It was December of 2012 and Manhattan was on fire. Construction was nearly complete on the Manhattan Relocation Center when rebel forces striking out against the Mitchell regime launched an all-out offensive. The target was the Liberty Island Detention Center, where a number of high-profile rebel fighters were being held and the outlying camps in Brooklyn and across the Hudson in Jersey City. It was supposed to be a quick and decisive battle, which turned into a grueling nine day battle that cost millions of lives. I remember that day well, because it's the day my wife died.
Willa Sadowsky was a Sargent in the NYPD. She served for eight years in defense of the city and people she loved. On January 18th, 2012 she and nineteen other NYPD officers left their posts in refusal to serve a corrupt institution under President Mitchell. Word had gotten out that Commissioner Irons was in league with Humanis First and the NYPD was cooperating with the Department of Evolved Affairs in door-to-door raids of each and every tenement building on the island of Manhattan. Willa saw the order come down from Commissioner Irons and left that same day without notice. I remember her coming home, tears in her eyes, and telling me we had thirty minutes to pack up everything that was our lives and leave. She couldn't risk them coming for us.
Willa never let go of her badge. Though she officially left the NYPD, she never left behind the ideal of a peace officer or her goals of reforming the institution away from a history steeped in racial and genetic prejudice. Willa had experienced all sides of the NYPD's prejudice. She was an African American SLC-Expressive woman. Willa wanted, more than anything, for the NYPD to become something better. Something greater than its dark history of racist profiling and corruption. Had she lived, maybe she would have affected that change.
On December 18th, 2012 Willa Sadowsky died in the fire-bombing of Manhattan. She and twenty-seven other ex-law enforcement were evacuating civilians just off of 4th street when a Mitchell-led airstrike dropped napalm on civilian targets, fearing the vehicles breaking through checkpoints to escape the fighting held "insurrectionist fighters." She and eight hundred and sixty-eight other people died instantly in the bombing on that road. Within a matter of hours of her death the fighting and fires escalated out of control. Order broke down, the government began to collapse, and New York City died.
It's been six years since the Scourging of New York. Six years since the last NYPD officer wore their badge, and as we approach the seventh anniversary of that tragedy, that badge looms on the horizon.
Since the founding of the NYC Safe Zone, law enforcement has been handled by the 91st Military Police Battalion based out of Brooklyn Army Terminal in Bay Ridge. It was a sign of the times that law and order were maintained by the US military. But now that torch is finally being passed.
In June of 2019, the NYPD will begin service to the NYC Safe Zone (leaving law-enforcement beyond the Safe Zone still under the 91st's purview). Longtime proponent of SLC-Expressive rights and former NYC mayoral candidate, Marcus Donovan was appointed Commissioner. Commissioner Donovan has outlined a plan to both revitalize and re-imagine the NYPD as something that is a foundational cornerstone of community, rather than a corrupt and oppressive force that serves the wealthy elite.
In order to make this promise a reality, Donovan has surrounded himself with the talented and the respectable. His first order of business, the reformation of the special NYPD SCOUT unit, has garnered the most attention. SCOUT was an experimental special operations unit of the NYPD that predated the Frontline Initiative and sought to place talented SLC-Expressives together to better serve the city. While the project was scrapped in favor of the more militarized Frontline organization, SCOUT remained in Donovan's thoughts as he designed his plan to rebuild the NYPD.
Today, SCOUT will serve as the equivalent to the Special Crimes division of the NYPD and handle cases where mundane law enforcement tactics and tools are insufficient for the job at hand. SCOUT is to be headed up by Captain Oliver Wilson, a longtime NYPD officer who fought against corruption and directly undermined the anti-evolved activities of the NYPD while an officer, by covertly feeding information to the Ferrymen and their allies. Commissioner Donovan has been careful to try and surround himself with law enforcement officers who will hold both he and his administration accountable.
Only time will tell if the new NYPD will be able to shake off the burden of its past and if the dreams of people like Willa Sadowsky will become a reality.
Yorumlar