by F. P. Lione
Fiore got the barrier up, clueless as to what just happened behind him. The crowd was so frenzied, he couldn’t hear a thing.
Once we got control of the crowd, I turned to see the damage. There were ten people cuffed, including Mr. Chicklet. They were sweeping them up and moving them toward the end of the block to the substation, where they’d hold them in the pen. It was 7:40 when things quieted down, and Joe and I walked back to post.
We could hear the noise now, both from 7th and 8th Avenues. We walked through the darkened street, feeling the chill in the air. As soon as we reached 7th Avenue, the blazing lights hit us from everywhere. The buildings had cushioned the sound that now seemed magnified from when we left.
“Hey, where were you guys?” Hanrahan said, annoyed. He looked at his watch. “I sent Garcia and Romano fifteen minutes ago to go to meal.”
“Did you hear the 85 at four-three and eight?” Joe asked.
“You guys called that over?”
“No, we were standing right there when it came over. We ran over to help them, and they locked up like ten people,” I said.
The demeanor of the crowd had changed since we left. They were more docile now, sober and shivering. The sun was long gone, and the temperature had dropped to below freezing. The wind that New York is known for whipped between the buildings in Times Square.
Hans, the German guy, looked at me and said, “Officer, I don’t feel too good.” He proceeded to throw up over the side of the barricade.
“Romano owes me five bucks,” I said to Joe.
“You called it,” he said.
“Oh come on,” I said, stepping back as he emptied his stomach again. “That’s disgusting.”
“Sorry,” he moaned.
“What did you do, eat hot dogs?” From where I was standing, it smelled like sauerkraut and NyQuil from the Jagermeister he was drinking.
“Yeah. Before we came in here we had hot dogs.”
A small circle opened up, and I could see them getting out of the way inside the pen. Someone else was barfing. It was the guy from Ohio.
The guy from Mississippi sat on the ground with a blanket wrapped around him, oblivious to the vomit behind him. He was hurting now, and I’m sure the cold ground wasn’t helping him any. His wife was standing against the barrier, resting on her arms.
The Japanese women were still smiling, but more subdued. The Brazilian ladies looked disgusted as they got themselves to the very edge of the barrier. The kids from Yonkers were yelling at the guy from Ohio for hurling inside the barricade. “Do it over the side like the other guy!” one of them yelled.
At 8:00 they turned the searchlights on and booted up the surround sound. Some of the searchlights go up into the air, bouncing off the buildings and the advertisements. The other searchlights spanned the crowds, psyching them up for the shows to start.
“Welcome to Times Square 2001,” Dick Clark’s voice rang out into the night. The crowds went wild, suddenly alive again.
The people in the pen now had red tubular balloons with gold streamers on the end, and some of them had red and gold pom-poms.
“Where’d you get those?” I asked them.
“Someone gave them to us. They told us to wave them.” “Times Square BID,” Rooney said, meaning the Times Square Business Improvement District.
There were hats in the pen now, the cardboard ones that look like birthday hats with the elastic around your chin that always pinches you. They were black, with Happy New Year’s in gold letters and gold spikes on top. The guy from North Carolina had an I Love New York hat on (the one with the heart), and his wife had a Statue of Liberty crown.
The performers started. Bon Jovi went first, playing on MTV’s stage, the sound amplified all across Times Square. Dancers in skimpy outfits with streamers performed, probably freezing their tails off. Puppets came down the emergency lanes and up to the stage. Something like ten thousand bell ringers were there, while someone sang “Ring My Bell.”
We don’t get to catch too many of the performers because we have to keep an eye on the crowd. I got a VIP pass from someone at ABC. I usually get one every year from one of the TV stations, and I save them. I have like six of them in a drawer at home.
The Japanese women were the only ones in the pen with any oomph. They had a sign that said “I Love Dick Clark” and were holding it up, trying to get the attention of a cameraman.
The other pens were going wild, but my bunch was dead.
“Are you kidding me?” I yelled at them. “You got a prime spot here, and you’re standing around looking like corpses! Look around—everyone is going wild. You guys are embarrassing us.” I had their attention now.
“I should throw you out of here and get myself some people who at least have a pulse!” I was using my hands now, punctuating my words with my index finger. Romano looked at me like I’d lost my mind, and Joe’s face was blank. They didn’t realize that if I tired the pen out now, they’d be less trouble later.
“You guys came here from all over the world,” I continued. “You got farther in here than most people who tried to get in. Now let me see some noise here!” I screamed.
“He’s right,” Hans said. “Yaaahhh!” he screamed. The rest of the pen followed suit; even Mississippi threw off his blanket and stood up screaming.
I saw the cameraman pan toward us. I pointed at him. “Look, they’re filming you right now. Everyone is watching, wishing they were you!” This launched them into another bout of hysterics. I had no idea if the camera was filming them, but at least they were jumping around and screaming, knocking themselves out.
They used their horns and balloons, pumping their fists up in the air.
The energy was starting to build, and it rippled through the crowd as the shows started. It would lull again, probably in an hour, around 9:30. But for now, everyone was pumped.
