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My interview on Unraveling the Secrets with Dennis Crenshaw and Rick Ozman:

Cops don’t really watch cop films or TV shows. Before I retired I never saw one episode of Law & Order, CSI, or Third Watch. Us cops used to say “why watch it if we’re living it.” Most cop films/TV shows don’t depict ‘the job’ as it really is, anyway. But now that I’m retired I’ve been catching up on these cop shows, and I usually find myself talking back at the screen “we can’t do that” “that would never happen.” The biggest culprit is CSI: Las Vegas/Miami/New York. Let me explain a crime scene, at least in NYC, and from my experience: At the scene of a homicide both patrol cops and detectives interview witnesses. If the perp is on the scene sometimes it’s the patrol cop who makes the arrest. However, if the perp has fled the scene then the arrest is handled by the precinct detectives. Eventually, Crime Scene Unit (CSU) shows up…who are usually two cops, middle-aged, overweight, and they sure-as-hell don’t look like fashion models. CSU will gather evidence, take photos, take measurements, draw diagrams, dust for fingerprints, and then they’d hand the evidence over to the crime lab personnel, who are civilians with college degrees, and they don’t carry guns. And unlike the TV counterparts, the crime lab people do not visit crime scenes, interrogate suspects, investigate leads, or make arrests.

Here’s another beef of mine: TV/film detectives. A real-life detective is not a supervisor. He’s a regular cop in a suit & tie with investigative status. He cannot boss an uniform patrol cop around. And, in real life, if a detective ever spoke to me the way the detective-characters speak to uniform cop-characters on Law & Order, CSI, or in films like Spike lee’s Inside Man, there’d be one heck of a fight.

But, if you like cop stories, the best police-action-films come from Hong Kong cinema. They’re slick, metropolitan, fast-paced dramas with rapid gun battles,aerobatic stunts, with or without martial arts, and alotta violence. Most of these films require a high level of “suspension of disbelief,” especially when the chase/escape scenes border on the magical. There is usually a complicated relationship between the cop & the bad guy, a cat & mouse game of wits that resolves into a mutual respect for their opponent. Hollywood knows a good thing, and some of HK’s best of the best is reassembled for American audiences. For example, Martin Scorsese’s film The Departed is a remake of Infernal Affairs, and Quentin Tarantino’s Reservoir Dogs is a play-by-play copy of Ringo Tam’s City on Fire (come to think of it, all of QT films, from the editing to the dialogue and pacing, are heavily influenced by Hong Kong cinema).

My recommended list of Hong Kong action-cop films, are: Running Out of Time, Full Time Killer, The Mad Detective, Infernal Affairs, Time & Sand, A Better Tomorrow, Bullet in the Head, Full Contact, and Hard Boiled. ~ AA

I’ve finished reading the book Jihad in Brooklyn by Samuel M Katz. It is the true story of two Palestinian men living in Brooklyn, New York, who planned a suicide-bomb attack on a commuter-packed subway train on July 31, 1997. A third man, an Egyptian, who was a roommate of the two Palestinians, alerted the police just in time to avert the attack. And in the wee hours of the morning, the midnight crew of the NYPD’s Emergency Service Unit raided the dirty, cramped apartment in the heart of King’s County on 4th Avenue, between President and Carroll Streets. Bullets flew, fingers reached inches away from flipping the switch to their home-made bomb, and although Gazi Abu Mezer and Lafi Khalil, the two young men bent on terrorizing New Yorkers during Monday morning’s rush hour commute, were shot and arrested, they survived their bullet wounds and, the mastermind of the plot, Mezer, is now serving a life sentence, and his accomplice, Khalil, was sentenced only 36-months for possession of a counterfeit alien registration card. But hardly anyone would ever know about it.

