(For the girl I lit the candles for)

I knew NYC would kill me. I’ve always avoided applying for schools or jobs there because I intuitively knew I wouldn’t belong.  And of course, that’s the only job offer I received after the PhD program for a field that I wasn’t interested in or had specific training for.

I’ll keep the details to a bare minimum, but it is a bit complex and complicated.  Basically, I had a job solely because of the Ferguson incident, the Black Lives Matter movement, and the death of Eric Garner.  Under heavy political pressure, the NYC City Council establishes the first ever Inspector General for the NYPD and houses it within the NYC Department of Investigation.  On paper, it is supposed to be an independent oversight agency tasked with unbiased examinations and investigations of the NYPD’s policies, procedures, and operations.  In reality, it is an agenda driven, politically motivated endeavor led by Mayor Bill DiBlasio’s former campaign treasurer, who ended up cleverly expanding his power, conducting fishing expeditions, overreaching past the scope of his mandate, abusing his authority, betraying DiBlasio, and eventually getting fired after a lengthy investigation.

In any case, before that all unfolded, I was hired to be one of their lead policy managers / investigators.  Long story short, I’m placed in a daily battle to maintain my integrity and sanity while getting undermined, backstabbed, ignored, and ultimately shelved.  Power, media attention. and fame make people crazy and there was no exception here.  What started out as a hopeful endeavor quickly devolved into a toxic, chaotic one.

After barely over a year at Investigations, I manage to escape to the NYPD where it is relatively peaceful and stable for around three to four good years.  It is still not an easy place to work at, but I am somewhat protected, valued, and even loved.  I handle their secrets and advise the High Command, no small feat and something I will always be proud of for the rest of my life.  It was like a family to me.  

Always heroes. 

Always NYPD.

But the winds of politics blow fast and fickle, nationally and citywide, and the administration changes again and again.  Over my five year tenure, I serve under three different Police Commissioners and almost a fourth.  The Department changes from within and many key staff are fired or forced to resign.  I gradually lose my protection and because of my skill set, knowledge of the Department’s inner workings, and my general inability to bend my knee, I go from valued asset to major liability almost overnight.  Over the course of my last year there, I get targeted, bullied, and had no choice but to leave the job.  They poison, undermine, and rip me apart so badly that one day, my ears are ringing and I walk out of the office and take a month off.  I can’t ride the subway without jumping,  I am afraid of going to the office, participating in Zoom calls, lose a ton of weight, I struggle to walk up to the apartment, interact with others.  And this is from someone who has gone to some very dangerous and unpleasant places.  I try to go remote, but it’s too late.  I’ve been checkmated and the damage is irreversible.   Because of COVID and my weird resume, I can’t find anything else.  The whole time this is occurring and I’m getting boiled slowly like a lobster, I had already been trying to escape with futility.  I get depressed and discouraged, and the rest is simply too painful to write about at this point.

But to summarize, I was playing with some big guns in NYC politics.  In the grand scheme of the universe, insignificant, but for the US and NYC (where everything is overhyped), high up. I wasn’t getting in the way of “small” people and wasn’t just the proverbial pebble in the shoe, but a major barrier. I stopped or at least slowed down some pretty bad behavior.

I’ve survived and solved a lot up to that point in my life, but this situation was by far the most difficult (and still is). I suppose in a way, I asked for it.  While I did try to have a fun, international job and then a boring, paper pushing compliance one, this was my destiny.  It is at times comforting to know that I did everything I could to change my fate (or at least I think I did).

The story that has always struck me is the one in the Iliad where Achilles is told by his mother that if he goes to fight at Troy, he is fated to die there.  His alternative is to live as a woman in peace on a remote island.  We all know what he chooses, a death with glory and honor over a safe, long life.

I’m neither a hero nor was I trying to be one.  But even as a younger man, I wished that one day I would be in a position to do something impactful, even great.  And in a way, a very real, tangible one, I did get that opportunity in NYC.  For those magical years, my work impacted millions of people from a hidden, behind the scenes position.  Many of my predictions while initially ignored, downplayed, or even laughed at, eventually came true.  But I’m truly proud I got to serve and protect the largest city in the US, and not in an insignificant way.  And for all that, I paid with a lot, more than what I expected and bargained for.  I truly loved the NYPD, its mission, its purpose, what it stood for, and my colleagues.  Losing them was heartbreaking.

No one really understood when I told them what was happening and had happened.  I’ve barely figured out how to tell people these days.  When you’re in the middle of the storm, you don’t see much in front of you other than the wind and rain.

While I lost so much and it is painful, on the most part, I don’t think I would or could have done much, if anything, differently.  I held my ground, fought the best that I could with all that I had – my mind, my heart, my soul.  Like other things I did, sports, music, teaching, other work positions, I left it all out there, all in, all out, and had nothing left in the tank at the end. 

One day, I will make more, if not complete peace with all this and the devastating aftermath.