Robert Harnischfeger: NYPD

Robert Harnischfeger MPA 2002 didn’t grow up wanting to be a cop. Like many baby boomers, Harnischfeger formed his opinion of the police and military during the Vietnam and Watergate eras, assigning cops and soldiers to the “not to be trusted” category. Yet soon after graduating from college with a degree in psychology, he knew that police work could offer him opportunities few careers could.

“The New York City Police Department (NYPD) needs just about every talent imaginable,” says Harnischfeger, a native New Yorker, “whether it’s art history in terms of art theft, or biology and medicine in terms of forensics.”

Becoming a police officer is a decision he’s never regretted. In the last 20 years, he’s been a street cop, an undercover agent, and assistant to the highest-ranking uniformed police officer in the department, moving through the ranks, from cop, to sergeant, to lieutenant, and soon to captain — a promotion he expects to receive shortly.

Through the years he’s been most impressed by his colleagues — people who put their lives on the line with little fanfare. One particular incident brought this into sharp focus. As a young police officer, Harnischfeger was called to an address where a young man was holding his family hostage with a knife. Afraid there was going to be a shooting, Harnischfeger summoned the Emergency Services Unit, a special division within the NYPD that handles emotionally disturbed persons.

“They came in with bulletproof shields and a device that looks like a fork. I gave them a blueprint of the room where the man was. They opened the door to the room, walked in, and pinned him to the wall with this device. Then they disarmed him, put the cuffs on him, and walked out. They took my handcuffs and said ‘He’s yours, kid.’

“They did this all within maybe six, seven minutes and went on to the next job. There was no shooting, no loss of life, no injury to anybody. They just walked out. I was shocked. They got no credit for saving lives, but they had just saved several. They do that several times a week, and nobody ever sees it.

“When cops make mistakes — and they do — unfortunately there are tragic consequences, and that makes headlines. But day to day, I believe most cops perform their jobs compassionately and professionally, and that doesn’t make the headlines.”

A good way to understand what cops do, he says, would be to sit in the backseat of a patrol car for a tour and see what happens. “You wouldn’t see ‘NYPD Blue,’ but NYPD,” he says. There’s no script, it’s whatever calls come in. They’d see, he says, that a lot of police work is assisting people. It’s not chasing after bad guys. There’s a significant service component to policing that people don’t see: lost children, lost adults, vehicle accidents, medical emergencies.

He’s deeply moved by the colleagues who lost their lives on September 11. Harnischfeger recently listened to tapes that made it clear that many of the police and firefighters knew the danger they were in. “I thought at first, that maybe they were unaware that the towers were going down, just as I would have been,” he says, “but I found out that wasn’t the case. On the tapes I heard, ‘Get out, get out. They’re going down.’ Yet a lot of them remained, knowing. It put the incident in a different light for me. It’s a tremendous sacrifice.”

The tragic events of September 11 could result in an increase in community support and trust, he says.

“A lot of police work is based on cooperation between the community and law enforcement. It’s sort of connected to what I said about those emergency cops. They do this every day, and nobody ever sees it. Now people have seen what police do. This support could translate into significant improvement in police/
community relations.”

—Sarah Abrams