This incident occurred 4 years after the car-bombing of the World Trade Center, and 4 years before 9/11, and yet I don’t recall ever reading about it in the newspapers, seeing it on the TV news, or hearing the guys at work discussing it at roll-call. However, this wasn’t the way the police chiefs, Mayor Giuliani, and Police Commissioner Safir wanted it. They wanted a huge press conference with all the major news media, and everybody would become semi-famous and get their picture taken, etc…the whole nine yards. But there was only one problem: the six police officers who risked their lives to make the arrests didn’t want their names, or faces, made public for fear of retaliation from any terrorist group who may, or may not, be happy the attack was thwarted. Also, the cops felt what they did was all in a day’s work, and didn’t want to brag. But the “Big Brass” didn’t care what the cops thought. They threatened them with cut-backs and removing their status as a rescue unit if they didn’t cooperate. So, the cops grudgingly agreed to the press conference at Police HQ.

Giuliani, Safir, and all the gold brass, plus the six police officers, paraded into the press room, and the Mayor and the PC got up on the podium and gave a long-winded speech. Cameras flashed, and the reporters yelled out to hear from the cops. Giuliani looked over at them and signaled to get up on the podium, but the cops wouldn’t budge, or say a word.

I wonder how red Giuliani’s face got?

Have a listen to my podcast interview with Police Magazine:

I’m bummed Fox canceled The Sarah Connor Chronicles. I like science-fiction stories, and I rarely like anything on TV, but this was one show I watched. For me, time-travel stories are fun. I get a kick outta the fish-out-of-water-look on a time traveler’s face when he finds himself in the future, or in the past. Have you noticed writers often depict the future as an extension of the present day, but bigger? For example, the 1936 film Things To Come is supposed to take place a 100 years in the future. The film’s vision of 2036 had Wizard of Oz-like crystal cities in the clouds, and giant propeller-driven planes and dirigibles. I guess the concept of jets, cities spreading horizontally, instead of, vertically, and space shuttles, was beyond the imagination of technology in the 1930s. But the future seems to be imagined in two ways: Either bleak and scary (Blade Runner, The Terminator, Resident Evil, Logan’s Run, Soylent Green, Mad Max, etc)…hmmm, I was going to say, also, an utopia, but I can’t think of any film/book where everything is clean and hopeful.

In a podcast interview with Stewart Swerdlow (author, lecturer, and survivor of the Montauk Project), he and I discussed time travel:

If one goes back in time is it possible to return to the same exact time line?

Stewart: There are already infinite time lines. Everything you can imagine exists somewhere. So, theoretically, you cannot change anything because it “already is” somewhere. So, when you go back in time you’re not supposed to interfere with anything. If you do, you’ll automatically be focused on an alternate time line where that has occurred. So, no, you would not return to your original time line, because you have changed your perception.

But, Stewart says time travel isn’t complicated: “Every point in time & space has an unique frequency and vibration. There are no two points in time & space that are identical. So, if you can map out and vibrate an object, person, or thing, to a specific point in time & space there will be an instant connection, because it would have to match.”

Years ago, a science magazine once gave instructions for a time machine: You’ll need two 6-feet copper poles and two 6-feet pure silver poles. But first you have to know the ley-lines (energy lines) in your area, and where these lines crossed. Go to these ley-lines and bury one copper pole horizontally in the ground and place the silver poles vertically at either end. Now, take the second copper bar and lay it across the top of the silver poles. Next, stand under the structure. The device will change the electro-magnetic frequencies in the area and literally will create doorways to other dimensions. Supposedly, this device works. However, there is one catch: It’s a one-way ticket. You don’t return home. ~ AA

Eight years after 9/11 post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) has increased amongst eyewitnesses and survivors of the World Trade Center attacks. According to The Journal of the American Medical Association (Aug 4th), they found a 5% rise of PTSD in the approximate 50,000 people first surveyed in 2006 and 2007. Originally, their study found PTSD was 14% amongst the people they surveyed, but when participants were re-evaluated in 2008, the number had risen to 19%. One reason for the increase was, 9.5% didn’t report symptoms in the earlier survey.

Between 2003 and 2004, The New York City Health Department examined PTSD in 11,000 lower Manhattan residents who lived near the site of the WTC disaster. Their study revealed that 12.6% of the people surveyed suffer from PTSD. Also, women were more likely to have PTSD at 15%, compared to 10% of the men. The report then broke down the participants between race and income, stating 1 in 5 African-American, 1 in 4 Hispanics, suffered PTSD, compared to 10.7% of white residents. And people with an annual income less than $25,000 showed a 20% rate.

