
It's all coming back,

936
00:58:29,464 --> 00:58:32,550
and it's really, uh,
difficult to think about it.

937
00:58:32,634 --> 00:58:36,304
My place to let it out was the shower.

938
00:58:37,013 --> 00:58:38,806
I went in the shower,

939
00:58:39,557 --> 00:58:41,142
and I cried.

940
00:58:42,268 --> 00:58:46,940
And I cried, and I cried, and…

941
00:58:47,732 --> 00:58:50,318
…I never told anybody that.

942
00:58:50,818 --> 00:58:54,364
That was how I got it out.

943
00:58:54,948 --> 00:58:55,823
Yeah.

944
00:58:58,034 --> 00:59:01,246
And when I retired,
that's when it hit, bang, so hard.

945
00:59:01,329 --> 00:59:03,665
Suddenly, who am I?
I'm not relevant to the world.

946
00:59:03,748 --> 00:59:04,999
-It changes you.
-It does.

947
00:59:05,083 --> 00:59:07,418
That's why I stopped drinking.
When you retire…

948
00:59:07,502 --> 00:59:09,837
How did we deal with it?
We went to the bar.

949
00:59:09,921 --> 00:59:12,882
That's how we dealt with it,
and we talked about it with each other.

950
00:59:12,966 --> 00:59:16,553
But now, there's guys
that are fucking suffering out there

951
00:59:16,636 --> 00:59:18,888
from 9/11 and PTSD

952
00:59:18,972 --> 00:59:21,599
that they've never dealt with
in their careers.

953
00:59:21,683 --> 00:59:24,227
You guys in Homicide,
seeing all the dead bodies,

954
00:59:24,310 --> 00:59:28,273
the dead children, and all that shit…
And you all have it. All of you have it.

955
00:59:28,356 --> 00:59:30,775
You gotta deal with this shit,

956
00:59:30,858 --> 00:59:33,111
'cause it will fester,
and you will change as a person.

957
00:59:34,112 --> 00:59:36,531
Honestly, thank God
for this little meeting here.

958
00:59:37,949 --> 00:59:41,286
All those years, I thought I was
the only one losing my fucking mind.

959
00:59:43,746 --> 00:59:46,165
And I wasn't. And I know it.

960
00:59:47,917 --> 00:59:50,420
Coming here-- I'm sorry, I got--

961
00:59:50,503 --> 00:59:51,879
I'm not crying! You're crying!

962
00:59:55,341 --> 00:59:57,719
I won't do it for the cameras,
but I'll make fun of you later.

963
00:59:57,802 --> 00:59:59,470
-All right.
-I love you.

964
00:59:59,554 --> 01:00:01,931
You gotta dry-clean your brain
like all of us.

965
01:00:02,015 --> 01:00:03,641
You can't keep it in.

966
01:00:04,225 --> 01:00:06,352
I feel happy now
just looking at Brian's face.

967
01:00:06,436 --> 01:00:09,147
From the minute he started to now,
it's like a different person.

968
01:00:09,230 --> 01:00:11,441
This is a therapy group today.

969
01:00:11,524 --> 01:00:13,943
-I mean, look at it.
-'Cause it's a comfort zone.

970
01:00:14,027 --> 01:00:14,986
It's a comfort zone!

971
01:00:15,069 --> 01:00:17,363
We feel comfortable talking to each other.

972
01:00:17,447 --> 01:00:19,532
We chewed some of the same dirt.

973
01:00:19,616 --> 01:00:20,491
Yeah.

974
01:00:20,575 --> 01:00:24,120
Mental health is just as important
as physical health.

975
01:00:24,203 --> 01:00:26,956
And now I understand that.

976
01:00:27,540 --> 01:00:31,919
But it took me about 19 years
until I talked to therapists about it.

977
01:00:32,003 --> 01:00:33,129
I had to.

978
01:00:34,297 --> 01:00:37,050
Because, you know,
I'm not a… I'm not a superhero.

979
01:00:37,133 --> 01:00:40,845
Part of this is like survivor's remorse.
Chief, you were in the Burger King.

980
01:00:40,928 --> 01:00:41,971
Tommy, you were there.

981
01:00:42,055 --> 01:00:43,598
He was there. Everybody was there.

982
01:00:43,681 --> 01:00:47,018
You're saying
"Why didn't it happen to me?" a little.

983
01:00:47,101 --> 01:00:48,394
You think about it.

984
01:00:48,478 --> 01:00:51,314
We had 23 NYPD officers,

985
01:00:51,397 --> 01:00:54,776
we had 37 Port Authority police officers,

986
01:00:54,859 --> 01:00:58,196
and we had 343 firemen killed.

987
01:01:00,782 --> 01:01:03,242
God gave us memories for a reason.

988
01:01:03,743 --> 01:01:05,536
And it's to remember them.

989
01:01:05,620 --> 01:01:07,246
Remember what happened.

990
01:01:07,330 --> 01:01:08,623
Never forget.

991
01:01:10,500 --> 01:01:13,252
In the place
where the Twin Towers once stood,

992
01:01:13,336 --> 01:01:16,631
we now have, uh, the Freedom Tower.

993
01:01:16,714 --> 01:01:20,593
I've never seen it
from, like, this… this level either.

994
01:01:20,677 --> 01:01:21,678
It's so majestic.

995
01:01:21,761 --> 01:01:26,307
And I'm glad, um…
I'm glad we put it right up their asses.

996
01:01:26,391 --> 01:01:27,934
-Very happy for that.
-Yup.

997
01:01:28,017 --> 01:01:29,435
We're all alive.

998
01:01:29,519 --> 01:01:32,480
We're all surviving
in one shape, form, or another.

999
01:01:32,563 --> 01:01:36,609
And I appreciate that they set up
the memorial for those memories

1000
01:01:36,693 --> 01:01:38,861
of the first responders and the civilians

1001
01:01:38,945 --> 01:01:42,657
and all the citizens from other countries
that got killed that day.

1002
01:01:44,909 --> 01:01:48,496
It is a symbol of strength and resilience

1003
01:01:48,579 --> 01:01:51,124
that we got knocked down, but we got up.

1004
01:01:51,207 --> 01:01:53,042
As a country, not just a city.

1005
01:01:55,086 --> 01:01:57,588
The memorial, it's absolutely stunning.

1006
01:01:58,131 --> 01:02:02,844
The imprint of the buildings
with the names and the waterfall.

1007
01:02:04,137 --> 01:02:07,640
-What a beautiful day, right?
-Not unlike the day.

1008
01:02:15,273 --> 01:02:17,358
-Really?
-Jimmy Riches, right here.

1009
01:02:18,443 --> 01:02:21,404
He was a cop, too,
before he was a fireman. John Chipura.

1010
01:02:21,487 --> 01:02:23,781
You know so many of them
from Staten Island, right?

1011
01:02:23,865 --> 01:02:26,784
Timmy McSweeney. And then we got Moira.

1012
01:02:30,204 --> 01:02:32,039
Terrorism is not just one attack.

1013
01:02:32,123 --> 01:02:37,420
It's a constant state
of ruining people's lives with fear,

1014
01:02:37,503 --> 01:02:40,965
with illness, with mental incapacity.

1015
01:02:48,222 --> 01:02:52,185
Counter to the evil, there's… love,

1016
01:02:52,268 --> 01:02:56,355
and there's people
that really, like, care.

1017
01:02:58,274 --> 01:03:01,319
Through that tragedy, the country,

1018
01:03:01,402 --> 01:03:04,405
especially here in New York,
everyone came together.

1019
01:03:07,575 --> 01:03:10,912
It shows me what we're capable of.