The Book

21st Precinct Sergeant Waters. Oh, shooting. A cop is shooting or a cop is shot? Yeah? Yeah? Where is it? 75 or 79? Wait a minute now, not so fast. You're in the muster room at the 21st Precinct.

The nerve center. Call is coming through. You will follow the action taken pursuant to that call from this minute until the final report is written in the 124 room at the 21st Precinct. is precinct. Alright, I'll send the officers right over there. No, you just stay there.

Show them where it is, yeah. Right away. They'll be there right away. Twenty-first precinct. It's just lines on a map of the city of New York. Most of the 173,000 people wedged into the nine-tenths of a square mile between Fifth Avenue and the East River wouldn't know if you asked them that they lived or worked in the Twenty-First. But that

they know it or not, the security of their homes, their persons and their property, is the job of the men of the 21st Precinct. The 21st, 160 patrolman, 11 sergeants, and four lieutenants of whom I am the boss.

My name is Canelli, Frank Canelli. I am Captain in command of the 21st. I was working my day tour 8am to 6pm. As customary, I arrived at the station house around 730 and after signing the blotter, went into my office and changed the uniform.

Meanwhile, the 65 men who would work the 8 to 4 were coming into the station house, walking through the muster room and downstairs to the basement lockers. They changed to uniform and reported to the back room. At five minutes to eight, the patrol sergeant began forming them into ranks for inspection for paratoid marching out into the muster room for the turn