Amazon.com<\/a>.<\/p>\n Chronicle file photo<\/p>\n
Anthony Schembri knows how to tell a story.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen I was 14, my neighbor\u2019s uncle went missing,\u201d he said from his home in Sarasota. \u201cSo my mother said, \u2018Take her to the police station.\u2019<\/p>\n
\u201cWe got there and the people in front of us were reporting a lost dog. The lieutenant said, \u2018We will put out a bulletin. We’ll send out pictures and all of the cars will look for the dog.\u2019<\/p>\n
\u201cThen it was our turn,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
The lieutenant asked how long the man had been missing.<\/p>\n
“Twelve hours,” Schembri’s neighbor replied.<\/p>\n
The lieutenant said, \u201cWe don’t look for anybody unless it’s been 48 hours \u2014 that\u2019s our policy.\u201d<\/p>\n
In his unmistakable Brooklyn accent, Schembri said, \u201cSo I tell him, \u2018He was walking his dog at the time.\u2019<\/p>\n
\u201cI got a dirty look from the lieutenant because now he had to take the report,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
A detective overheard the conversation.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe was going upstairs and he says, \u2018Come up here, kid.\u2019 So I went \u2026 and he says, \u2018Kid, that’s pretty good. You can think on your feet.\u2019<\/p>\n
\u201cHe said, \u2018What do you want to be when you get older?\u2019 I said, \u2018I want to be a cop.\u2019<\/p>\n
\u201cSo he was typing with one finger. And I just took a course in typing. So I said, \u2018That’s the way you type?<\/p>\n
\u201cHe says, \u2018You can do better?\u2019 I said, \u2018Better than two fingers.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n
The detective gave him a report to type and then offered 14-year-old Schembri a job typing reports.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe’ll always buy you dinner,\u201d the detective told him. \u201cWe’ll buy you lunch.\u201d<\/p>\n
Schebri said he\u2019d do it for nothing \u2014 he just wanted to be around them.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey used to send a police car to pick me up,\u201d Schembri said with a chuckle. \u201cMy neighbors saw me getting in and out of a police car. They thought I was a bad kid.\u201d<\/p>\n
It was the beginning of a career that would span decades in law enforcement, lead him to become police commissioner and, years later, inspire the television series \u201cThe Commish.\u201d<\/p>\n
As a young teen hanging around cops, Schembri learned the art of de-escalation in tense situations.<\/p>\n
One night he was riding in an unmarked car with two detectives and they came upon a man with a gun pointed at his wife\u2019s head.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe\u2019s sweating and he says, \u2018Stay back, I’m going to kill her.\u2019 So one of the detectives, Johnny Burke, says, \u2018Kill her. She doesn’t mean anything to me. What do I care?\u2019<\/p>\n
\u201cI’m thinking, \u2018Wait a minute. What’s going on here?\u2019 So the other detective says, \u2018Oh, by the way. After you kill her, my partner’s going to kill you. And he’s going to get promoted. And he’s going to get a medal and a raise.\u2019<\/p>\n
\u201cSo the guy says, \u2018I’m not going to kill her so he gets promoted.\u2019 And he throws the gun down,\u201d Schembri said.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m thinking, \u2018They don’t even have their guns out. This is not the way they do it on television.\u2019<\/p>\n
I watched these detectives,\u201d he said. \u201cThey were geniuses. They had PhDs in people.\u201d<\/p>\n
Reading people, not just crimes<\/p>\n
Schembri said quick thinking and Brooklyn humor prevented a lot of bad situations from becoming worse.<\/p>\n
One day, a guy came into his office and asked how to get to the top of the building.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt was a busy office \u2014 the criminal court building in Brooklyn \u2014 but it was a slow day and my gun was in my desk,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
\u201cI said, \u2018Why do you want to go to the top of the building? He said, \u2018I want to jump off.\u2019<\/p>\n
\u201cAny man who’s going to commit suicide will take you with him,\u201d Schembri said. \u201cHe’s a dangerous guy. He’s got to be treated as such.<\/p>\n
\u201cI said, \u2018Do you have a permit to jump off the building?\u2019<\/p>\n
\u201cHe said, no. I said, \u2018Well, you can get in trouble for jumping off the building because this is a city building. You need a permit.\u2019<\/p>\n
