NYPD officer on way to promotion keeps jumper off tracks

Walter T. Warkenthien had just arrived at Penn Station in Manhattan on Friday morning and was on his way by subway to pick up his NYPD dress blue uniform for his promotion to detective when he saw something that he didn’t like. An apparently emotionally disturbed man with a backpack sat at the edge of a subway platform, his feet dangling over the edge and looking like he was ready to jump.

Warkenthien, who lives on the South Shore of Suffolk County, approached the man who said, “I am going in, I am off my meds.”

“All I could think was tracks, tracks, tracks,” Warkenthien, 28, told reporters.

A quick-thinking Warkenthien pulled the man back from the edge and along with other Good Samaritans held him until rescue personnel could take over at the 86th Street and Lexington Avenue station. Then, Warkenthien went to the 23rd Precinct in East Harlem and dressed for the ceremony at police headquarters, where nearly 150 officers were awarded the rank of detective.

During the ceremony, Commissioner James O’Neill gave Warkenthien, whose namesake father and late grandfather were also NYPD detectives, a special shout-out.

“He did what NYPD cops do,” said O’Neill. “It is all in a day’s work.”

After his promotion, Warkenthien said he could think of nothing better than being a cop.

“I love it, you can put me at a corner with a traffic cone . . . I love to come to work,” Warkenthien said as Amy, his beaming wife of two years, looked on. He will be assigned to the 23rd Precinct detective squad.

Also promoted and praised by O’Neill was officer Jose Ayala, who pursued and ultimately shot dead the man who police said assassinated Det. Miosotis Familia as she sat in a police van in the Bronx on July 5. O’Neill also made special mention of two other new detectives, Diara E. Cruz and Patrick J. Espeut, who were wounded in a 2016 shooting in a Bronx housing complex.

By Anthony M. DeStefano

tony.destefano@newsday.comtonynewsday

Anthony M. DeStefano has been a reporter for Newsday since 1986 and covers law enforcement, criminal justice and legal affairs from its New York City offices.