To Me, He Was Just Dad by Joshua David Stein

Author:Joshua David Stein
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Artisan
Published: 2020-04-15T00:00:00+00:00

Sulome Anderson is a writer and journalist based in New York City and Beirut, Lebanon. Her most recent book is The Hostage’s Daughter: A Story of Family, Madness, and the Middle East.

My Father the Hostage Negotiator

Jack Cambria

by Melissa Cambria

As lead hostage negotiator for the New York Police Department, Jack Cambria participated in thousands of hostage crises. He’s probably most well-known for John Turturro’s fictionalized portrayal of him in the 2009 remake of The Taking of Pelham 123. Over his thirty-three-year career with the NYPD, the Brooklyn, New York, native (born in Carroll Gardens in 1954) rose from beat cop to lieutenant in Sunset Park, headed up the Emergency Services Unit, and, finally, led the Hostage Negotiation Team. He currently provides hostage-negotiation training around the world and consults for film and television. He has two children, Melissa and Chris.

the day i was born, my dad was up on the Brooklyn Bridge, talking a potential jumper down. He saved the guy and then rushed over to the hospital where my mother was in labor, sirens blaring. He made it in time.

During more than three decades with the NYPD, my dad conducted more than five thousand hostage negotiations. When it came to his children, he was, obviously, a tough cookie—I never really got away with the typical bargaining teenagers do. The rules were the rules. The thing is, though, Dad was almost preternaturally calm. He rarely got ruffled. I chalk this up, of course, to his professional training.

But most of Dad’s approach—not only to his work but to us, his family—came from his Brooklyn upbringing. Dad was born in Carroll Gardens and grew up in Bensonhurst, two small family-oriented neighborhoods in New York City. He always had a sense of community. What’s more, his parents raised him to treat everyone with the same level of respect. Respect was a big thing in the Cambria household. As Dad worked his way up from being a beat cop in Sunset Park to a SWAT team leader, these early lessons really helped him. He could connect with anyone. He got down—or up—to their level and spoke to them without judgment.

I think Dad was so tired of enforcing rules all day at work that at home, he just went along with whatever Mom said. He was also really easy to talk to. He had a saying he used at work and at home: “Always talk to me. Tell me what’s going on.” I was a good kid and didn’t get into as much trouble as my friends. I made sure to always tell Dad how good I was, too.

But though Dad was calm, there were some lines we weren’t to cross. I had a midnight curfew, which, by and large, I respected. But one night, a bunch of friends and I went to a nightclub out on Eighteenth Avenue in Bensonhurst. I meant to call my dad to tell him I was going to be late, but I guess I forgot. Eleven turned to midnight and midnight turned to one and I was having a great time on the dance floor.

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