Lucky For Us: 13th ‘Safe City’ Ceremony Honors NYPD Officers BY ZACH WILLIAMS NYPD Police Officer and 10th Precinct veteran Robert Karl knew something was wrong when a little dog passed him one day on Ninth Ave., walking close to its owner but without a leash. He recognized the pair from just moments before — but now, headed in the opposite direction, toward W. 15th St., and with an additional person. “The dog was well-behaved the whole time, and that’s the only reason I paid attention to it,” Karl said in an interview. Then, however, he noticed one man take out a baggie of cocaine. The other held some cash. Neither of them knew the blue-eyed loiterer five feet away was an undercover cop who was poised to add another arrest to his career total of 353. Similarly decisive action by Sixth Precinct Police Officer Robert Lewis earned him place alongside Karl, when both were among those receiving Officer of the Year awards from the Greenwich Village-Chelsea Chamber of Commerce (GVCCC; villagechelsea.com), whose 13th Annual Safe City Safe Streets event also recognized the work of five other officers who distinguished themselves by thwarting criminals, assisting crime victims, and serving the local community. Karl and Lewis followed different paths to their profession, but a shared instinct for action turned them into the best of New York City’s Finest. Karl came from a patrilineal line of cops, while Lewis joined the department after a friend dared him to take the entrance examination. Then three years later, in 1996, he received a phone call. A voice on the other end informed the 20-year-old college student that his name was at the top of the wait list for the police academy. “I didn’t even know I passed,” Karl said in an interview. But he followed this unexpected opportunity to the first of hundreds of arrests in the northeast Bronx. Karl meanwhile followed the footsteps of his great-grandfather — the first person in his family to wear the NYPD badge — to Chelsea, where he has spent the entirety of his career since graduating from the academy in 1999. The neighborhood at the turn of the century faced different types of crime compared to the thefts that now dominate local crime statistics. Karl recalled that prostitutes and drug dealers congregated on 11th Ave. back then. The population grew by 25% in the next decade while crime fell by about 600 incidents per year over the course of Karl’s career. .com
Photos by Zach Williams
L to R: Jennifer Goodstein (Publisher, NYC Community Media), Sgt. Thomas Wahlig (Ninth Pct.), Police Officer Michael Eschmann (13th Pct.), Police Officer Robert Karl (10th Pct.), Florence Chung (CEO of The Hetty Group), Maria Diaz (Executive Director, GVCCC), Police Officer Robert Lewis (Sixth Pct.), Police Officer Vanessa Felix-Hidalgo, Police Officer Alberto Ortiz (Midtown South), and Mathew Heggem (Board President, GVCCC).
Police Officer Robert Karl, of the 10th Precinct.
Karl also changed in the middle of all of that. He became a plainclothes officer in the anti-crime unit. He pretended to party at local clubs while keeping an eye for the pickpockets and bag-snatchers who preyed on unsuspecting revelers. This shift from uniformed patrol also reflected a larger shift in the depart-
Police Officer Robert Lewis, of the Sixth Precinct.
ment’s strategy to combat crime. The “Broken Windows” approach of policing depends on preventing low-level crimes like petty theft as a means to preventing more serious crimes such as rape and murder. The enemies of law enforcement were evolving at the same time, accord-
ing to NYPD Deputy Commissioner of Intelligence and Counterterrorism John Miller, a former TV journalist who was the keynote speaker on Dec. 15. Terrorism emerged as a threat as the murder rate dropped in the past two Safe City continued on p. 11 December 22 – 28, 2016
3