From pulling a man out of rough seas to grabbing guns off the street and locking up perpetrators, the 60th Precinct had a busy summer.
For their hard work, several of New York’s bravest received “Cop of the Month” honors at the recent 60th Precinct Community Council meeting.
In the first incident, Sgt. Glenn Amico and Officer Sean Feliciano responded to a 911 call of a man in distress on the rocks off the waters of Coney Island.
Upon arriving at the scene, the officers noted nobody was in the water due to the large swells in the ocean, but noticed a man clinging to the rock jetty. So the two officers rolled up their pants, made their way along the jetty and pulled him to safety.
“He was a little scared, a little tired and bleeding from the rocks,” recalled Feliciano, who is originally from Bay Ridge.
Amico, a 19-year veteran, said from what he understood, the man tried to go out for a swim, but he grew tired from the swells and wound up getting stranded on the jetty.
The second award went to Police officers Derek Gilson and Hugh Herbert, who responded to a domestic violence call on West 36th Street.
“We figured by comments made upon our arrival that there may have been a weapon inside the residence, so we took it upon ourselves to further investigate the incident, and after speaking to someone in the house, we recovered a firearm,” recalled Herbert.
Gilson said the arrest of the gun owner and recovery of the weapon was particularly gratifying as there was a baby in the room where the firearm was found.
Officer Richard Vargas, of the precinct’s plainclothes anti-crime team, received his “Cop of the Month” certificate while working in the high-crime Impact Zone” and an anonymous call came over the phone that there was a man with a gun at the bus stop at West 24th Street and Surf Avenue. Upon arriving at the scene, Vargas was able to make the arrest and recover the gun without incident.
The last award went to police officer Diana Boliak, who while on patrol with her partner, Vanessa Hodge, answered a call of a weapon in a residence.
Upon arriving at the scene on Bay 49th Street, the two encountered a man outside the building who said he was moving out. The two noted that he fit the description of the perpetrator that came over the radio, and placed the man under arrest. Upon arriving at his apartment, they recovered an AK-47 assault rifle.
For Boliak, originally from Bensonhurst, it was his first “Cop of the Month” award.