19
Michele called about 9:00. It took three times for me to hear her say she had gone over to Fiore’s to spend New Year’s with Donna and the kids. I put my head almost inside my jacket to block out the noise.
“How’s it going there?” she asked.
“Good, it’s pretty quiet,” I said.
“You can barely hear me,” she yelled. “It doesn’t look quiet on TV. We’re looking for you in the crowd.”
“We’re a block down from the ball. If I see a camera, I’ll wave. Is Stevie there?”
“Hold on, I’ll get him.”
“Tony!” he yelled excitedly. “Happy New Year! My mom’s letting me stay up till twelve o’clock.” He blew a horn into the phone.
“Happy New Year, buddy, it sounds like fun over there,” I said. I could hear the phone moving away from him.
“A lady came to my house that knows you,” he said, and I heard him call “What?” in the background.
“Oh, your mother came to my house. I didn’t know you had a mother,” he giggled. “She was nicer than your father, and she baked cookies.”
I laughed, “Put your mother back on.”
“I miss you, babe,” I said. “I feel like I haven’t seen you in so long.”
“I know. What time are you coming out tomorrow?”
“I don’t know, Joe tells me we’re going to his house.” I didn’t sound thrilled with the idea.
“Is that okay?”
“Yeah, it’s okay. I’ll catch some sleep and try to get out there by two.”
We talked for a couple of minutes more, saying “I love you” and “Miss you.” I disconnected the phone, and it rang two minutes later. This time it was Denise.
“Where are you?” she yelled.
“Take a wild guess,” I said.
“Times Square?”
“Where else?”
“Is it busy?”
“Not too bad,” I said. “What are you doing tonight?”
“I’m going up to Dave’s. I’m meeting Jessie and Stacey,” she said, talking about two of her friends from the neighborhood.
“Be careful. Take it easy driving home,” I said.
“I will, Happy New Year, Tony,” she said. “I love you.” “Happy New Year, Denise, I love you too.”
I put my phone back in my pocket. I heard screaming across the street at the pen on 43rd and Broadway. We saw a couple of guys going at it, their fists swinging and connecting with each other. They were belting each other pretty good until six or seven cops ran over and pushed the barrier out of the way to get them.
They pulled five males out of the pen and put them down on the ground to cuff them. As they pulled the barricade back in place, I heard it come over the radio, “We got a fight at four-three and Broadway.”
The last guy they took out before they closed the barricade took off before they could get him cuffed on the ground. He pulled loose and started running toward us. He didn’t look scared; he looked almost amused to have a whole barrage of cops chasing after him. As he made it over toward our pen, he cut to the right toward the middle of the pen. Romano, Joe, and I started running toward him. As he approached the barricade, he held up his arms over his head and did a free fall into the pen. I don’t know if he thought this was one of those concert moves where the crowd catches him and moves him along on their hands, ’cause it wasn’t. They scrambled out of the way so fast he hit the pavement with a thud and a whoosh as the air got knocked out of him.
The cops who were chasing him grabbed him by the boots and pulled him out from under the barricade that surrounds the pen. He was facedown, and when they stood him up, you could see he was wasted and feeling no pain. His face was scratched, and he had a couple of pebbles imbedded in the skin on his face and hands. He’d feel this in the morning; they always do.
By 10:00 the crowd was only screaming when the cameras hit them. Other than that, they were just trying to make it till midnight. The radio was busy with chiefs and inspectors calling to move sergeants and cops around. At one point, a chief called Central to handle a job that he was right in front of.
“Chief Roche to Central.” It was pronounced Roach.
“Go ahead, Chief.”
“I’ve got a pickup of an aided on 48th between 7th and 6th. Have someone respond here to fill out an aided card.”
An aggravated voice came over the radio and said, “You’re a cop, you fill it out.”
“Uh-oh, here it comes. This is gonna be good,” I said as the ranks descended upon the airwaves.
“Call an exterminator!”
“Help! I’m stuck on a glue pad!”
“Captain Cocker to Chief Roach.”
“Sounds like they’re swarming, I’ll be right there!”
“This is Mr. Orkin to Chief Roach.”
“We have some mouse droppings here!”
I was laughing so hard my stomach was hurting, and I could see cops all over Times Square were rolling.
“Central, mark this radio,” the chief said, outraged.
“2205 hours, Chief,” she said, indicating it was 10:05, and cut off laughing.
Someone came over with, “That’s all, folks!”
He’d never find out who said it. Eight thousand cops were at the Times Square detail, and all of them were on this channel. He should have ignored it and saved himself the embarrassment.
The chief radioed Central again to disregard his request for the aided card. He said he had someone there to do it.
The night dragged on. We had a couple of aided cases. A man had a heart attack in the pen just south of us. A kid overdosed. I don’t know if it was drugs or alcohol, but he was taken out of the pen behind us. EMS came up past us and came back with a woman in one of their fold-up wheelchairs. Her arm was in a sling and her face was bleeding. Someone said she got crushed in one of the barricades.
