{"id":283540,"date":"2026-09-11T05:58:07","date_gmt":"2026-09-11T05:58:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/283540\/"},"modified":"2026-09-11T05:58:07","modified_gmt":"2026-09-11T05:58:07","slug":"former-philadelphia-police-crime-scene-investigator-recalls-9-11-aftermath","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/283540\/","title":{"rendered":"Former Philadelphia police crime scene investigator recalls 9\/11 aftermath"},"content":{"rendered":"

As the nation marks 25 years since the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks<\/a>, a former Philadelphia police officer is reflecting on his time at ground zero and the memories that continue to stay with him.<\/p>\n

John Taggart was among about a dozen Philadelphia police officers sent to New York City in the aftermath of the attacks.<\/p>\n

A former crime scene investigator, Taggart was tasked with documenting the devastation and assisting recovery efforts at ground zero.<\/p>\n

Today, his Roxborough home serves as a personal museum dedicated to Sept. 11. Among the items he has preserved are the hard hat he wore at the site, a World Trade Center subway sign and hundreds of photographs he took during the response.<\/p>\n

The images document both the scale of the destruction and the police officers and firefighters who worked alongside him in the days that followed.<\/p>\n

READ MORE | Philadelphia firefighters reflect on ground zero mission 25 years after 9\/11<\/a><\/p>\n

25 years later, Philadelphia firefighters remember responding to ground zero<\/p>\n

Excavation and recovery were the primary missions as responders searched for evidence and human remains.<\/p>\n

“You could tell almost immediately,” Taggart recalled. “The first time you turned off, I don’t know what street it was… you were like, ‘There’s no one alive.'”<\/p>\n

He said the destruction was unlike anything he had ever witnessed.<\/p>\n

“I don’t remember seeing any glass, any telephones, any computers or anything like that,” he said.<\/p>\n

Taggart also remembers seeing personal belongings scattered throughout the area.<\/p>\n

“There were shoes everywhere,” he said.<\/p>\n

According to Taggart, his team was among the first law enforcement personnel from outside New York to reach ground zero.<\/p>\n

“Apparently, we were the first outsiders to actually get to ground zero, and it was only five of us,” he said.<\/p>\n

Many of the first responders he worked with in New York have since died from illnesses linked to exposure to dust and debris at the site.<\/p>\n

Taggart said one of his biggest concerns is that another tragedy like Sept. 11 could happen again.<\/p>\n

“You know it’s going to happen again,” he said. “It’s surprising that it hasn’t.”<\/p>\n

Today, Taggart works for Action News as a weekend overnight assignment editor.<\/p>\n

Although he spent 32 years with the Philadelphia Police Department and witnessed countless major incidents, he said nothing compares to the events of Sept. 11, 2001.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"As the nation marks 25 years since the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, a former Philadelphia police officer is…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":283541,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[69,71,70,110854,118248],"class_list":["post-283540","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-philadelphia","tag-philadelphia","tag-philadelphia-headlines","tag-philadelphia-news","tag-sept-11","tag-taggart"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/283540","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=283540"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/283540\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/283541"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=283540"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=283540"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=283540"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}