The Sprinter

Why are you facing sergeant waters? Wait a minute, just a second. Burglars, where? Yeah? Yeah? Well, what is that, an apartment house? Oh. Yeah? You're in the muster room at the 21st precinct, the nerve center.

A 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. Now you stay right there. Well, send the officers over.

That's right. I'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 who edged 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 Twenty-first precinct. The 21st, 160-patrolman, 11 sergeants, and four lieutenants of whom I am the boss.

My name is Canelli, Frank Canelli. I'm Captain in command of the 21st. I was working my night to her 6 p.m. to 8 a.m. At 10 p.m. I was out on patrol of the precinct in Sechtakon number three.

I had given instructions to the operator, Patrolman Coley, to return to the station house. And we were driving south on Lexington Avenue in that direction. So they pulled the curb, Captain. Yeah. I got out and I walked over the car.

He was behind the wheel and she was sitting there next to him with her arms folded. I said, you went through the light. He said, I know I did, Officer. My mind was on something else.