The Jump

24th-day spacing sergeant waters. Yeah, where's this? Yeah? Yeah? They beating up a man? Who is? Yeah? Yeah? Which corner is it? You are in the muster room at the 21st precinct, the Nerves 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 room at the 21st precinct. Alright, I'll send the officers right over there. Yeah, right away. Okay.

21st precinct transcribed. 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 East River wouldn't know if you asked them that they lived or worked in the 21st. Whether 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 patrolmen, 11 sergeants and 4 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 night tour 4 p.m. to 8 a.m.

It had been a busy night in the precinct. Before I turned out the platoon at midnight there was a three alarm fire and a tenement on 78th Street, a pedestrian killed by an automobile on Park Avenue, an armed robbery of a delicatessen on 2nd Avenue, and the mugging by two youths of a hospital orderly as he walked

from his work to the 77th Street Station of the Lexington Avenue subway. Things quieted down after the late tour took over, however, and I was able to stay in the station house and clean up the paperwork, reading and signing reports and communications that normally I would have finished ours earlier. While I was so engaged, patrol of the precinct