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Let me start by saying that the way I convinced those three sergeants of mine back in 1992 to sit down and really spend the time revealing our world to Dr. Marans and opening themselves up was by having a long heartfelt conversation with them, and then giving them overtime to do it. I have always wondered which one compelled them more!
I am happy to be here, in part because I grew up a few blocks from here. I got a chance to come home today and walk by the old house of mine, which is now a condo where they would not let me in the front door. Manhattan has changed! I am also happy to be with my friend Steve Marans today. He has been keeping this work alive since long before it was in vogue and long before anyone was really thinking about it or talking about it, or most importantly in your world and mine, being funded for it. I’m an old American Police chief. It is hard to say that just a few blocks from where I grew up as a kid. I did not grow up to be a police chief. My father was a doctor, and my mother was a child psychologist. I went to law school; I was a prosecutor here in New York. I had an internship working for the cops. I had never met one, not the right way. And now these eyes are old. I’ve been an American police chief for 22 years, in four American cities, and I’ve been back in New Haven for the last two years.
So what was the body count in Afghanistan and Iraq last night? Do any of you know? Do you remember when we grew up there was a body count in Vietnam and Walter Cronkite would tell us the body count every night in that deep voice of his? That was many, many wars ago; many, many presidents ago. The wars are always undeclared, and presidents don’t take credit for them and they can’t be called “a war,” but to the friends whose children are dying in uniform, I think they’re “a war.” The body count last night was nothing. Sometimes it is one or two. If it is a Blackhawk helicopter that goes down, it is seven. What was the body count in America last night?