Carrying about additional instruction for the students, teachers being undertrained, teachers been afraid of the technology you oftentimes hear nothing sufficient budget to provide any kind of the i. T. Maintenance. Heres another context with the technology we devised worked very well but did not have much impact a larger rollout. Similarly we had another project where we try to provide a kind of kiosk for women to live in bangalore to search for jobs whether employed as domestic laborers in private households. And we set a basically a terminal in which the system was designed to be without any tax so the women monitored could still navigate. And Research Pilot we were able to show the women could navigate, find jobs and so forth but we eventually found that actually getting the employers decide on this particular system and then providing the training that many of the women needed to qualify for those jobs was much, much bigger task. Here again we had working technology that addressed a particular kind of problem but it didnt handle the into and issues again. Weve Done Technology may be stalled at most 10 of the larger issues. A little over five years i worked on 50 or more projects in india, all of which were about applying some kind of visual technology to the problems of health care, government, education, microcredit, agriculture and so forth. And very, very often the situation was exactly like i described, where we would design a solution but as soon as we tried to take it to larger scale, the technology failed to have an impact because of either institutional deficiencies and capacity or because individual are unable to make use of that technology on their own. Im a scientist by training and so i wanted to find out why this was the case, why was it the things we have spent a lot of time trying to design well and were research showed there were some positive impact did not have, in fact, a larger scale. The ultimate conclusion i came to was a very simple premise which is that technology in and of itself only amplifies underlying human forces. What that means is wherever the human forces are positive and capable, you can use technology and things get better. But with this human forces are possibly corrupt or fundamentally unable to take advantage of those technologies, then no amount of Technology Turns things around. This goes in direct contradiction to some of the earlier quote i mentioned what people believed technology in and of itself causes the social change we are looking for. You can watch this and other programs online at booktv. Org. Former new York City Police officer Steve Osborne is next on booktv. He talks about some of the experiences he had throughout his career. How are you doing . [laughter] my name is Steve Osborne and to use the a nuke city cop for 20 years and just the accent is real. [laughter] [applause] but the funny thing is i didnt even know had in accent until i came to savannah. I was a cop for 20 years and then i became a writer. People ask me how do you go from being a cop to a writer . I dont like telling the story special at a book festival with other writers because they want to strangle me. It happened by accident. After retiring from the Police Department, my life with from the fast lane to the slow lane. Alall of a sudden i had all of i this time on my hands. When youre a cop come like a real cop and youre living the life you have no life. A im working around the clock, working nights, weekends, holidays. Im never home. Then all of a sudden im retired and a Center Industry at the walls. First thing i did was move the sofa from their to there. Fro and my wife says to me, she goes come what are you doing . She goes, you havent been home in 10 years. Put the sofa back where it was. So i did. So now im sitting there and im kind of bored and i dont know why. I guess everybody has a little voice in the back of the head the kind of whispers in the year what did you get is that same voice to get me saved all thosea years like watch out for thisl and watch out for that guy. It was that same little voice that was whispering in my ear to write pics i grabbed a pad and again and i wrote a story from a short story, about 12 pages about just something that happened to me on the job. So after i wrote this thing im looking at it like all right, what now . What do i do with this now . So i handed it to some family and friends. Im like, i just wrote this. The mind reading it and tell me what you think . So they read and they were like we didnt know you could write. [laughter] we didnt know you were that smart. But they loved it. And i was kind of surprise, kind of taken back. So wrote another one. I handed it out and everybody read and they loved it. So wrote another one. And the first one had been crying to us ago and had them laughing. Abouabout a third one and i have been crying again. So had the stories and i was doing it to get done. I didnt know what to do now. What do i do now . W am i wasting my time . It felt good to write. Its hard to explain but the actual act of writing and w putting those stories and my thoughts and my feelings on paper, it stirred something in my soul. It was the same way like at 3 a. M. I would be out on patrol. This was where i was supposed to be there i was not supposed to be home in bed sleeping, watching a movie with the wife. I was supposed to be out on patrol at 3 a. M. Chasing bad guys. It stirred something in my soul. So