Lifting Spirits After a Tragedy

It’s a horrible situation when a police officer’s life ends in tragedy. The quite literally put their lives on the line every day. You cannot even imagine how painful it is for a family. Even further, something that people may not always think about is the effect that the loss of a comrade has on the precincts for which these officers serve. When you lose a member of your working family, it leaves a tremendous void.

Last year officers Rafael Ramos and Wenjian Liu of the 79^th and 84^th Precincts in the NYPD were killed. For the 79^th and 84^th, that void is very real.

So, I decided that the latest episode of “The Hook-Up” should center on lifting the spirits of the officers they worked most closely with. I wanted to boost the morale of these people because of the profound effect that these losses of life had on them.

I know New York is New York, but people don’t realize how dense the population in in the area truly is, nor do they understand the challenges for police officers that come along with that. There’s so much pressure on the police department to handle so many different people that have all different type of problems and dilemmas.

I, myself, did not have a full understanding of that until I had the pleasure of spending the day at the 79^th and 84^th as part of the show.

If you just take a second to breathe and think about your local police station and the challenges that they’re dealing with on a day-to-day basis, you may just want to upgrade the amount of love and respect you give to these people.

Here’s a glimpse of my experience with them and NYPD Commissioner William Bratton, as well as Yankees legends Willie Randolph and Paul O’Neill.