The Collar

Twenty-first policing, Sergeant Barnes. Where is this? His wife? Heading her with what? All right, out in the office. You are in the most room up to twenty-first policing. One nerve center. Call is coming through.

My transcription, you will follow the action taken pursuant to that call from this minute until the final report is written in the one twenty-four room at the twenty-first policing. Okay, the officers will be right there.

You wait out in front. Show them what's planted in. Yeah, yeah, out in front. All right. Okay. Twenty-first precinct. It's just lines on a map of the city of New York. Most of the 173,000 people who read it in the nine-tenths of the square mile between Fifth Avenue and the East River wouldn't know if you asked them if they lived or worked in the twenty-first.

Whether 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 twenty-first, one-hundred-and-six-two-many-eleven sergeants and four-o-tenants of whom I am the boss.

My name is Cannelli. Frank Cannelli. I'm captaining command of the 21st. I was working my night tour, 4 p.m. to 8 a.m. The weather was unusually mild for the time of the year. At 10.45 p.m. I was on patrol of the precinct in sector car number one.

I had instructed the operator of the car, Potomacov and Charles Lasky, to stop at a garage on First Avenue in the 90s. So that I could verify the investigation by Sergeant Waters of an application for a towing car license.

While I was inside the garage, talking to the night manager, Patrolman last he entered and informed me that a signal 30 ambulance responding had been broadcast over the car radio. The address was 710 East 78th Street.