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NYPD ESU: PART 1 - YOUTUBE SCRIPT
The
saying goes, when New Yorkers are in trouble they call the police… when the police get
in trouble, they call the ESU. The Emergency Service Unit.
The men and women of ESU are the elite of the New York City police department – protecting
the nation’s biggest city from some of its biggest threats.
The Daily went along over the course of several days as they trained all over the city – on
the streets, in the water, and in the sky.
We’re with the NYC police department’s ESU out on the East River. We’re directly
below the Roosevelt Island tram system. You can see above us 75 feet in the air – one
of the cars is stalled.
We’re gonna have 110 people in here. Alright it’s gonna be crowded. You’re gonna have
women and children.
ESU officers drill constantly, to make sure they’re prepared for any emergency.
>> ERIK GERMAN: In the event that the Roosevelt Island tram stalls out in the middle of the
cable, the first challenge faced by ESU is getting to the cable car itself to help the
people inside. One of the ways they have of doing that is riding a zipline like this.
And can you explain why this is necessary to practice?
>> LIEUTENANT TIM KRUMM: What if scenario – if gets stuck over water, how will we
get them off. Especially someone who may require medical attention. Maybe they have a heart
condition // But if they need life saving interventions, they need to get out of cabin
fast.
So if people get trapped, the only way out is what you see here.
Right. You guys practice this stuff, practice this
stuff, so when the time comes to do it, in an emergency situation, it’s not new ground
for anyone involved. That’s exactly right.
These skills are useful for more than just a stuck tram.
In a hostile fire scenario, coming in from above is often the best route.
Guys, here’s the situation. We just got a 911 call. We got an officer down. He was
on a foot post. He was walking across a baseball field. Apparently, he took some small arms
fire. He went down. Our mission is to go in there and do a downed officer rescue on him.
They have three basic techniques for descending from a helicopter: being lowered by someone;
rappelling while attached to a line; and what they call fast-roping – using only your
hands and feet to slide down a rope – the most dangerous of the 3.
So the scenario they’re training for here is that this officer has been shot by a gunman
on a rooftop just behind me.
We fast-rope the team in, we provided security, we started medical interventions. There was
a threat to our front. We subdued the threat.
I need a tac medic.
He’s securing the patient and calling for a second helicopter to bring in a tac medic.
That medic is going to rappel down and he is going to be able to do even more complex
interventions to deal with the wounds that the officer has. ***
If we’re called in -- if our skills are needed, especially as Tac Medics, everything
has gone really bad.
So if someone needs an ambulance in a gunfight, that’s when they call you.
>> DETECTIVE DENNIS CANALE: Pretty much, yeah. We are the mobile ambulance in a gunfight,
yes.
This seems like a pretty elaborately specific scenario, right - a shooter on a roof, the
downed officer, the need for helicopters? Why bother even training on something like
this?
>> LIEUTENANT KENNETH BEATTY: We have to train for worst-case scenario. And probably what
you saw today was pretty much the worst-case scenario.
And why is it important to train for the worst-case scenario?
Whatever the bad guys can think of, you know, they’re probably gonna try it.
And ESU is determined to be ready.
We consider ourselves a support unit for police officers. They call us for absolutely anything
and everything and that’s what we train for -- anything and everywhere.
And the ability to save human life. I mean I don’t know how to describe it.