Part of my job was to keep the crowds back and under control. In the inner city, you can have a thousand people on the street in minutes in a crowded neighborhood-even in the dead of winter at 10 in the morning. All in all, the crowd was cooperative and no problem at all.
There was one guy, however, who kept pushing on the yellow-and-black plastic police line hastily strung up across 123rd Street. He even attempted to go under the tape a couple of times. He kept yelling at the guy who was barricaded.
"Listen, man! Give yourself up! It's no good! There're a thousand cops out here!" he yelled toward the building in exasperation. When I stepped over to push him back from the tape so he wouldn't break it, the smell of liquor from his breath almost knocked me over. Over the next hour the crowd watched, lost interest, and moved on. But Mr. Liquor held his spot, even though it couldn't have been more than 10 degrees out with a wind making it even colder. I suspected he had a bottle on him somewhere, but I never did see him drinking out of it. He somehow managed to stay inebriated as the morning wore on.
A sergeant from the two-eight precinct was in charge of the corner and kept warning the drunk spectator to back off from the police line and stop shoving against it. The guy was polite but drunk as a skunk, not that I've ever seen any skunks in New York City with their load on. Meanwhile, the hostage negotiating team arrived and set up their space on the other side of a radio car in front of the building. They were unsuccessful in reaching the occupant of the apartment by phone and now were using a bullhorn to encourage a dialogue while urging the man to surrender.
The guy was still yelling for the barricaded man to come out as I walked over to talk to him.