i had these stories and everybody was telling it like it, but being a cop you are cynical, skeptical. They were family and friends so i figured they were telling me what i wanted to. Was lucky enough i had a friend who was a writer, like a real writer. She wrote a bestseller, a television show, movie. So she knew what she was talkini about. I called her up and i said to me there, just rea read the stuff o if its any good or not. If its no good also the computer out the window and start a garden or something, i dont know what. So she ranted, she gets back to me and she goes, this is pretty good. A little rough around the edges but its got to be polished up but she said this is pretty good. So i kept writing. G. Wrote another story. About a year later she called me up out of the blue. She told issues during the show called the moth. Is anybody heard of the story called the moth . What a great organization. For those who dont know, the moth is a group we get up on stage at regular people tell a real story about their life. So they had this show and the night before i had a cop who was scheduled to appear and he had to bail out so now they are stuck. That asked my friend, do you know anybody who can fill in, a cop maybe . Sure enough she calls me. The universe works in mysterious ways. So she calls me up and tells me about this. So i called them, pitched the start of the phone. Next night i met the players club. I thought this was going to be like in the basement of the church got a couple sittingn around, you know . Going like this for applause. [laughter] and i show up at the place, theres like 300 people. I was never so scared in my s whole life. And that was invoked over the years involved like thousands of arrests. This was the scariest thing i ever had to do. I wanted to writ run out the do. I told the producer, unlike i would rather be chasing a guy down a dark alley with a gun. Didnt get up on that stage. But i got up, and not for f nothing, blew the roof off the joint everybody liked it. I was a little nervous because the theme of the show was crimes and misdemeanors, and the speakers before me all had these stories. One guy says he did 20 years for murder he didnt commit. Another guy was a defense attorney talking about a screwed up the criminal Justice System was. And then my friend gets up and tells about how she got arrested at the Republican National convention by some less than friendly riot cops and i could use a bologna sandwich as a pillow in central booking. I figured i was dead meat. So i get up there, told theot story and they loved it. I thought that was the end of it. Two weeks later they called me. And said records on condition what you and want to bring you. The next thing i know im in l. A. At ucla in front of 2400 in people. Thats what i said last night im not doing that. But i did. Then we went to seattle, san francisco, denver and the kind of encourage me to keep writing so wrote some more stories. And then they put me on npr, the radio hour and goes out like over 200 radio stations if one day i get a call from an editor and he says i just saw all your stuff. I think its imperative the right of the. I says, i think youre right. [laughter]ig so before i got up and until these stores i would write them out. It helped me flesh this story got in my head pics i told them, maybe i have a one of like first draft stuff. He says send it to me. Access its first draft stuff. I would still cant, id never anything before. W i didnt know it was really worthy. I sent it to him and three days later he called me up when he goes out you got an agent . It just so happened that i did. And agent had heard on npr radio a couple weeks before and itnt does come out like to represent you. What i told him i like writingan stored sure is. I enjoyed the. A cops life is a series of short stories. When you go out on patrol i may handle 10, 15, 20 jobs in a night and every job is a story. It has a beginning, a middle, and and, different characters, different dialogue, different consequences. A cops like virtually a series of short stories and thats what i felt comfortable writing. But my agent told me that short stories not the way to go. People dont really go for that. He wanted me to write a memoir. I thought about it and im like, same thing, a little voice, it wasnt working. It did not want to do that. Some agent and i didnt talk for a couple of months. Then all of a sudden the editor from doubleday calls me up, offers me a contractor i called my agent and i like check your email. Weve got a contract. The then i had to finish the book, which wasnt that tough. I kept writing and writing, and i finished a book. It wasnt as hard. I wouldnt say it was there be but i did enjoy it. Every cop out there, not just become every cop out there has great stories. Its finish the job every night you were involved in peoples lives. You are involved in peoples crisis. Ringng after doing that for 20 years come youve got a million stories. On not everybody can write it and put on paper. So i wrote the book, and as i was writing it, through some of the stories i was afraid im like, nobody is going to believe this. Theyre going to think im making this stuff up. I wrote one story about a busy night that they had in a four i hour period, really in a fourero hour period i had a 17 yearold kid shot. I had two women stabbed in a family dispute that went crazy, and i had a 24 yearold kid fall out a fourth