It seemed to be just another night on patrol in Times Square.
Peter Cybulski, a 2009 Riverhead graduate, was putting in his final few days at work before leaving Sunday for a week-long vacation to Jamaica.
After two and a half years patrolling some of the most violent streets in New York City, he had recently been moved to patrol Times Square – a much busier area, but seemingly less dangerous than the eastern outskirts of Brooklyn, where he spent his first few years on the force.
Little did he know that Times Square would bring him one of the most frightening moments of his entire career so far.
He and his partner, Sergeant Hameed Armani, were sitting in a parked patrol car just before 11:35 p.m. last night when a man pulled up beside them, threw a package into the car’s window, and zoomed away.
The package began to blink a flashing light. “Boss, this is a bomb,” Cybulski said to Armani.
They looked at each other and knew what they had to do.
“It was a very crowded area,” Cybulski recounted at a press conference this morning. “There were multiple children around, multiple families around. We weren’t going to let this take out other people with us.”
So Armani threw on the car’s siren – and began to drive.
“We were trying to get as fast as possible away from the crowd,” Armani said.
They prayed aloud with each other as they drove, Cybulski holding the flashing package in his lap. It was only when they were at a safe distance from the crowds that they pulled over, jumped out of the car and placed the package on the sidewalk for inspection.
The bomb turned out to be a hoax – a candle and a battery-operated lantern, wrapped in tin foil and a white shirt – but Police Commissioner William Bratton said the officers’ quick thinking and bravery last night made them “heroes.”
“They put their own lives at risk so they could save potentially hundreds if not thousands of lives of people in Times Square,” Bratton said at the press conference. “They are heroes of this department, heroes of this city.”
All clear by the bomb squad after a suspicious object was thrown at a police car. @NYPDMTN pic.twitter.com/yOsg14RTl7
— J. Peter Donald (@JPeterDonald) July 21, 2016
For Cybulski, it’s all part of his duty as a police officer.
“We come to work every day not knowing quite literally what might be thrown at us,” he said.
The man who allegedly threw the device into the car was eventually arrested many hours later, after a six-hour standoff with police at Columbus Circle.
“We are just happy no one got hurt,” Armani said. “It was a good day.”
Cybulski’s girlfriend, Brittany Rocco, called the experience her “worst nightmare.”
“It really is your worst fear when you wake up, it’s 7 o’clock in the morning and he’s not home yet,” said Rocco, who lives with Cybulski in Riverhead, where they both grew up.
But she added that she is proud of him for putting his life on the line every day for the people of New York City. “I know it’s what he wants to do. I know he enjoys helping people, and protecting people, and doing what so many people wouldn’t have the courage to do.”
“He’s made me so proud since the beginning,” she said, “but this makes me proud all over again.”
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