If you’re walking down Fifth Avenue, you are statistically never more than two blocks away from a cop. Unless you’re in a bathroom. Then you’re three blocks away. And they can probably smell your panic.
There are more NYPD officers than there are active-duty Marines in some Marine Corps bases. It’s an organization so large that its internal affairs division has its own internal affairs division. The bureaucracy is so thick that paperwork has been known to form its own gravity.
Want a funny fact? The NYPD has a Real Time Crime Center that uses facial recognition. It’s basically a giant database that can find any face in the city. Unfortunately, it also confuses Greta Gerwig with a mailbox.
The Myth of the Lone Wolf
You know those movies where one tough cop takes on the entire mob? That doesn’t happen in New York. The NYPD would just send 400 cops to the meeting. The mob boss would open the door and see a sea of blue shirts and say, “I surrender. Can I at least get a receipt?”
The force is divided into 77 precincts, and each one feels like its own tiny city-state. The 75th Precinct in Brooklyn has more cops than the entire police force of Akron, Ohio. And Akron has tires.
They even have a Mounted Unit with horses. These horses are the size of small SUVs. They are trained to stand still while a drunk tourist tries to feed them a hot pretzel. That’s bravery.
Nypd New York