floor window at a party. And right before he hit the ground he clipped the back of his head on a fire hydrant. I was on my hands and knees and i talked to him while he died. And after that i look at the watch and im like, all that happened in four hours. Nobody is going to believe this. But its true, and thats aa cops life. The next it was probably a quiet night, nothing memorable but every night when you go to work, you do not know whats going to happen from one minute to the next. Ute to as i got towards the end of the book, there was one story thatat had to be written. I didnt want to write about it. I didnt feel the need to write about it. I felt very conscious writing about it but it was a 9 11. And if i did not write about i think there would have been a big hole in the book. And when i started writing it, about account it was like the first couple of days i dont remember much. Its all kind of a blur to me. Even when i hook up with guys that were with me at the time, they say the same thing. Like every member something very vividly, i have no recollection. I remember something very vividly, they can remember. If all of us those first couple of days, its kind of a blur. And after that i was working 12 hours on 12 hours off for the next two months. And my unit was in the Detective Bureau so we got assigned to the morgue. Our job was to identify the remains coming in it and they couldnt write about what i saw and what we did. Those are peoples family, family members. I couldnt write about it. But i think i wrote about my feelings and how i dealt with it and i think you get a pretty good picture about what happened. F what you might find it hard to believe that there was one funny story about 9 11. Ny you might find it hard to believe, but i was assigned to the morgue and my friends 80 year old mother calls my house. Nobody had seen or heard from in weeks. I was down there every day. So my friends 80 year old mother called my wife and says how a stephen doing . She goes, steven is in the morgue. [laughter] and she was a little hard of hearing, but she got that much. Shes like, im so sorry. My wife is like no come its okay. A lot of lives dont know whether husbands are. Re t [laughter] at least i know where he is. [laughter]he from there the story gets a little toward the we dont know how it spread, but it spread. And there was this one bar down the jersey shore i used to hang out and then you all the guys there. And they heard that i was in the morgue. Now, none of them knew my wife and nobody felt comfortable calling my house to find out what with the arrangements were going to be. Ra they figured they would just about it sooner or later. So this goes on. Finally after like two but i get a couple of days off and im like, i need a beer. I walk into the front door of the bar [laughter] and it was like they saw a ghost. But i just, i was never, before doing this i never wrote anything. I hated writing. G. In the Police Department to use duct write reports. I hated writing the. I kept having to a minimum. W of other guys used to really dress their reports out. A lot of big words. I kept my very basic, simple. I just didnt like it. And even when i was a kid i wasnt a good student at school. I was a solid c. Student. On my best day. I dont know if anybody ever went to catholic school, but such a catholic used to be to the crap out of me on a regularn basis and remindin remind me tht wasnt going to amount to nothing. I wish she could see me now. [laughter] so writing was never on my radar. And when i was writing i found it funny, like i kind of enjoyed looking at some of the stupid things i did, like the dumb things you do as a rookie, like chasing a guy down the subway tunnel just a robbery. Why i didnt think a train might keep coming. At the time the adrenaline isg n pumping and i dont know, i didnt think of the likely event that a train was going to come. But im still there to talk about it. When i was a kid my father was a guy. Her i guess was a cop. I saw it through him. Gh him and he worked in a precinct not too far from our house and sometimes my mother would make him to bring this up to your father unlike a moment day dayso i traveled there and bringing dinner and they wouldnt leave. I would stay in the station house. I would be sitting on the desk with a desk sergeant it a desk sergeant before becoming and theyre telling their sad stories enter some 12 year old kid sitting behind a facade tosi listen to every word, and then thinking like this is the life for me. This is what i really want to do. When his buddies would come around the house, to me they were the coolest guys in the world. They were real men and i wanted to be just like them. So i guess from a kid, i knew that i never wanted to be a doctor. I never wanted to be a lawyer or an astronaut. Tron i wanted to be the guy standing over the dead guy in the middle of the street trying to figure out who killed him. So i really had no choice. So writing kind of took me by surprise. And 20 years of police work, itt gives you plenty to write about. Sometimes writers get mad at me like, this whole writing thing happened by accident, but i paid my dues. 20 is out industry in new york city you pay your dues, and thats where, i did note at the time but thats where i was doing my research. In the back of my head i was recording all these things that i saw at all these things that i did. It gave me plenty of stuff to write about. I