Edward Conlon Quotes

It wasn't as if crack was getting great press in the South Bronx in 1999, but it took a particular kind of idiot to wake up one day and say, 'Angel dust is a product I've heard nothing but good about, and it's about time I was involved.

Later that day when I passed the Admin lieutenant and the Sargeant standing by the Desk, I said casually, "I'm leaving too, Sarge."
"Okay," he said, and I kept on walking.

Good cops make their bosses look good, and Hector was a one-man beauty school.

Once, I went to the roof of a project and saw a hawk perched on the rail; always, you see the city in the near distance, its towers and spires studded with lights, both stately and slapdash, like the crazy geometry of rock crystal. There were many days when you felt sorry for people who worked inside.

On Sunday mornings, as the dawn burned into day, swarms of gulls descended on the uncollected trash, hovering and dropping in the cold clear light.

In any case, I was less unhappy than the teammate who wondered whether the purported tribute of being a "well-rounded detective" was a jibe around his weight.

Do you have any idea who you've been dealing with?"
"This is big-time! Interstate! Federal! You're not in a precinct, are you?"
"This goes way beyond you! This goes deep!"
"We've been on to this guy for a long time, Shaka."
"The Virginia Mafia! Nobody fucks with them!"
"We've got him in a room down the hall
this guy gave up his own sister! You're lucky you got out alive!

The bulletproof vest
'bullet resistant,' technically
is made of two double panels of a synthetic material called Kevlar, inside a cloth carrier that holds it around your torso like a lead X-ray smock. One cop wrote phrases from the Bible on his, 'Yea, though I walk in the valley of the Shadow of Death ... ' Other cops wrote their blood type.

On the second to last day, Lt. Russo, who ran the program, announced, "Unless you were at dinner last night and had the opportunity to say 'Howard, pass the salt,' you are going to Brooklyn North and Manhattan North. That's where they need people, and that's where you're going." "Howard" referred to to the Commissioner Safir, and when they read the list of assignments the next afternoon
"Alvarez ... Brooklyn North ... "
"Baker ... Brooklyn North ... "
"Buono ... Manhattan North ... "
"Calderon ... Brooklyn North ... "
"Conlon ... South Bronx Initiative ... "
more than a few people turned around to look. Howard, pass the salt. I was a little surprised myself.

When I had to work Shea Stadium for a Mets-Braves game – Atlanta pitcher John Rocker had recently given an interview in which he denounced New Yorkers of all Colors and preferences – I was assigned to a parking lot, where numerous drivers asked me for directions to various highways. When my first answer – "I have no idea" – seemed to invite denunciation and debate, I revised it to "Take the first left." For all I know, those people are still lost in Queens.