PINELLAS PARK, Fla. \u2014 A Pinellas Park High School resource officer who served as a New York City police officer during the Sept. 11 attacks is sharing his firsthand account.<\/p>\n
Harold Behar keeps a collection of newspapers, books and mementos from 9\/11, including glass from the World Trade Center. He uses those items as part of his annual talks with students at Pinellas Park High School.<\/p>\n
\u201cAs I look at this, it just reflects back to my time as a police officer,\u201d Behar said.<\/p>\n
Behar was 29 years old and had been an NYPD officer for about a year when the attacks happened. Before joining the police department, he served in the U.S. Marine Corps.<\/p>\n
On Sept. 11, Behar said he was on his way to his parents\u2019 house when he heard on the radio that a plane had struck one of the twin towers. He later tried to get back to his precinct to help, but the trip took far longer than usual.<\/p>\n
\u201cA typical ride that would take the NYPD to my precinct in Brooklyn was 35-40 minutes,\u201d Behar said. \u201cIt took me about three and a half hours to get in.\u201d<\/p>\n
Behar joined thousands of first responders who responded after the attacks. Now, as a school resource officer, he said firsthand accounts are becoming more important because today\u2019s high school students were not alive when 9\/11 happened.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe students get to see this in my eyes, in my view, what I saw and what I experienced,\u201d Behar said.<\/p>\n
Behar said he believes people who lived through that time have a responsibility to educate younger generations.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis was one of the worst attacks on U.S. soil, and it\u2019s up to us and people who have been there and been around during that time; it\u2019s important for us to educate the younger generation,\u201d Behar said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"PINELLAS PARK, Fla. \u2014 A Pinellas Park High School resource officer who served as a New York City…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":396420,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[13],"tags":[4996,2967,113,4628,115,596,277,202,204,203,199,201,200,135,835],"class_list":["post-396419","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-st-petersburg","tag-app-education","tag-app-public-safety","tag-education","tag-matt-lackritz","tag-news","tag-pinellas-county","tag-public-safety","tag-st-pete","tag-st-pete-headlines","tag-st-pete-news","tag-st-petersburg","tag-st-petersburg-headlines","tag-st-petersburg-news","tag-tampa","tag-vod"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/396419","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=396419"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/396419\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/396420"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=396419"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=396419"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=396419"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}