guess i feel lucky. I feel lucky because when you write like that, like i said, it stirs something in your soul. It gives you, once you leave the Police Department, my life was kind of empty, and writing kind of filled that void. And it was good to think aboutut because you forget all the things that you did. Like i worked in a lot of busy places and i remember being a desk sergeant in this busy precinct. The neighborhood was insane, and my first night there im sitting on the desk and am looking around, and the building was a dump. Wa it was falling down come the ninth precinct, they were s cracked walls and peeling paint. And im sitting there and all of a sudden the front door flies open and this guy comes running through the blunt through the front door covered in blood and another guy chasing them with a pipe. Pim, im jumping over the desk. Unwisdom of the cop in the wrestling, fighting, trying to get a pipe often. Turned out to be a was to homeless guys from across the street and on guy they chipped in for a bigger one guy took a bigger set than the other one. Two hours later im just sitting there looking at this big piece of peeling paint waiting for it to fall down come the front doors are still open again. And some guy with bagpipes come0 bursting, 3 00 in the morning with bagpipes comes bursting into the front door of the station house, does a couple of laps. He plays some song like out of braveheart. Im looking at him. All of a sudden he marches out of the door, down the block, you hear the bagpipes fading away,wa and im like i love this job. [laughter] i really do. I love this job. This is like the greatest job in the world. Now, im sure a lot of people have questions, and if you want i could take a few questions from you. Can you come up to the microphone . If you dont do that come nobody on the television will hear you. I was wondering, well, a few questions. Im from new york. Wheres the ninth precinct . A lower east side. From houston to 14th street to broadway to the east river. And i was there during the 80s and the 90s when new york city was the wild west. Ld i go there now, i dont even recognize the place. I have three questions. Keep going. How did the neighborhood change while youre there . Thats one question. And then if you could tell us if the writing was therapeutic for you, if any one of these stories, visceral helping me work through one thing that happened one time . And then the funniest one. New yorker changed like you cant imagine it like the lower east side. What i was down for it with the wild west. Straight that he used to walk down with a gun in my head inside my coat pocket because it was so dangerous, now theres little cafes out of there. People are sipping their lot days, you know . St moms are going into the parks, there were war zones and now they are pushing baby carriages. Writing was therapeutic and theres a lot of funny stories but theres a lot of sad stories, naturally you would sti think that the book would be filled with all the action and adventure, and theres a couple of stories in there were guys pulled guns on me. I have a gun right in my face and im fighting for the life. Those are good stories. I enjoy them. Ies. But laseing i [laughter] is the stories about being in peoples lives, the interaction between two human beings. Like you would think the first word that i wrote would be like some big car chase with shots fired a homicide or somethingg like that, but it wasnt. I dont know why but the firsti story i wrote was the first time i had to tell a parent that their child was dead, and her child was in the other room and should been dead for a few days, and her body was badly decomposed and mom wanted to go into that room. She was not going to believe that her child was dead until she saw the body, and i couldnt let that happen. I was a rookie at the time, about 25 years old. This was not my job to somebody else come to detected, the sergeant from somebody, but there was nobody available. It was sunday morning. It had to be done now and it fell upon me. Indian police work, especially when youre a young cop, you are confronted with difficultre situations and you got to rise to the occasion. You in these peoples lives during the most difficult time in her life, and jump to rise to the occasion. I dont know how i did it. I said mom and were in the hallway and i sat on the steps and it didnt know what to say. I cant stop thinking about whad to say that i just started feeling and i know down in of her and took her hands in mine. A kind of look a proposing marriage or something. I took her hands in mine and ioo convinced her that it was best to remember her daughter the way she was and not the way she is. S and it worked. And when i walked into the building that morning i was young, like 25 years old, a rookie. But a couple hours later when i walked out, i felt that id grown, had matured and i become more of the cop that i wanted to be. Next question. [applause] do you miss it . The actual work . Does writing about it give you a chance to do it again . We always say missed the guys. You go to these incredible adventures. And my Partners Life depends on me. There is a bond, i meet guys that i know from for 30 years ago and we are still friends. We still have that bond because we went from something most people dont. My life depended on him and being there when the world turned to crack and his wife depended on mine. You develop friendships, bonds