On the morning of December 2, my group and I visited the eminent 1 Police Plaza, in downtown Manhattan. This is a large fourteen floor building that serves as the location of the NYPD headquarters. Interestingly, Daniel’s mother actually works in the building and we were able to say a quick hello to her. As we arrived, we were introduced to Officer David Gholson who led us on a basic tour of the building. This was a very interesting tour which gave us the chance to travel deep into the building and into the everyday lives of NYPD workers. We were able to see locations in the building from the Real Time Crime Center to the Teddy Roosevelt room. The Real Time Crime Center is a center where the most recent news and surveillance is monitored by many people in a large high-tech room; the information is always updating. The room often contains representatives from many different government organizations such as the NYPD, FDNY, CIA, FBI, and many more. The room also has a situation room for emergency predicaments. The Teddy Roosevelt room is a highly decorated room created in commemoration of Teddy Roosevelt. While we were there we also had the chance to interview Sergeant Chan-Shu who is a middle aged black woman who has a lot of experience in the force, with exceptional amounts of time spent towards patrolling the streets and office work. Interviewing Sergeant Chan-Shu was a very important advancement for my group and I because she was able to provide the very unique view of a black woman in the police force on today’s issues. Our interview lasted about 25 minutes and we were able to learn a lot from her answers. When we asked her what she wanted to change about the NYPD she stated a couple of things but one thing that stood out to me was when she said that she would like to see more diversity in the police force. I agree with this and I think that more diversity would definitely improve the community-police relationship. After the interview we played a short and fun game of police rank trivia and then we were escorted out by Officer David Gholson who initially greeted us. Conclusively, this was a great and unique fieldwork for us.
This is a picture of just one side of the room, as the room was to big to fit in one picture.
