A kinder, gentler cop? Not on Steve Osborne’s watch.
Top NYPD brass might be making a push towards G-rated policing, but Osborne — who spent 20 years as a tough-talking, no-nonsense New York police officer — is calling BS.
“We’re not choir boys and we’re not Boy Scouts,” said an unapologetic Osborne, 54, who just released a memoir called “The Job.”
The Jersey City native, son of a hard-nosed Irish cop and an even tougher Brooklyn-born Italian mama, spent years in some of the city’s most dangerous precincts.
“It’s not like you see on TV, ‘Turn around and put your hands behind your head’ — that stuff, it just never works.
“What happens is when you’re going to arrest a guy out on the street, usually you get out and jump him — before he even has a chance to even think about doing something stupid. I’ve done it, and I can tell you it works.”
He balked when he heard that NYPD Deputy Commissioner Michael Julian late last year vowed to put an end to cursing on the job.
“I read that and said, ‘What the f–k!’ ” he said. “When you’re out in the street and dealing with dangerous individuals, you have to speak so that they understand you.”
“There’s an old saying out on the street, ‘A cop’s greatest weapon is his mouth.’ ”
And sometimes his squad car.
Take the time Osborne, as a rookie, stopped a 10-inch steak-knife-wielding creep in Washington Square Park before he plunged the weapon into some poor sap’s chest.
“I had to think fast . . . I hit on the gas pedal and nailed him with the car,” Osborne writes in his book.
Still, the perp still needed a talking to — especially after daring to smirk when a large crowd gathered and started to turn on the cops.
“ ‘Maybe you should shut the f–k up before I knock your teeth out,’ ” Osborne writes. “And I reminded him, ‘This is all your fault, a–hole.’ I was a little relieved that he found it all amusing. That meant the little trip I sent him on, flying through the air, probably didn’t cause too much damage.”
Osborne started working the Neighborhood Stabilization Units in Crown Heights and East Flatbush — and learned very quickly to be able to read the streets.
And that meant being able to tell the difference between good guys and bad guys — watching their eyes when you chat them up, if they look away, seeing if they fidget.
It’s not about racial profiling, he insisted. “After being a cop for a few years you learn to dislike people equally,” he writes.
Everyone was treated the same way, he said. “You act like a gentleman, and I’ll treat you like a gentleman. You act like an a–hole, and that’s the way I’m going to treat you.”
Over his career, he says, he made thousands of arrests — from dope fiends to millionaires. As a sergeant in the fugitive division, he had a sign hanging over his desk that quoted Ernest Hemingway: “There is no hunting like the hunting of man.”
Yet in all his years as a cop, he never shot anyone.
Osborne retired in 2003 as a lieutenant and has since become a bit of a celebrity, telling his gritty tales on public radio or “The Moth” podcast — worlds away from chasing crackheads or serving up “wooden shampoos” — clubbing a skell over the noggin with a nightstick.
“There’s still a big void,” he said. “I miss the excitement.”
http://nypost.com/2015/04/26/former-nypd-officer-cops-have-to-be-able-to-f-king-swear/
Day may come the tax payer say’s enough and just votes them out of the budget. Let them then stand on the corner and curse for free. Be ok with most in America.
“What happens is when you’re going to arrest a guy out on the street, usually you get out and jump him — before he even has a chance to even think about doing something stupid. I’ve done it, and I can tell you it works.”
Jump him?
Is that code for “shoot him”.
Damn sure no choir boy or Boy Scout. They know how to behave.
You don’t think for a minute that the guy writing this book had an enormous EGO to feed ,and still does for that matter. I’ll bet his thin blue line is ten miles wide too!
“It’s not about racial profiling, he insisted. “After being a cop for a few years you learn to dislike people equally,” he writes.”
That’s interesting, because after being an American National for so many years, you learn to dislike cops equally, ASSHOLE!
So they hate themselves , their mothers , their wives , daughters , sons etc
Sounds to me like they are surrounded
We hate them too , and won’t call them human