By Albert Amateau
As Detective Mike Singer walked into the Sixth Precinct Community Council meeting in the basement of Our Lady of Pompei Church last Wednesday night, a wave of applause grew into a thunderous crescendo.
Community Council members, police officers and Village neighbors rose to their feet to pay tribute to the man who had retired from the New York Police Department after 25 years — virtually all of them spent in the Village precinct and 16 of them as Sixth Precinct community affairs officer.
“I’m his 11th C.O.,” Deputy Inspector Theresa Shortell, Sixth Precinct commanding officer for the past two and a half years, remarked. “All the words that people have been saying about him tonight are deserved. He is 24/7. I’ve called him in the middle of the night — ‘Sorry, Mike, did I wake you?’ ‘Oh no, that’s all right.’ He made me love this neighborhood like he does. Without Mike’s help, we wouldn’t have had all the success that we have been having,” Shortell said at the April 25 event.
“Mike Singer knows more about the Village than most people have forgotten,” said Maureen Remacle, president of the Sixth Precinct Community Council, as she paid tribute to the man who has been the link between the public and the precinct. On behalf of the Community Council, she presented him with an engraved silver box.
Dave Poster — longtime leader of the Christopher St. Patrol, the volunteer community anticrime group that works closely with the Guardian Angels, the youth anticrime group — lauded Singer for welcoming the patrol and the Angels as part of the precinct’s law enforcement community.
Sandy Gavin, who runs the Caring Community Senior Center at Our Lady of Pompei, fondly remembered Singer’s devotion year after year in promoting the precinct’s participation in the annual Caring Community’s Thanksgiving party for seniors.
David Gruber, president of the Carmine St. Block Association, and Harry Malakoff, a Village quality-of-life activist, were among the Villagers who spoke about Singer’s service to the neighborhood.
“I’ve met many community affairs officers as an auxiliary police inspector, but Mike Singer is a gem,” said Morris Faitelewicz, a member of Community Board 3 and an inspector in the police auxiliary.
“It’s been a happy 25 years,” Singer said. “It seems like I came here yesterday. I even got to meet my wife here. I wish I could do it all over again.” His wife, Jean Guiney, a police officer whose father was a police lieutenant and whose brother is a police officer, served in the Sixth Precinct for 21 years before she retired a few years ago.
Singer was born in the Bronx and graduated from Taft High School. He joined the Navy and was in the submarine service for six years from 1966 to 1972.
“I was the oldest guy in my Police Academy class,” he said. He was 35, at the upper age limit for police recruits. “I made it by 21 days,” he recalled.
Singer’s first assignment was in the 60th Precinct in Coney Island, but in a few months he was transferred to the Sixth Precinct where he became an institution.
Officer Jimmy Alberici, previously crime prevention officer for the Sixth Precinct, took over from Singer as community affairs officer on March 31.