but last forever. I still have one of my first partners, we hang out together all the time. I miss the guys, the adventure, n. Y. City cop, my life of adventure and i do miss that. You can ride their crazy is rollercoaster in the world and you wont get that adrenaline rush. Kind of like being a Fighter Pilot and work for united airlines. You still fly but it is just not the same. I do miss that part. I am not a yankee fan. I was there in the guiliani years. What was your opinion on stop and frisk . Did it work . Should we keep doing it . I knew somebody was going to ask me that question. I knew it. The one thing i will say is stop and frisk works. Guns in their waistbands, somebody should step on somebody elses shoes, and walk down a block you dont walk down. And shooting the place up. What happened with stop and frisk, we would stop a lot of people, throwing up on the wall, and right away, all the guys in the street know you cant walk around with a gun in your waistband because theres a good chance you get stopped tonight. Now if somebody looks at you the wrong way, wait right there. Half the time by the time you get back, the other guy was gone or the whole situation is confused but stop and frisk we went from being in the 80s a reactive Police Department, we would respond to crimes, take reports and make an arrest and we went from reactive to proactive where we were trying to prevent crimes and i tell you the truth if you were to ask me in thes, 90s, if murder could be reduced by 85 and major crimes by 80 i would say you were nuts. I never would have believed it in a million years. I would not think it was possible but it was done and it was done because of a more proactive approach to policing. [applause] house i worked in new york city for six years and came down here and i sought this watch. It is beard be of the first cop killed in new york city. In 1909 yankees said this. I didnt know that. Rudy guiliani is given credit for cleaning up the city. Your knowledge of it, your thoughts on it. Was the contributing to keep new york city safer than it was. With a you like guiliani or not give credit where credit is due. Before that we took freeports and watched crime go up and it took somebody saying we could do something about this. It doesnt have to be like this. You couldnt leave a brown paper bag in your car without somebody breaking into it to see what was in there. Back then we had 40,000 cops, we had an army and they always knew we could do something about it but somebody had lead the charge. With the you like him or dont like him you have to give credit where credit is due and he showed something could be done and after that, mayors and Police Commissioners after that followed suit and they said new york city, some of the neighborhoods i used to working were war zones. Was insane. One time my wife calls me up. I and my Office Working in the bronx and i am talking to her on the phone and she is complaining to me about the bills, credit card bills and outside my Office Window bam bam bam, theres a driveby shooting and the station house blocks, gunshots echoing through my Office Window. I am covering the phone, dont know if she will go nuts worrying, and i tell her i got to go and she is telling me you dont understand, the bills are killing us this month and i want to tell writing Something Else just got killed down the block. But i couldnt tell her that. I made up an excuse and next thing i know i am running down the street gun in hand into knows whats. Back then, we went from 2200 homicides to around 300. It is incredible the reduction in crime. I am proud to say i was there, all the other cops, i watched it happen. It was incredible to watch. I was at a christmas party. And i was talking to these young cops. And how many robberies are you doing a month these days, and the street robberies, very seriously, she says to me about 12, i said 12 . Are you kidding me . When i was there we were doing an absolute minimum of 120 a month and that is only the ones that got reported. Capt. Times people got robbed and figure what is the use and they never made a report. 12 was an astounding number. I remember one night during a blizzard we had eight. New york city is such a different place i kick myself. Some of these neighborhoods, there was a lot of vanderbilts and nt lots. I would be a millionaire right now and i didnt think the city would never turn around like it has. It is a complete different city. Thanks for cleaning it up. You are welcome. Obvious question, you love the business, why did you retire after 20 years . The other question is how often did you meet at cats silly . I h fcats jelly. Why did i retire . You get to retire after 20 years and theres a reason. Police work burns you out. It eats you overtime. The other day i bumped into a cop, walking my dog, hes walking his dog, the dogs are talking so we started talking and it turned out he was the retired detective and we started talking and he tells me why he retired, he was burned out. He said it took him a full year to get healthy again. Working around the clock, you dont eat right. You dont eat right. You dont sleep right. For years i hardly went to bed or woke up at the same time every day. It is a very unhealthy lifestyle and you cant do it forever. Everybody says that they know when it is time to retire and i knew the exact date, i knew the exact second when i decided to retire. I was a lieutenant, a Commanding