Seven Shots

On July 31, 1997, a six-man Emergency Service team from the NYPD raided a terrorist cell in Brooklyn and narrowly prevented a suicide bombing of the New York subway that would have cost hundreds, possibly thousands of lives. Seven Shots tells the dramatic story of that raid, the painstaking police work involved, and its paradoxical aftermath, which drew the officers into a conflict with other rank-and-file police and publicity-hungry top brass. Jennifer C. Hunt draws on her personal knowledge of the NYPD and a network of police contacts extending from cop to four-star chief, to trace the experience of three officers on the Emergency Service entry team and the two bomb squad detectives who dismantled the live device. She follows their lives for five years, from that near-fatal day in 1997, through their encounters inside the brutal world of departmental politics, and on to 9/11, when they once again put their lives at risk in the fight against terrorism, racing inside the burning towers and sorting through the ash, debris, and body parts. Throughout this fast paced narrative, Hunt maintains a strikingly fine-grained, street-level view, allowing us to understand the cops on their own termsand often in their own words. The result is a compelling insider's picture of the human beings who work in two elite units in the NYPD and the moral and physical danger and courage involved. As gripping as an Ed McBain noveland just as steeped in New York cop culture and personalitiesSeven Shots takes readers on an unforgettable journey behind the shield and into the hearts of New York City police.

Jennifer C. Hunt is a sociologist and professor at Montclair State University. She spent four years doing fieldwork among police in uniformed patrol and later worked in the NYPD as an assistant to the deputy commissioner of training. She has written police department training materials, as well as a book on ethnography.