TO THE RESCUE
Angel offers to buy gear for ‘Suicide Squad’
GW Bridge bosses only vow to build barriers
RESPONDING TO a Daily News story revealing that, denied safety harnesses, Port Authority cops cling to one another as they try to stop suicides off the George Washington Bridge, the agency promised Sunday to speed construction of safety fencing on the milelong span.
At the same time, though, the agency was less committal about equipping its heroic “Suicide Squad” cops with $40 safety harnesses, promising only to “review” the issue.
Completion of a permanent safety barrier is expected to take several years, while the cops are called on to save would-be jumpers once every four days.
The Suicide Prevention Team rescued 70 people last year, but another 12 slipped through their fingers, sometimes literally.
The lack of safety gear outraged retired FDNY Deputy Chief Joseph DiBernardo so much that he told The News he’d pay for the harnesses out of his own pocket. “It’s like sending a cop out without a (Kevlar) vest!” DiBernardo, 75, said. “Steam was coming out of my ears when I read that story.”
A standard safety harness costs $40 on Amazon.
Port Authority spokesman Joseph Pentangelo said agency brass “will review the request for harnesses and officers’ concerns.” He added that “the agency is seeking to install temporary safety fencing on the bridge as soon as possible.”
As part of a major renovation to the world’s busiest bridge, one walkway will reopen with a permanent safety fence in 2020, and another walkway will be upgraded by 2024, officials said.
Factors contributing to the cost and complexity of the project include the challenge of designing and installing a fence that is strong, yet porous enough to not strain the bridge’s steel in high winds, officials said.
A net was placed over a decade ago beneath the Munster Terrace cathedral in Bern, Switzerland, and since then, no suicide attempts have been reported, according to California’s San Jose Mercury News.
Construction on a $204 million safety net beneath San Francisco’s Golden Gate Bridge is set to begin this year.
Last month, Eugena Perlov and her daughter sued the Port Authority for failing to install protective barriers on the suspension bridge, calling it a “suicide magnet.”
Perlov’s husband, Vladimir, plunged to his death off the bridge in January 2016.
“If there were barriers, there was a great chance he wouldn’t have done it,” Perlov, 43, said.
DiBernardo, a crusader for proper safety gear, said it would be a tragedy if an officer were killed trying to save a life. His son, also Joseph DiBernardo (photo inset), was a firefighter who was severely injured when he jumped 40 feet to escape a Bronx blaze that killed two firefighters in 2005.
The younger DiBernardo struggled with his injuries, and died six years later.
Another firefighter died the same day in Brooklyn on the FDNY’s “Black Sunday.”
DiBernardo said his son could have avoided severe injury if he had been equipped with a “bailout system” for escaping through windows.
He started the Lt. Joseph P. DiBernardo Memorial Foundation, which provides safety equipment to underfunded firehouses around the country.
“We’re extremely appreciative of the Joseph P. DiBernardo Memorial Foundation offer. That’s the true spirit of first responders. We’re all looking out for each other,” Port Authority Police Benevolent Association spokesman Robert Egbert said. A Port Authority official also expressed gratitude, but said money was not causing the holdup, declining to elaborate. Egbert said cops manning the George Washington Bridge first submitted a request for harnesses around three years ago, and made subsequent requests. But he said riskmanagement officials raised concerns about them creating a “false sense of security,” and where they would be anchored.
The officers want to buy their own harnesses, but would face discipline for using unauthorized equipment.
Pentangelo noted that the PA’s Emergency Service Unit cops have harnesses.
Union President Paul Nunziato shot back: “It is apparent the Port Authority does not understand the exigent circumstances involved when one is intent on taking their life. The overwhelming majority of these incidents involve immediate patrol officer action. That action does not include the officer the luxury of asking the suicidal person to please wait for ESU.”