Officer at a manhattan gang squad i thought i had seen everything and done everything, i was burned out and didnt have it in me anymore. A couple months before, we caught a homicide, a gain related homicide. A guy had killed another guy in front of his pregnant wife. She is standing there six months pregnant and watched her husband died. There is not much more what is sadder than that . I always loved the job. I wasnt any smarter than anybody else, not more clever in anybody else but i was always tenacious. When i was after a guy i never gave up. One of my detectives, the guy who did this, was a gained member, mexican gained member. He was an illegal immigrant, had no roots, no way to track and down, no house, no mother, no father. He picked up and left. We had a tip from an informant that we might find him in yonkers hanging out in a corner in the morning looking for day work. One of my detectives comes in and tells me this. He says how about we go up there the next couple days, see if we can find him. Normally this gets my juices flowing, there is Nothing Better than grabbing a guy on a crime like that. I was sitting in my office with my feet up on my desk. Only four hours sleep the night before. I am eating cold pizza and nothing happened. I was dead inside. I was numb. I was dead. I couldnt i couldnt get the juices flowing anymore and at that second i said it is time to pull the plug. I wasnt the type of guy to go get myself a shot at headquarters wearing a suit, carrying a clipboard and tell war stories from the old days. That is when i decided it was time for me to go. And i did. Lives in manhattan now and i would just like to say thanks to you and the rest of the Police Department for keeping everybody safe. Its definitely a safer place today. [applause] my question is i dont know whether it started with the murder of the two policemen in brooklyn i think it was where the blahs yo, the current mayor had a difficult time with his relationship with the police tyo force mayor de blasio i guess my question is, do you know, is he doing anything to improve his relationship with the police force . Has he made any progress . You know i wrote a book, right . [laughter] yeah, not on those two officers were killed a lot was made out of and i wrote an oped for the new york times. In the emergency room the cops turned their back on the mayor when he went into the emergency room, the city offices. To see the officers. People were upset about the it wasnt a well calculated plan. They turned their backs on the mayor everybody knew he had no t use for cops. Thats what he campaigned on, a tale of two cities, the oppressive the Police Department. Everybody knew and all the cops felt that he had no use for cops, and that night when it happened and is walking into that room with her tube dead love brothers are in the other room, i think they just felt, i wasnt there but i think they felt he had to and thats why they turned their backs on him. R hes gotten better with the i police. This is just my opinion. I think hes gotten better with the police because he nobody has to. Can just imagi new york city would, you could just imagine what it would be like without the cops. Its so much better than it was in the old days, and he knows that. I think just because the politics he has to be better with the police. At this point it would be bad politics to beat up the police because Everybody Knows what improvements were made. So i think that is doing it because he has to. Thats just my opinion. The commissioner, bill bratton and rail kelly . I dont know either one of them who was the better commissioner . I dont need a one of them personally but its difficult to say. Like bill bradley now, i feel like hes the right guy for the job. With all the anticop sentiment around the country in the new york, he just when i see him on commissioner phil like hes the right guy for the job at this first time. When he was commissioner firstt on thats when ill broken windows thing started and then ray kelly became the commission as they ran with it. They just kept going and going and crime kept going down. Ld whos better . I wouldnt say who is better but i would say that ray kelly did a great job. Thats the cop when i would see him on the news, i meet with some Police Commissioners in the past that wasnt crazy about bt when i would see him, you no, it made you proud. He represent the Police Department will. Another bill bratton is that i think is a very difficult job with a mayor that i dont know what his relationship is with the mayor, but im sure he has a very difficult job and i just think hes the right guy for thy job right now. Back to your book. Thank you. I know you did your research with your life, but im wondering, memory does plays tricks on you and stuff. Im imagining that you then had to go back to your Police Reports and whatever you did in order to get the details a little bit correct and that kind of thing. And what was out like to do that to revisit those reports and to revisit those stories . How was that for you . Yeah. Before writing the book, my only training was writing Police Reports so thats what i knew, and i real where made an effort to make sure that the facts were as best i could remember them. Sometimes i went back to the scene of where niece things happened and went back and went through the statement footsteps i did and making sure of my distances and everything, and everything was accurate. But