By Albert Amateau
Volume 76, Number 27 | November 22 – 28, 2006
State Assemblymember Deborah Glick presented the Cop of the Year Award to Sixth Precinct Officers Keith Ferguson, center, and Anthony Burgio.
Chamber honors police officers for outstanding work
The Greenwich Village-Chelsea Chamber of Commerce on Wednesday honored four officers from three police precincts covering Chelsea, the Village and the Gramercy-Flatiron neighborhoods with Cop of the Year awards.
Two officers in the Sixth Precinct, covering the Village, were named Cop of the Year. Keith Ferguson and Anthony Burgio responded to a call at the end of 2004 that a man wanted for murder and carrying a 5-year-old girl was in the W. Fourth St. subway station.
They searched the station, spotted the suspect, Jeffrey Mitchell, and his daughter, 5. Ferguson and Burgio rescued the girl and arrested Mitchell, who earlier that evening had shot James Young to death while he was sitting in a car in Ozone Park, Queens, with Mitchell’s wife, Hope Perkins, and the girl. Mitchell was convicted of second-degree murder and second-degree kidnapping and received a 25-year prison sentence.
In the 10th Precinct, which covers Chelsea and the southern part of Hell’s Kitchen, Sean Conlon, a precinct officer since 1988 and member of the precinct’s Community Policing Unit since 1991, was named Cop of the Year.
Over the past year, Conlon was responsible for 60 arrests, one of them on an open warrant for a suspect wanted in a homicide 23 years ago. During his entire N.Y.P.D. career, Conlon has made 1,200 arrests.
In the 13th Precinct, which extends from 14th to 29th Sts., between Seventh Ave. and the East River, Matthew Hart was named Cop of the Year. The arrest that earned him the award came when he was alone in a patrol car on the midnight shift and spotted a car running a red light at 21st St. and Fifth Ave.
Hart tried to pull the car over but the driver sped down Fifth Ave., with Hart in hot pursuit, into the Village where the suspect lost control, struck another car and drove on until he hit a lamppost. Four men jumped out of the car and Hart chased one of them after radioing a description of the others to the Sixth Precinct. Hart caught one suspect; police from the Sixth Precinct arrested two others after they boarded a cab. The suspects had just robbed a victim at gunpoint and two loaded guns were found in the car they had abandoned.
Assemblymember Deborah Glick, State Senator Tom Duane and Manhattan Borough President Scott Stringer handed out the awards.
