On Tuesday, December 2nd, my group mates and I visited One Police Plaza. One Police Plaza is the headquarters of Nypd operations. It has 14 floors, each floor ascending with higher rank. The Commissioner is at the 14th, while the Chief of Department is on the 13th. Upon our arrival, we were greeted by Officer David Gholson and given a tour of the building. The building contains many rooms and areas dedicated to a certain department or job. An example of one of these places was the Real Time Crime Center, which I found the most interesting as well as engaging. A large room with around 3 wall sized panels on each wall, the Real Time Crime center is the surveillance room for the Nypd. The Real Time Crime Center also houses and represents many organizations. Upon entering, we were greeted by an officer who works in the Center. He stated: “Whenever something national happens, like for example the President being in New York, each Nypd subdivision, plus larger organizations like the FBI, Secret Service, and Coast Guard each send representatives to the center.” On each panel contained something different. On one panel there live footage all over New York City, everything feeding into the Center at once. On another, there was a panel that showed all planes flying over the U.S. They were broke up into FAA regulation regions, each oddly shaped territory containing a cluster of planes, all in the air. After our tour, we were taken back
up to the 13th floor, where we met with Sergeant Chan-Shu, an African American woman who has been in the force for a very long time. We talked to her about growing things in the news as well as things more central to her personally. When asked one thing she would change about the NYPD, she stated: “If I had to change one thing, I would change the amount of minority officers in the NYPD and bring back the Beat cops.I would also give incentive for extra training.” After our interview, we had time for a little bit of a trivia game. The requirement: name all NYPD ranks in order. My group mate Troy, was the first one to name all correctly, and won a very nice Nypd basketball. Following the game, we chatted with some of my mother’s co-workers and then went up to the 14th floor and took pictures in the Teddy Roosevelt room. This room was a dedication to Roosevelt, with a large bust carved in his image sitting in the corner of the room. All in all, this was a great experience that I would repeat.