\u201cI’m waiting for my detectives to come back so we can jump on this guy and tackle him,\u201d Schembri said. \u201cI\u2019m telling him that he had to see a doctor who’s in charge of buildings and jumpers at Kings County Hospital.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cHe says, \u2018How would I get there?\u2019<\/p>\n
\u201cI said, \u2018We have a police car going there in a few minutes. I think I could talk them into giving you a lift.\u2019<\/p>\n
\u201cHe said, \u2018How nice.\u2019 I tell him to have a seat and I call for two uniforms. They come up, and I whisper to one of them, \u2018You see the guy sitting on the couch? He’s a psycho. Take him to Kings County Hospital.\u2019<\/p>\n
\u201cI wrote him a note on my official pad to take with him asking to issue one roof-jumping permit \u2026 About an hour later, I get a call from a doctor. \u2018Are you Detective Schembri? I have a guy here. You want me to issue him a roof-jumping permit?<\/p>\n
\u201cI say, \u2018No, doctor. He\u2019s suicidal.\u2019<\/p>\n
\u201cHe says, \u2018Oh, you want me to keep him.\u2019<\/p>\n
\u201cWhat a good idea,\u201d I tell him.<\/p>\n
\u201cThat’s Brooklyn humor.\u201d<\/p>\n
Decades after that first trip to a Brooklyn police station, Schembri is still telling stories. This time, instead of around a detective’s desk, they’re told in the pages of his first novel.<\/p>\n
He never intended to write one.<\/p>\n
During law school, Schembri wrote a curriculum about corruption, which made the front page of the law journal. That caught the attention of the Russian embassy.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey called me to meet with the ambassador \u2014 they wanted to put an attach\u00e9 in my class,\u201d he said. \u201cThen they wanted me to go over to Russia and teach a similar course.\u201d<\/p>\n
While at the embassy, Schembri asked if they had any serial crimes in Russia.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey said they had just executed a man who killed 50 children over a five-year period, but he turned out to be the wrong man,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
When he left the embassy, he pulled out a yellow legal pad and outlined the plot and four main characters.<\/p>\n
The result was \u201cIn Russia: A Brooklyn Solution,\u201d a novel about an NYPD lieutenant who travels to Moscow to help solve what is believed to be Russia’s first serial killer case.<\/p>\n
\u201cSo that was my idea. My book begins where that leaves off \u2014 the search for the real killer,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
![\"Anthony](\"data:image\/png;base64,iVBORw0KGgoAAAANSUhEUgAAAAQAAAADCAQAAAAe\/WZNAAAAEElEQVR42mM8U88ABowYDABAxQPltt5zqAAAAABJRU5ErkJggg==\")
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Throughout his career with the NYPD, Anthony Schembri (right) rubbed elbows with people in high places. He’s seen here with the late Mario Cuomo, former governor of New York (left).\u00a0<\/p>\n
Special to the Chronicle <\/p>\n
Over the years, Schembri has served as a detective, police commissioner, lawyer, professor, secretary of Florida’s Department of Juvenile Justice, Citrus County administrator and, now, novelist.<\/p>\n
“I started out as a cop,” he said. \u201cI was in the prosecutor’s office and they said, \u2018You wouldn’t understand these cases because you’re not a lawyer.\u2019<\/p>\n
\u201cSo I became a lawyer. That’s how I kind of did things.<\/p>\n
“But I’ve always been a cop in my heart.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"In this Chronicle file photo, former Citrus County administrator Anthony Schembri talks about his life and career. Now…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":312470,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[36],"tags":[98,100,99,29356,1958,118167,9,24,25648,63,104,17992],"class_list":["post-312469","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-brooklyn","tag-brooklyn","tag-brooklyn-headlines","tag-brooklyn-news","tag-detective","tag-dog","tag-kings-county-hospital-center","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-city","tag-novel","tag-nyc","tag-police","tag-police-car"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/312469","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=312469"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/312469\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/312470"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=312469"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=312469"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=312469"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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