Cameras, signs aid in battle
said. “They’re not telling us what they plan to do. They might have a smile on their face and walk right by you, not telling you directly, ‘Hey, listen. I’m here to hurt myself.’”
Like Watson, Port Authority Police Officer Danny Rodriguez also lost someone on the bridge.
A few years back, on the night shift, he responded to a report of a man threatening to jump from the bridge.
It was pitch black on the pedestrian walkway when he got there. The jumper was dressed in black.
Rodriguez saw an outline of the man as he climbed over the railing. His back to the water, the man stared at Rodriguez as the cop reached over to grab him.
“All I remember is him falling backwards, looking at me,” Rodriguez said. “I just saw his eyes in the dark.”
If a life isn’t saved, the officers often have to participate in the grim task of recovering the bodies from the water, Nunziato said.
“Sometimes the bodies don’t look like bodies anymore,” he said.
With its dull, battleship gray metal spires, the George Washington Bridge lacks the nostalgic charm of the Brooklyn Bridge, but people flock to it, mostly for the view.
“We’re the Golden Gate Bridge of the east,” said Port Authority Police Officer Vincent Zappulla. “It’s an iconic bridge and it draws people to it.”
Sometimes, it brings people to the very top of it.
On Oct. 28, Pennsylvania resident Alberto Hernandez, distraught over losing his job, shucked off his shirt and scaled the bridge’s New Jersey tower, which officers call “the top of the steel.”
For more than an hour, Hernandez stood on the far corner of the tower, sometimes leaning on a surveillance camera as Port Authority cops and NYPD Emergency Services Unit officers talked him into surrendering.
“It was pretty frightening up there,” Zappulla said. “It was windy as heck and cold. We were afraid that the wind was going to blow him off the tower.”
Ultimately, Hernandez sat down on the ledge and began to cry.
At that moment, Zappulla knew they were going to be able to save him.
“We just kept saying to ourselves, ‘Sit down ... just sit down,’” Zappulla remembered. “And he did. Then we just knew we had to wait until he leans towards us.
“Eventually he is either going to go or he’s not. You can tell by the body language when they are not going to go,” Zappulla said. “When he started to cry and put his head in his hands ... that’s when you pounce on him. We tell him, ‘Hey, guy, it’s going to be fine. It’s going to be OK. We got you.’”
Hernandez was taken to Bergen Regional Hospital for evaluation, where he was charged with interference with transportation, defiant trespass and disorderly conduct — all misdemeanors.
When he was released from the hospital he returned to the bridge to get his belongings — and to thank the cops who talked him out of killing himself.
“He gave me a big hug ... quite a few hugs, actually,” said Ahern, who was also involved in the save.
Opened in 1931, the famed span connecting Washington Heights to Fort Lee, N.J., is the only bridge run by the Port Authority where people killed themselves last year.
No suicides were reported on the other bridges run by the Port Authority in 2016, which include the Bayonne Bridge, the Goethals Bridge and the Outerbridge Crossing — all in Staten Island.
By comparison, four people jumped from the Verrazano Bridge linking Brooklyn to Staten Island in 2016. Two others jumped from the Throggs Neck Bridge between Queens and the Bronx. The Bronx Whitestone Bridge and RFK Bridge each had one jumper last year. All four bridges are run by the Triborough Tunnel Authority.
Suicide totals on city-run bridges were not disclosed.
The city does not keep statistics of bridge jumpers, according to the city Department of Health and Mental Hygiene. Suicides from Brooklyn and Manhattan bridges and other spans are lumped into a “death from elevated position” category, which also includes those who fall from tall buildings, officials said.
Thirty-seven people jumped from the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco last year — about three times the number of people who made the fatal plunge from the George Washington Bridge. An additional 162 potential suicides were stopped by their pedestrian walkway patrol, which is similar to the Port Authority’s Suicide Prevention Team.
The Golden Gate Bridge averages about 30 jumpers a year and has had more than 1,700 confirmed suicides since it opened in 1937, according to a San Francisco Chronicle report.
Construction for a suicide barrier on the Golden Gate Bridge is expected to
begin this year, officials said.
Pedestrian safety fences for the George Washington Bridge won’t be built until 2024, following a bridge renovation project, a Port Authority spokesman said in January.
“One of the concerns we’ve heard is the aesthetics — the look going across the bridge,” Nunziato said. “They were talking about putting a net there instead. I don’t know if that means my guys will have to jump on the net to get the jumpers.”
To combat the delay, the Port Authority has the suicide squad.
It also installed surveillance cameras that are constantly monitored and six crisis hotline phones on each of the pedestrian walkways so suicidal people can get connected with a crisis counselor. There are also 42 signs (above) — 21 on each side of the bridge, encouraging suicidal people to seek help, officials said.
Experts agree that the best way to stop people from committing suicide is to reduce “lethal access” — spots where people can jump from or hurt themselves — and take preventative steps before troubled people even get to the bridge.
“We have to get people at earlier stages of risk,” said Alan Ross, executive director of Samaritans Suicide Prevention Center. “If they get to the bridge, that’s a symbol of a need for greater prevention.”
The city owes the George Washington Bridge’s Suicide Prevention Team “a debt of gratitude” for stopping the suicide attempts, he said.
“These guys have a tremendously challenging task to feel that they have the responsibility to save people’s lives,” said Ross. “But we have a saying: You don’t save a person’s life. You help them get through a moment.”
Zappulla and his fellow officers know that even if they save someone from dying, two or three weeks later they may return to complete the job — an emotional reality that is hard to grasp.
Although the Port Authority does provide counselors for the cops, most just compartmentalize the grief and set it aside.
“You put it in its place,” Zappulla said. “You put it in a box because the next day it could happen again.”