i really tried to be as accurate as possible. Sometimes i even called my old partners, remember this . And after i wrote a come of stories i give it to my old partners said do you remember this the same way i do . And they did. So i was used to testifying in court, and you have to have all your paperwork today you have to have your testimony together. So that was the way i approached it youre always but if you and i see a car accident or if you and i see a homicide, we view it slightly different. I guess over thize didnt realize it, but when i saw these things i was always looking at the story behind that, and so always be slightly different views. Like sometimes we would get involved in some crazy caper, five or six of news a chase, somebody gets shot, and the next day its funny, you have slightly different views of what happened because you approached it from different angles. But i did do my homework and went back and tried to make it as accurate as possible. Hi. I noticed that you were going to be writing for some tv episodes. Hopefully. Im a great fan of blue blood. I wonder if you might comment about the authenticity of the show, particularly talking about cases over the dinner table. My mom loves by blue blood pow because of tom sell electric. Selleck. The take current cases and talk about current events. Yeah, they talk about current events, but you got to remember, its television. What i wanted to do is ive always wanted to take my book and turn it into a script. I think is works well. When you have like network television, you cant always say what you said and you cant always show what you really saw. So it gets watered down a little bit but its pretty good. My mother will agree with you, she loves it. 9 11 and the aftermath, a lot of stories about the lingering effects of that on first responders, emotionally and maybe particularly physically. Just wonder if you or some of your partners are still living with that. Yeah. And guys are getting sick. It is true. I was one of the lucky ones. When didnt on the morning of 9 11 i woke up and getting ready to go to work, and i turned on the news and i see smoke coming out of the upper floors, and then as im watching with my wife, the second plane hits. She starts crying. She starts screaming. And im holding her and watching this, and im like, i got to get to work. Everybody else that had a normal hulls with a normal job, they were racing home to be with their family, to be with their wives. Im hugging my wife. Shes crying into my chest. My shirt is wet with tears and boogers and [laughter] and im holding on to her and all i could think of is, i got to go to work. And i remember her looking up at me and saying she was used to me leaving her. I get a phone call at night, got to go to work, get up, im gone, dont come back until the next day. It wasnt often often times id be working 4 00 to 12 00, id call her at 11 00 and say id be home in a little while, and then wed getting a shooting and wouldnt get until the next day, she was used to being alone. I remember her looking at me, tears running down her face, and she said, please dont leave me, not this time. I said, you understand, i have to good. Right . She knew i was just going. She was just trying to she was just venting. She was going to be left alone to have to deal with this by herself. And i left her there. I left her standing at the door, crying, while i jumped in the car doing 90milesanhour with the red light on the dashboard, listening to the radio, and im racing down there. At the time i was lieutenant in the gang squad and i had 50 sergeants and detectives working for me, and i knew once we went down there, it was going to be a madhouse. We had to stick together as a unit. If we didnt, if we got separated, we werent going to find each other for days. So, one of my sergeants, my righthandman. I freely odd mitt it, administratively, im a moron. Its not what i like to do. One of my sergeants, the energizer bunny, on top of everything. So i had him on the phone and im like, come on, when are you going to be at the office . I says im not leaving without you. Im calling the guys in the office, get all the equipment we need. As soon as i get there were jumping in the cars and going down. So i got to the office, got everybody together, we all jumped in the cars, and he was a few minutes late. His girlfriend was a nurse or something and he had to drop her off at the hospital. So he was about 1520 minutes late and i wasnt going to lead without him. I needed him. I wanted my whole unit together. He gets there, jumps in the car, and off we go. The second building came down right before we got there. So he wasnt late, we probably would have ran in there like everybody else. And i guess its hard to explain how you feel down there. I think more than anything, i felt helpless, because as a cop, when you see something really bad, the way you find closure is you find a person that did it, you arrest them, they go away, and that how you find closure. And right away we found out that wasnt going to happen. The individual that did this were all dead. And the individuals that were responsible for it were in a cave overseas. As new york city cops there was nothing we would do about it, and i felt kind of helpless those days. All we could do was dig through rubble and pick up remains and process remains. So, that was the overwhelming feeling. I also felt privileged, because i know that