An NYPD detective whose family lineage with The Finest spans four generations hung up his badge and gun for the last time Friday \u2013 as he recalled a job he\u2019s loved since \u201cday one.\u201d<\/p>\n
Walter Harkins retired following a 33-year career with the department \u2013 part of around 150 total years of service his family gave the Big Apple \u2014 as colleagues and loved ones honored the dedicated officer with a walkout ceremony at the\u00a0Ted Weiss Federal Building in lower Manhattan. <\/p>\n
Walter Harkins was celebrated for his retirement Friday. LP Media<\/p>\n
\u201cI felt it [becoming a police officer] was in my blood,\u2019 said the 62-year-old Queens resident who was on the FBI-NYPD Child Exploitation and Human Trafficking Task Force.<\/p>\n
He started on the job in 1993, but his family history in law enforcement dates back the same year Grover Cleveland was elected president. <\/p>\n
Harkins\u2019 great-grandfather, Patrick Harkins, first joined the city\u2019s police force in 1884 \u2013 before the city had five boroughs \u2013 and rose to the rank of inspector before leaving in 1916. \u00a0<\/p>\n
His grandfather, Walter EB Harkins, began his NYPD career in 1922 until retiring in 1964 as deputy chief inspector and his late father, Walter E. Harkins Sr. was with the department between 1959 and 1998, in which he worked as a homicide detective.<\/p>\n
Walter E Harkins Sr., the father of the retiring detective. Harkins Family<\/p>\n
\u201cWell, I grew up in a police family. My father, you know, he wasn\u2019t home on weekends, or every five weeks, when I wake up, he\u2019d still be at work,\u201d Harkins, a father of two sons, told The Post.<\/p>\n
\u201cOr when I go to bed, he\u2019s not home yet.\u00a0So I \u2014 we grew up in that, in that household, I was used to it, I mean, and then my kids saw it\u2019s a culture, it\u2019s not, I wouldn\u2019t describe it as a job, and I\u2019m not knocking other people\u2019s jobs.<\/p>\n
\u201cI would like to say it\u2019s just policemen are different, and I\u2019m not saying they\u2019re better than everybody, but it\u2019s just different.\u201d<\/p>\n
Harkins started out as a truck driver, before he decided to pivot careers at 27 years old and take the test to join the department as former Mayor David Dinkins pushed to hire more cops.<\/p>\n
Grandfather Deputy Chief Inspector:
\nWalter EB Harkins. Harkins Family<\/p>\n
Three years later, he joined the department and never looked back.<\/p>\n
\u201cI enjoyed it from day one, but being older and joining the police department made a difference, because I had already had many adult jobs,\u201d he said. \u201cYeah, so you join a police department, it\u2019s just different. And I loved it. I loved it.\u201d<\/p>\n
On the task force since 2017, his days could start pre-dawn and involved hunting for a fugitive or investigating a trafficking case as part of a team of local cops and FBI officers.<\/p>\n
His two sons, Christopher Harkins, 28, and Thomas Harkins, 22, as well as his girlfriend Toni Ventrello, were all on hand as the retired cop received a hero\u2019s sendoff from more than 50 attendees.<\/p>\n
Patrick J Harkins joined the police force in the 1880s. Harkins Family<\/p>\n
While his two sons aren\u2019t cops, Christopher is a security supervisor at Madison Square Garden and Thomas works for the city\u2019s Parks Department.<\/p>\n
\u201cJust always growing up, I want to follow in his footsteps. He was first, you know, a truck driver, before he became a police officer. Now, saying, I always took an interest in on top of that, I always took an interest in public service, and so for me, the Parks Department was a great stepping stone to get into that,\u201d Thomas told The Post.<\/p>\n
Walter Harkins and his two sons and girlfriend. LP Media<\/p>\n
\u201cI got my commercial driver\u2019s license because of him. He\u2019s always something I looked up to, and I think I\u2019m following in his footsteps pretty closely.\u201d<\/p>\n
Harkins heard chants of \u201cWalter\u201d as waved to colleagues and then rode off in an old school baby-blue vintage Chrysler Plymouth Gran Fury provided by the Edward Byrne Foundation for the special moment. <\/p>\n
He called the final farewell \u201cbittersweet.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI really, I really love my career,\u201d he said.\u00a0\u201cI love the NYPD.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"An NYPD detective whose family lineage with The Finest spans four generations hung up his badge and gun…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":363975,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5122],"tags":[5229,114493,5248,405,403,5226,5225,5228,5227,5257,7207,700,67,586,132,5230,68,1154,2969],"class_list":{"0":"post-363974","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-new-york","8":"tag-america","9":"tag-generations","10":"tag-metro","11":"tag-new-york","12":"tag-new-york-city","13":"tag-newyork","14":"tag-newyorkcity","15":"tag-ny","16":"tag-nyc","17":"tag-nypd","18":"tag-police","19":"tag-retirement","20":"tag-united-states","21":"tag-united-states-of-america","22":"tag-unitedstates","23":"tag-unitedstatesofamerica","24":"tag-us","25":"tag-us-news","26":"tag-usa"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/115512760450461384","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/363974","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=363974"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/363974\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/363975"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=363974"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=363974"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=363974"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}