Also, in 2003-2004, the World Trade Center Health Registry surveyed 30,000 rescue and recovery workers. This group consisted of police, firefighters, and volunteers. According to this study, the reported cases of PTSD was: 21.2% volunteer workers, firefighters 12.2%, and police officers, at 6.2% (personally, I believe PTSD amongst cops are higher than this number. But because of the stigma attached to mental health issues within the NYPD, cops are less likely to report such problems).

Also, the recent Journal of the American Medical Association found the cases of asthma in people surveyed who didn’t have the illness prior to 9/11 was now 10.2% of civilians and 20.5% of rescue and recovery workers, and that asthma was the highest in residents living near the WTC site. Another health study from the Journal of Occupational & Environmental Medicine reported doctors from World Trade Center Medical Monitoring & Treatment Program at Mount Sinai School of Medicine, have been studying 28,252 rescue workers who worked the pile at Ground Zero, have found eight cases of multiple myeloma, a hematological cancer. Myeloma is a common disease found in elderly people, average age 71. But what the doctors find alarming is this cancer is appearing in rescue workers younger than age 45. Now, questions are being raised whether the toxic environment at Ground Zero may be linked to these cancers. To date, no study has been created to monitor cancer rates amongst civilians and rescue workers exposed to 9/11 toxic dust.

(I think it’s amazing that for the past 8 years, NYC Mayor Bloomburg, and other officials, have denied the link between these illnesses and the toxic dust of 9/11. And considering that Mount Sinai Hospital reports 70% of the 40,000 rescue workers who worked at the WTC are now ill, maybe it’s time to take a closer look) ~ AA

July 23rd 2009 interview on BlogTalkRadio. Solana and I discuss my book The First Responders, and the 9/11 health issue:

Whenever I want to go to the movies I have several options. I can hop on the #7 train to Times Square (midtown Manhattan, endless crowds, mostly tourists with subway maps, three-card monte side shows, neon light overload, six-floor-stadium-sized multiplexes), or I can go to my local movie theatre (underneath the el-train ). Because I live in a Latino neighborhood, most of the movie-goers are Hispanic. Therefore all the Hollywood movies are shown with Spanish subtitles. The problem with subtitles is: I want to read them. I can’t help myself. It’s from all those years in film school watching Fellini, Godard, Truffant, Wenders, and Fassbinder.

I can understand why some people dislike foreign films—you’re too busy reading subtitles to watch the movie. So, I’m sitting in the Spanish theatre watching Terminator Salvation, and for the first twenty-minutes I’m listening in English and reading in Spanish.  Wait a minute, what am I’m doing? I speak English. Why am I reading Spanish subtitles?

When I moved to a small town in upstate New York (Oneonta in Otsego county), the only place to go for entertainment was a six-screen multiplex on the other side of Walmart’s parking lot. The projection booths were manned by college students (by law, projectionists are supposed to be union-members of the Theatrical Board. But they didn’t care about unions here). You had one kid handling six projectors, plus the ticket counter. The film never started on time. It was always an extra 20 minute wait listening to obnoxious Broadway tunes. The kid never knew what projector lens to use.  The coming attractions were blobs of shadows and light.  When the featured film finally did start, the “projectionist” struggled to find the proper lens. The movie zoomed in and out of focus. Half the film was on the ceiling. The sound would cut off and on.  Or, they couldn’t find the switch to turn off the Broadway tune. Or, the film started in the middle because they forgot to rewind. I’m not kidding. This happened every single time I went to the movies!

On the opening night of Spielberg’s War of the Worlds my sister and I went to the 9 o’clock show. The theatre was packed. We sat in our seats waiting—thirty minutes, then forty. Finally, I got up out of my seat and found the manager. I asked him when the film was going to start. He said, “Well, we’re waiting for some people to show up and as soon as they arrive, we’ll begin”. Duh?

What are your movie-going experiences? ~ AA