Meet the NYPD's badass female cop who trains newbies
After decades staring down danger, tough ESU 'prof' is passing on her street smarts
EMERGENCY Service cop Kimberly Zarrilli remembers like it was yesterday the night a deranged man opened fire on her through a bedroom door.
Zarrilli, one of the few women to serve with the NYPD’s most elite unit, had just responded to the scene and thought she had established a good rapport.
It was “beginning to be a successful negotiation,” Zarrilli recalled Wednesday.
“We had begun to talk to him, we were on a first-name basis.
“He had actually said he was going to come out, we were starting to negotiate how we were gonna take him out, we were gonna formulate a plan.”
Instead, he fired shots through the door, the bullets whizzing right past her.
After a short pause, she heard another shot — and then a “loud thump.”
“Unfortunately, he’d taken his own life,” Zarrilli, 43, said with downcast eyes.
She can’t help but wonder, “Where could we have gone just a little bit better on that where it wouldn’t have ended like that?”
Not all of the stories from Zarrilli’s 20-year career have the same unhappy ending, and she knows it comes with the territory.
Those highs and lows have helped Zarrilli in her current role — instructing future classes of ESU cops, with her latest crop graduating Wednesday.
AS a young girl growing up in the West Brighton section of Staten Island, Zarrilli always wanted to be a cop.
“I come from a family full of police officers. My father was a New York City detective and my oldest brother is a retired lieutenant,” she said proudly.
“Emergency Service and the Police Department is something I not only grew up with but knew I was going to do from a very young age.”
She recalls going to family picnics with her father and his brothers in blue — and was captivated by their war stories.
“That’s where I really grew my love of wanting to come here. When I came on the job, it’s the only place I ever wanted to go.”
Zarrilli got a softball scholarship to St. Francis College in Brooklyn Heights and was studying sociology and criminal justice, but knew she always wanted to join the force.
“It’s just a calling that you get and I didn’t want to pass up that opportunity,” she said.
In her last year of college, “I dropped everything and went to the [Police] Academy.”
Zarrilli cut her teeth as a patrol cop first in the Sixth Precinct in the West Village and then in the 72nd in Sunset Park, Brooklyn.
But she always had her eyes on the ESU.
She took FEMA prep courses to get ready for the interview and always tried “to be at the top of my game.”
“I wanted to show that I could be here and that I could do this work.”
WHILE Zarrilli said she has never had an issue being a woman in the male-dominated NYPD, it does come with some challenges.
On her first day with the ESU on Staten Island, she brought a 4-foot-long hero sandwich for the guys and was welcomed with open arms.
“I’m walking into a squad where these guys have all worked together now for years, so here I am walking not only into a new squad but I’m also a female,” she said.
“I think they were probably like, ‘Oh my goodness, how is this going to work out?’ . . . I think it’s the natural human reaction.”
Her wife, Natalie Maldonado, whom she met at the 72nd Precinct 18 years ago while they
Twere patrol cops, understands the struggles.
“It’s a male-dominated unit,” Maldonado said. “Any woman, in any unit, you’re going to be the minority. You always feel like you work a little harder to prove yourself. You want to make sure you can hold your own. You show you’re not afraid to get out there in the mix.”
Before starting with the unit, Zarrilli said she had to do a gut check. “You have to have a real heart-to-heart with yourself if you’re going to do this type of work,” she said. “This is very dangerous work; you can get killed. That’s just the reality of it.” HERE is an old saying in the NYPD: “When people need help, they call the police. When the police need help, they call the ESU.”
The Emergency Service Unit is where the city’s swashbuckling cops show their skills.
They rappel down the sides of buildings, kick down doors and pull people from mangled cars before the vehicles blow up.
They’re also the ones who get called when an officer’s down.
“You need to know what you’re doing,” Zarrilli said.
She would go through a mental checklist before every job, thinking to herself: “What do I have and where is this going?
“You’re going into certain situations where this person’s barricaded, sometimes they have a weapon, sometimes they don’t. They may have just shot somebody,” she explained.
“I’ve been on plenty of jobs where people have shot other family members. What do you think they’re going to think of you when you’re showing up to the door?
“My father used to say nothing’s gonna prepare you for the streets of New York and, damn, I have to tell you he was 150 percent on that. He was dead on.
“There’s just certain things you can’t unsee.”
ON the night of Oct. 29, 2012, Hurricane Sandy was dumping rain, destruction and chaos across the tri-state region. People were trapped in their homes and dying from the unstoppable forces of Mother Nature.
For Zarrilli, it was her hardest day in uniform, by far.
“People were on their roofs ... they were bringing their dogs, their kids, oh my God. People were jumping into the boats,” she remembered.
She was at one point swimming alongside a tiny rowboat in her dive suit and helping bring people to safety.
“I think searching for people was [the hardest part],” she said. “I kept saying, ‘I can’t believe that there’s a boat on someone’s front lawn, or there’s a car on someone’s house, like how did it get there?’
“I remember people’s furniture being swept out of their houses into their front yards.”
A fellow cop drowned that night in his home because she and her team couldn’t reach him in time.
“The scuba sergeant made that call not to go into the house, there was some sort of danger with the electric,” she said.
“I remember being there and them telling us we’re not going to go there.”
As emotional as the experience may seem, Zarrilli shared the story in an even tone. She has learned to leave work at work and to not let it affect her personal life.
“Once you put that key in the door to go home, you really kind of want to leave that outside world there and not bring it into your home.”
ON Zarrilli’s last day on the streets as an ESU cop in 2014, she talked a suicidal man down from the Brooklyn Bridge. She was able to get him to safety with little fanfare.
A couple of days after, she learned she was pregnant — and left the streets to become an instructor at the ESU school for the good of her family.
To her trainees, she’s a favorite. They consider her to be one of the most approachable senior leaders at the school.
“She’s one of those people that are around for anything you need,” new grad Brian Rees, 37, told The Post.
“She was a great senior leader, she’s someone you can go to for advice on anything on how you approach a job, something that’s going on with the truck or work, just a great senior person to go to.”
There were no women in his class of trainees, but the guys never gave Zarrilli trouble.
“[Training] was basically the hardest thing I’ve ever done in my life,” Rees said. “I know how hard the qualifications are to get in here, so I know if she’s wearing that patch, she earned it every step of the way.
“I just know that I want to be where she’s at so if she can give words of advice, I’m going to follow.”
Zarrilli is content with her place at the NYPD, even if she misses the excitement that comes with being in the field.
Her top priority is her wife and their 2-year-old daughter, Gabriela.
When asked if she wants her little girl to grow up to wear a badge, Zarrilli said, “I hope so.
“I hope she comes to Emergency.”