This production took us all over the great city of New York. From a 55-foot scuba launch on New York Harbor, to the cobblestone streets of the West Side, to the piers, to Floyd Bennet Airfield, to sweeping aerial passes of the City skyline aboard a custom “Huey”.

Throughout it all we never ceased to be amazed by the candor, bravery and humility of of these professionals as they so calmly cast themselves into harms way in order to aid their fellow citizens.

The piece was assembled from hours upon hours of: Original action footage and personal interviews, NYPD skycam and closed circuit security tapes as well as archived news footage of the event.

The Inside the NYPD series explores the different units within the NYPD, from the Harbor Unit, to the Canine Unit, Mounted Unit, Counterterrorism Division, and Law Enforcement Explorers.

Check back in as the adventures continue. The iTunes audio podcast of the Inside the NYPD series is #1 in the Government channel.

The mounted unit is very effective at crowd control during parades. A cop mounted 8 feet in the air atop a 1200 pound horse is enough to calm even the rowdiest New Year’s reveler. As with the K-9 unit, the horse has a way of pacifying the situation just by being there.

We asked the officers if they had ever actually conducted arrests while on mounted patrol, and the answer is usually no. On the day we videotaped, there were three officers deployed to the Times Square area, and that time was mostly spent talking to tourists. As Captain Barry Gelbman put it, it is the job of the mounted officer to be “an ambassador of goodwill.”

— Tom Small, ScribeMedia

We met officer Todd Metro, inventor of the “metroblock” (the customized concrete blocks that bar vehicles from haphazardly approaching sensitive buildings.) He gave us a tour of the facility, including the giant command center that will function as the Office of Emergency Management should some climactic disaster strike the one in Manhattan. We witnessed officers learning to use radiation detectors, and Metro also showed us a mock-up of the Ryder truck bomb that exploded inside the World Trade Center in 1993, as well as a re-creation of the bomb factory in Leeds, England that was used in the subway bombings: both are used for officer training.

The Counterterrorism division was in the news recently with “Operation Kaboom” and “Operation City Lights”, both of which involved NYPD detectives attempting to smuggle fertilizer/radioactive explosive devices into Manhattan, to test the NYPD’s ability to prevent another attack. The Counterterrorism Division detected and “apprehended” the vehicle with the radioactive isotope; However, the detectives with the fertilizer bomb were able to construct, deliver, and mock-detonate their device undetected.

— Tom Small, ScribeMedia.org

The German Shepherd is one of the most widely used breeds in a wide variety of scent work roles. These include search and rescue dog, cadaver dog, narcotics detection dog, explosive detection dog, accelerant detection dog, mine detection dog, and others.

The Bloodhound’s physical characteristics account for its superlative ability to follow a scent trail left several days in the past. Humans constantly shed skin cells, as newer cells replace older ones. Under optimal conditions, a Bloodhound can detect as few as one or two skin cells. Odors are identified by scent receptors in a dog’s nasal chambers; the larger the chambers, the greater the dog’s ability to detect skin cells.

The Bloodhound’s nasal chambers are larger than those of most other breeds. The large and long pendent ears serve to prevent wind from scattering nearby skin cells while the dog’s nose is on the ground, and the folds of wrinkled flesh under the lips and neck, called the shawl, serve to catch stray scent particles in the air or on a nearby branch as the bloodhound is scenting, reinforcing the scent in the dog’s memory and nose.