everybody in the country wanted to be down there helping, and i was able to do it. I had the ability to go down there and help my city, my country, and i think thats the way mentally i got through it. I felt privileged to be there. [applause] im from philadelphia, and the home of frank rizzo, who went from beat cop to the mayor of philadelphia, and kind of have a Public Service announcement for savannah. In appreciation of police force. My wife and our daughter, 26yearold daughter, took the 13week civilian Police Academy training here, and each week there would be two different departments that would tell you what they do, and on the 12th 12th week, we did ridealongs with several different officers, and as you know, theres two of the most dangerous situations, Domestic Violence call and a car stop, which i did the messy call. My wife did a car stop. We actually got out of the cars, stood a safe distance away, but we really now understand and appreciate what police do so that this really should be a civic duty for all citizens, and i know you know that. But a rookie starts at 37,000 a year. To put his life on the line. Do you have a question . Oh, sorry. You mentioned all the police get a bad rap for what little might happen negatively, but the thousands of cases that arent appreciated. Back to the 37,000. Your dont take this job for the money. Thats not i mean, as you go up in the ranks you do better, you have better benefits, good pension, but you dont take this job for the money. You take it because its a calling. Theresing . Your heart that tells you, this is what you want to do, and thats why you take it. [applause] in the introduction ann said youd never shot yourgun, and we havent found out why and how that came about. I always worked in busy places, busy squads, busy neighborhoods, and people always ask, did you ever shoot anybody . And when i tell them, no, they seem disappointed. Like what were you doing for 20 years . But the fact is, its like i forget what the figure figure is 98 of cops never fire their weapon in the line of duty, but i can tell you theres at least a half dozen guys that are still Walking Around where i was actually pulling the trigger. It got to the point where they were going, and at the last possible second they dropped their gun, or had a situation several situations where i went to go stop a guy, like a stop and frisk, and when i put the guy on the car, he reaches into this waistband so i reach into his waistband, and hes got a gun and he ross got it first. Hes got the gun in his expand the guy was big. In his hand and he guy was big. His shoulders were over my head. Another guy with him who had a knife. And all of a sudden im in the fight for my life. I couldnt shoot him. I couldnt coo not let go of this gun. Him and i are fighting for it, and i picked him up and im swinging him back and forth. I briefly thought about letting him go and going for my gun but theres no way. Never would have got it out in time himself would have killed my. So im fighting with this guy and the only thing i could think about was, if you cant breathe, you cant fight. That the first rule of fighting. Cant breathe, cant fight. So i started yanking on his fists. They were right here dish was giving him this crazy heimlich maneuver, and im yanking and pulling and lifting him off his feet, and as im doing that, the other guy with the knife is trying to work around and wanters to stab me in the back, but he is not 100 committed to this because he knows where this thing is going elm he is not sure he wants to kill a cop. So that worked to my advantage. Im swinging this guy back and forth and im yanking and pulling and hes yelping and cant breathe. Finally he loosens up on the gun, i get it out of his hands and i cracked him right in the temple with hit. Stunned him. At that point could i have shot him. I could have shot the both of them. They would have given in medal, but at this point i didnt feel it was necessary. I had the gun, had em down, and another time i went to go lock up this wimpy little stockbroker. I thought he would answer the door with a pocket protect expert pencils in there he answers the door with a vest on and a. 380 in his hands and coming one with a gun and the only thing i could do is jump him. We went falling down to the floor. I had two cops with mement were all rolling around on the floor and we managed to get the gun off him. You only shoot somebody if its absolutely necessary, and i think harv has that line in the sand where, when somebody crosses that, youre going too do it. And i knew where my line was, and i got very close. Id say at least a half dozen or more times. But each time i always felt like i didnt have to do it, and i didnt. And that includes several thousand arrests i was involved in. [applause] [applause] all right. Thank you very much, and thankss for having me in savannah. [applause] ladies and gentlemen, how about this guy . Applaus one more decent round of applause. [applause] [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conv heres a look at some books that are being published this week. Cspan, created by americas Cable Companies 35 years ago and brought to you as a Public Service by your local cable or satellite provider. Host and this week on the communicators, the discussion of the federal governments Lifeline Program which is administered by the federal communications commission. Joining us are two guests to discuss this,