At 10:30 we saw an inspector with a couple of sergeants walking toward our pen with a white female. She was walking in front of them, leading the way as she pointed to us. She was good-looking, brown hair with blond streaks, blue eyes, maybe late twenties, early thirties. She pointed to the middle of the pen as Hanrahan came around from the north corner of the pen and Joe and I came around from the south. We met in the middle.
The inspector approached Hanrahan, “Hey Pete, how you doing tonight?”
“Good, Inspector, how are you? What’s going on?”
“This woman said she left your pen to get something to eat. When she tried to get back in, they wouldn’t let her back. She said she left her son in the pen and is trying to get back to him.” The woman looked a little worried. Not like some of the hysterical mothers I’ve seen who won’t stop screaming their kid’s names when we’re trying to get information from them.
“How old is the kid?” Hanrahan asked.
“He’s ten,” the inspector said.
Joe and I were standing back a little, listening to the conversation. “Joe, Tony, do you remember seeing her or her kid in here?” Hanrahan asked.
“Boss, we’ve been here all night. There’s no kids here,” I said.
“We’re gonna put it over the radio, with a description of the kid,” the inspector said. “He’s a male white, ten years old, wearing a blue jacket, blue jeans, white hat, and white sneakers.”
“No, he wasn’t here. Are you sure this is the pen you were in? ’Cause I don’t remember you being here,” I said. Maybe she got confused on where she was.
“This is where I was,” she said adamantly.
Both Joe and Nick didn’t remember seeing her either.
“We’re gonna bring her to the substation, so if anyone finds a lost child, they can bring him there,” the inspector said. They started walking down toward 43rd Street.
We asked everyone in the pen if they remembered seeing that woman or a ten-year-old child, and they all said no, she hasn’t been here. We would have remembered seeing a kid.
We heard him come over the radio, “Inspector Thompson to Central.”
“Go ahead, Inspector,” Central responded.
“At the Times Square detail we’re looking for a male white, approximately four and a half feet tall, eighty pounds, last seen in the vicinity of four-four and seven.” He gave the description of the clothes the kid was wearing.
Central put out the high priority “doo-doo-doo” signal over the citywide channel and the description of the missing child.
“How do you lose a ten-year-old kid here?” Romano asked.
Joe looked unconvinced, and I said, “There’s two possibilities here: Either someone took the kid, or there is no kid. There’s too many cops here for someone not to find him.”
Throughout the night, we’d been hearing over the radio that people were trying to break through the barriers, but nothing like we had on 43rd and 8th. Periodically we’d hear Central putting over the description of the missing kid.
Around 11:00 cops up on 57th and 8th were calling for an 85. The crowds had broken through the barriers. There was yelling on the radio for an 85 forthwith at five-seven and eight, and we heard sirens moving northbound as they started toward the break.
A series of golf carts with some big Brass shot past us on their way up. A chief called for Task Force to move north to 57th and 8th.
This would be the hour that the intensity climbed and the crowd worked themselves into a frenzy.
“Now it starts,” I said to Joe.
“Did you hear what’s going on at 57th and 8th?” Romano asked.
“Yeah, they broke through four-three and eight before while we were over there,” Joe said.
“You think it’ll start happening over here?”
“Maybe, but we’ll be alright. It’s not the people in Times Square that are breaking through, Nick,” I said. “It’s the people trying to get in Times Square.”
We listened to the action up at five-seven and eight while keeping alert to what was going on around us.
By 11:30, 57th and 8th was under control, and the mayor and Dick Clark took the stage.
Everyone was trying to listen to what they were saying and cheered
every time they paused. They also cheered when the spotlights hit them, and they cheered when the camera swung by them.
In the last half-hour before midnight the noise level was steadily rising, and we couldn’t hear each other talking anymore. Because you can’t hear over the noise, you tunnel into what’s going on around you.
At 11:40 Hanrahan came over to Romano, Joe, Garcia, and me. “Make sure you stay together and that you can see each other at all times,” he yelled. “In case anyone starts breaking through the lines, don’t run into the crowds. I don’t want you getting trampled.”
I looked into our pen. None of them looked like they would break through. As crowds go, they were pretty good.
Hanrahan walked back over to the other side of the pen, where Rooney, Noreen, McGovern, O’Brien, and Connelly were. I’m sure he was telling them the same thing he told us.
“What do we do if they start to come through?” Romano yelled into my ear.
“Just get on the sidewalk and put your back against the building,” I yelled back.
In the back of my mind I thought if there was an explosion, it would all be over. The truth is, if anything happened and the crowds broke through, we’d never be able to control them.
By 11:45 the noise reached a deafening pitch and would stay that way until after the ball dropped.
Balloons and pom-poms were all in constant motion now. There were no lulls anymore. It was all sound and movement, lights and people. The surround sound was drowned out by the roar of the crowd, and the countdown flashed on the Astro-vision screens. The lights on the ball flashed brighter now, and if possible, the crowd grew louder.
The sound became surreal, so dense it was like no sound at all. Animated faces seemed to freeze as we were enclosed into the energy that surrounded us and were caught in time.
Everyone looked like they were having the time of their lives. We were watching so that the whole thing didn’t come crashing down around us. I wanted to put my hands over my ears from the pressure, but I didn’t.