in. I even apologized to Sergeant Reynolds. I told him that I liked it there but I couldnât stay. He said that he understood. I wasnât the first New York City cop to do this to them. I got into the Volkswagen and drove nonstop back home. From Arapahoe County to Valley Stream in thirty-seven hours.
âNow I donât even think about what it would have been like if Betsy had come out to Colorado. I donât bring it up too often. I donât bring it up too often because that was me then, Colorado was Henry Winter. It was a hunting town where I could work as a cop. Arapahoe County was me and I left it.
Henry returned home in late August 1976, taking a job at a 7-Up plant in Mineola, Long Island. He drove a truck dispensing cases of soda pop on a route that included Queens, Brooklyn, and eastern Long Island, including some of the same streets his father had driven twenty-five years earlier while distributing beer. Henryâs boss turned out to be a gun freak who liked cops. He wanted to hear all of Henryâs stories, and Henry was only too happy to embellish. He and his boss started taking off from work early to drive to the Nassau County Police range, where they fired guns and listened to more cop stories. When the company started to lay off workers in the winter of 1977, the boss made Henry management, giving them even more time to fire guns and tell cop stories.
Henry didnât allow himself to think about Arapahoe County much. Mostly he just worked and waited. The city had started hiring back some of the laid-off cops. And then finally, in November 1978, Henry got a letter from the New York City Police Department asking him to report to the Police Academy for a two-week retraining session.
Blondie was getting his service revolver and silver shield back.
3
âIâm from Bed-Stuy. Do or die.â
âFirst I went to the academy for two weeks. Then they put me in something called the Neighborhood Stabilization Unit. We were housed in the Six-Nine Precinct on Foster Avenue in Canarsie, Brooklyn. The NSU was a new thing for rookies that was formed while we were laid off. Now they made rookie cops spend six months in NSU before assigning them to a precinct. None of the guys coming back from the layoff wanted to be in NSU. We were already cops. We knew what the game was. NSU was an insult. We all felt the same way. We came out of the academy with a class of rookies, but we werenât rookies. There were guys in my unit with three and four years on the job. So I couldnât take the Six-Nine. I was there for about a month, walking a beat on Avenue L, and I just couldnât deal with this precinct. It was a white precinct and I couldnât deal with white people. I had worked in Harlem and East Rockaway. If you arrested somebody in Harlem, they stayed arrested. If you took somebody off the street in the Six-Nine, the bad guyâs lawyer would beat you back to the station house. Then the phone calls would start. Some political guy would call your captain or a lieutenant from another precinct would get you on the phone and say, âThatâs my cousin Sal you got there. What can you do for him?â I used to wonder what the hell was going on. I wanted out.
âI had a dynamite boss there named Frank Bunting. He came from the Seven-Five out in East New Yorkâmy brother-in-law Dennis Caufieldâs precinct. One day Bunting told us, âLook, we got a foot post open in the Seven-Five on Pitkin Avenue. Itâs a badass place. Does anybody want it steady?â I jumped for it. I took care of Pitkin Avenue from Crescent and Pine to Euclid, that whole section of East New York. And I loved it there, because now I was back with the skells, the guys who, when you collared them, they stayed collared.â
For most of the next year and a half, Henry Winter walked a beat on Pitkin Avenue, swinging his nightstick, grabbing crooks and developing a reputation as an active cop. He
âNow I donât even think about what it would have been like if Betsy had come out to Colorado. I donât bring it up too often. I donât bring it up too often because that was me then, Colorado was Henry Winter. It was a hunting town where I could work as a cop. Arapahoe County was me and I left it.
Henry returned home in late August 1976, taking a job at a 7-Up plant in Mineola, Long Island. He drove a truck dispensing cases of soda pop on a route that included Queens, Brooklyn, and eastern Long Island, including some of the same streets his father had driven twenty-five years earlier while distributing beer. Henryâs boss turned out to be a gun freak who liked cops. He wanted to hear all of Henryâs stories, and Henry was only too happy to embellish. He and his boss started taking off from work early to drive to the Nassau County Police range, where they fired guns and listened to more cop stories. When the company started to lay off workers in the winter of 1977, the boss made Henry management, giving them even more time to fire guns and tell cop stories.
Henry didnât allow himself to think about Arapahoe County much. Mostly he just worked and waited. The city had started hiring back some of the laid-off cops. And then finally, in November 1978, Henry got a letter from the New York City Police Department asking him to report to the Police Academy for a two-week retraining session.
Blondie was getting his service revolver and silver shield back.
3
âIâm from Bed-Stuy. Do or die.â
âFirst I went to the academy for two weeks. Then they put me in something called the Neighborhood Stabilization Unit. We were housed in the Six-Nine Precinct on Foster Avenue in Canarsie, Brooklyn. The NSU was a new thing for rookies that was formed while we were laid off. Now they made rookie cops spend six months in NSU before assigning them to a precinct. None of the guys coming back from the layoff wanted to be in NSU. We were already cops. We knew what the game was. NSU was an insult. We all felt the same way. We came out of the academy with a class of rookies, but we werenât rookies. There were guys in my unit with three and four years on the job. So I couldnât take the Six-Nine. I was there for about a month, walking a beat on Avenue L, and I just couldnât deal with this precinct. It was a white precinct and I couldnât deal with white people. I had worked in Harlem and East Rockaway. If you arrested somebody in Harlem, they stayed arrested. If you took somebody off the street in the Six-Nine, the bad guyâs lawyer would beat you back to the station house. Then the phone calls would start. Some political guy would call your captain or a lieutenant from another precinct would get you on the phone and say, âThatâs my cousin Sal you got there. What can you do for him?â I used to wonder what the hell was going on. I wanted out.
âI had a dynamite boss there named Frank Bunting. He came from the Seven-Five out in East New Yorkâmy brother-in-law Dennis Caufieldâs precinct. One day Bunting told us, âLook, we got a foot post open in the Seven-Five on Pitkin Avenue. Itâs a badass place. Does anybody want it steady?â I jumped for it. I took care of Pitkin Avenue from Crescent and Pine to Euclid, that whole section of East New York. And I loved it there, because now I was back with the skells, the guys who, when you collared them, they stayed collared.â
For most of the next year and a half, Henry Winter walked a beat on Pitkin Avenue, swinging his nightstick, grabbing crooks and developing a reputation as an active cop. He
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