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Memo to Special and Senior Special Officers of the NYC Health and Hospitals Corporation (HHC) Hospital Police

Part I: HHC Hospital Police a start for a novel.

Winter: 2013

Twitter Point: I have been out of the HHC Hospital Police for at least 17 years. Most of the people I know should be retired by now. It is a fair question to ask: do I really have something to say that will resonate with the current HHC Hospital Police? I only ask that you read what I have to say and then you can judge me as to if there is anything of value in what I have written. But please don't ignore me. I was a member of the Hospital Police for almost 20 years. I deserve better than the lack of response I have received.

   Before I get started, I need to make it clear that I am not going to avocate getting out of Local 237.  This doesn't mean that I am in love with Local 237 or have been paid to do PR work for your union.  Your current president is a decent fellow who I first met when he was promoted to senior special officer. Is he a politician? He was one when I first met him and I am sure he is better at it today.  Yes, he is president of all the job titles in Local 237, so he has to balance your needs in relation to all the needs of the other job titles in Local 237. That also includes some of the people that you may have to arrest someday. If you are a supervisor that also includes some of your subordinates who you may have bring up on charges. And yes your dues help pay for your subordinates defense.  Have the members of the peace officer titles gotten as much out of your president as they wanted? Of course not, if you want to know how you can get more out of your union you have to read Hospital Police future.  

    But, I would rate him much higher than my first Local 237 president, Barry Feinstein, who assented to his throne using family connections, and as far as I know never worked a day in any of the local's job titles. If his father wasn't the first president of your union would he have become president?  I doubt it. If I had written a similar memo to Barry Feinstein,  I would have had Corporate Security call me in for a meeting and later transfer me to Woodhull Hospital (Well actually, that part did happen after I became involved in a newspaper about peace officers) During the early period of my novel Local 237 as well as their International union were a pretty arrogant bunch. The few times I saw a business agent they would spend most of their time with the Director of Security. When I was a part of central office, it was easy to see that the Corp. Security Director, and his subordinates were terrified of the Teamsters union. One thing I believe. The union was much more democratic after Feinstein left.

         If there is anything, I can do that will benefit Special and Senior Special Officers, then you can count on my help. The other thing I need to say is that I am trying to sell my novel.  And I want to write that second book that puts the Hospital Police front and center, but I'm not the type of person who writes just to write. So far I am pretty disappointed by the lack of response I have gotten from the members of the Hospital Police. One thing is certain if I can't get support from the Hospital Police than my novel will surely be a failure. If you can't read the dedication I have written before the novel starts and not feel pride as a member of the Hospital Police than I guess it's not the same Hospital Police I knew and maybe I need to close up and fade away.

 

   This novel is only partially about the HHC Hospital Police, but the main character is someone who has had a career in the HHC Hospital Police and there is a major scene(ripped from the headlines, of course) in a HHC Hospital.   I could have easily made him an NYPD detective. I had different reasons for giving him a HHC Hospital Police background; but the main reason was what happened after people asked me what I did for a living. I would always answer that I am a peace officer, because I was proud of what I did. The next question would be. Where do you work and I would always answer. I'm a Hospital Police officer or sergeant or captain depending on my rank at the time. When I became a captain the one answer I never told them was 'Hospital Security Officer'.  The person who asked the question would reflect on my answer for a brief moment and then give the usual response: ‘Oh you are a security guard. Naturally, my answer to their response was always intense and informative. If you read my novel, you will also see that the main character gets extremely agitated by the security guard reference. My main character as well as myself was forged from the almost 20 years in the Hospital Police. So yes, this lack of response from members of the Hospital Police, I am taking it personal.

   

   If you are a member of the hospital police or one of the other special officer or senior special officer titles, then you know that is a common response, especially among the media. Well anyway my character a flawed person with a Hospital Police background, rolls into high gear around the middle of the novel and becomes a pulp fiction detective and adventure hero. Maybe some other author has used Hospital Police as a background, but I have never seen such a book. I am asking that you give my novel a chance. Will you look at the hospital part of the novel as pure fantasy or pretty much the way it was at the time? Either way, I would love to get some feedback.( For a limited amount of time if you buy the novel via Amazon, I will refund the cost of the novel.)

           

    Around Chapter 9, the novel gets to the part about the hospital police. There is a pretty violent scene that happens in the hospital, and the main character gets hospitalized and later is visited by John Rodriguez. John Rodriguez was modeled after a HHC Hospital Police Sgt., even though I didn’t meet this person until a year or two later. John Rodriguez in the novel was one of the leaders of the get out of the union movement.   The main character has some unkind things to say about the union; this was where his head, my head and a lot of other peoples heads were at the time. Although the get out of the union drive like the other drives before it was pretty much a pre-ordained failure,* some good did come out of it such as the NYS Peace Officer’s bill and the realization that the union had to pay some attention to the professional aspirations of some of their members. One of whom later became its' president and probably will become its next major. [You know who you are and count me in as a contributor for your campaign]

 

               

   My first novel made it clear there was going to be a second novel.  In the second novel which takes place in the late 1970s, the main character becomes involved in the movement to get out of the union. Since he has plenty of money the main character pays for the buses to the protest demonstrations and even provides some good meals afterwards. He even hires a public relations firm so everything is publicized to the hilt. Like the early part of the first novel, the main character thinks he knows what is going on but fails to see the big picture. Eventually, one of the characters from the first novel, a Hospital Police Sgt., gets murdered and framed for the murder of the executive director in the hospital he works for. After a short investigation, the main character finds his friend was murdered after he finds out something that he wasn’t supposed to find out. The ensuing investigation leads to a grand conspiracy involving people from the city government, a rich businessman and a low-level  employee of your union who is looking to make money. In the end, the main character finds out that not only was the union not behind the conspiracy and his friend’s murder, but would have suffered a devastating loss had the conspiracy succeeded. Basically, the conspiracy was about getting rid of the union’s Hospital and Welfare Police and replacing them with contract guards. The rational would be that these officers are an unnecessary expense, because if something really bad happened they could call the NYPD. Of course, there is a deeper and sinister purpose why this group is looking to replace the peace officers (Will have to buy the second book to find that out.)

           

    As you know there is some factual basis for the plot. Under the right circumstances, such as a group of officers looking to get out of the union, the stage would be set for such a move to suceed.

  

   If the person reading this page is a get out of the union and replace it with a PBA supporter, I certainly understand where you are coming from. I once held the same viewpoints when the last and best drive to get out of the union occurred. The hard truth is that getting out of a powerful union who can use the law and politicians to keep its members is a difficult task.  My advice is to refocus your energies toward pressuring Local 237 into making the Hospital Police the number-one  force in any hospital in this country.  The one thing I know about unions is that unions are not geared toward making an emergent  law enforsement fullfill its potential. What a good union can do is get you the best deal possible once you have proved you are better than what the government is paying you.

 

 

  Please let your elected officials know how you feel. Copy and paste your Comments on to their web pages.  

http://www.house.gov/representatives/

 http://www.senate.gov/general/contact_information/senators_cfm.cfm

http://www.whitehouse.gov/contact

If you have a web site please list your site's url. It is a good way to improve your SEO via links from other sites. Also if people like your content they may click on your site and like your site's content. If you are a author, maybe they might even buy a copy of your novel.

 

 

Hospital Police HHC

If you order my book from Hemingway Direct on my Amazon page, I will give a $10 refund toward the cost of the book to the first 40 customers who write a review on my Past Twilight Amazon page.