Previously on Heroes Behind the Badge, chief Joe Morris shared his

firsthand account of 9/11 mobilizing from LaGuardia, arriving at ground zero and

surviving the collapse of the South Tower.

By the end of that morning with the superintendent and other

chiefs lost inside the towers.

Joe found himself the senior surviving officer, designated to command the

Port Authority police response.

In part two, Joe continues his story.

We'll hear how he led through the recovery operation, the proudest and most tragic

moments of his career, and how he helped rebuild both a department and the lives

of the men and women who served under him.

So at 11:30 AM.

after the ta, this is a couple hours now after the towers have collapsed, chaos

still, ongoing at the site, obviously.

What were the first actions you took?

that's a, great responsibility at a time of chaos at, time of tragedy.

what, what did, were you thinking?

What did you do?

when I got after the first, South Tower came down and getting back.

I thought of words from 1993 because I responded with Chief Knox, who was the

chief operations officer at the time, and I said to him, chief, what do you do now?

And he said, Joe, you gotta look at this like it's a tidal wave.

Our job is to survive and to bring order to chaos.

And that's, it's getting, pushing, myself off the floor, the bus.

That's what was in my mind.

Order to chaos.

So the first thing is to get who we had left, who was coming out of the

dust, where to go, and we settled.

We went a further couple blocks north after the second tower.

Because you had the, again, to get people together.

We met at the, Manhattan Borough Community College was located there.

They had a small auditorium where Port all Port Authority people came in.

It was loud, it was cops and people from all over.

And at that point I raised my voice and I said, whoa, enough.

Sit down.

We gotta get together here.

And what I told them to do, break up aviation tunnels and bridges.

Civilian, from the financial break into your groups because

we gotta get, get this in order.

So that was the first.

Then with the police, I went out on the street, I saw Chief Hall and

Bob Belfi inspector, and I said, we're gonna move up to the, the, the,

college's gymnasium because it was open.

He actually had doctors there and nurses setting up.

But we went in and I, it was a great location because it had seating.

It was out, it was parking and it had bathrooms and water and everything

we needed so that, and it was a central place we could get people in.

So you are talking to about one o'clock people.

We finally gathered maybe 300 cops when the buildings came down.

What Authority?

Police, and the response had 400 police officers down there.

I could think so we had.

disappearing.

So I, we started, then again, you asked why I had the detective

sergeant with me, Tony Fitzgerald.

I said, Tony, get your detectives who come here and I want you to

go get somebody over the morgue.

And somebody, I had heard that the city had set up a command post up here, 92.

So we sent somebody up there.

I sent the detective over to,

the New York Police.

Headquarters they had set up, they have on their floor.

They had a command post.

Actually at one point before 1130.

I actually drove over there with two, two detectives and put a detective over

there to see what was going on, because I knew we needed a presence there.

So we had a presence there.

Then I drove back.

That's when I, you talk about things.

I went to get my car where I had parked it.

My car literally was incinerated.

The only thing left was the steel.

Even the rubber tires were burned off of it.

Just the steel, no paint That, that caught my attention, I guess so because, so that,

that's, the things that you come back.

So I went back to the, gymnasium and that, that's when 1130 I was designated,

so I started breaking down the cops.

I told them.

The only, get me all the officers here that had emergency

service, trained, qualified.

Of course we had some trucks, so we got them together and in my

mind, those were the only officers that were gonna go down there.

It was just you.

You just couldn't send cops, the way they were dressed, it was

just smoke and everything else.

Plus, you have to remember, building seven was still up.

Burning was just north of the complex.

The city, when they put their er, they made their, OEM offices there.

They put a 500 gallon tank of diesel in the building.

Oh.

And that caught fire.

And that building was going on, and you couldn't get close because we knew

it was gonna collapse and it collapsed at five 30 at night, came down on it.

So you had all kinds of things like that.

Joe, you were at the, at your CP at your command post there

at the university, and then as days passed along, did you incorporate a

multi-jurisdictional command post where you all centralized together and, worked

in unison, or did you still just have

no.

What happened late that afternoon or in the afternoon?

Again, this the city, OEM and actually the fire department had

the jurisdiction of leadership for all of this because of fire.

So that big tent was set up at the, and West Street, big 10 at a big

tent, and that was a command center.

on the eastern side was Broadway, was the border.

It went up, the Canal Street was the northern border.

The Hudson River was the west border, and I believe, I'm trying to think,

the street of the South, it was three or four, four blocks south of that.

That was the zone.

Nobody could come in.

The National Guard was designated by the governor.

the fire department,

was, the lead for rescue recovery and to, create it.

It wasn't that first day, but going towards the second

or third day because of the.

There's only so

much you could do with hands and pails.

They had to get heavy

equipment in.

I remember that w when I was working that, a number of people

from my department went there, as did so many others, and I was just curious

how that was coordinated as a central command as far as where they could

go or who they were assigned with or what their daily functions would be.

They really hooked up with a department, NYPD or us.

or, the fire department.

And that's why like we had New, Jersey State Police wanted to volunteer.

We, we, gave them cover that only lasted for maybe two weeks, right?

Then we said, thank you very much, but it's time for our crews to do right.

So that even that day going forward, I, I had my pick of who I wanted

the lieutenants to work for me.

The sergeants in ESU, in the ESU, like I say, ESU, were the only ones I let down.

That first day, I actually sent cops home around four o'clock, four 30.

I had them sit on the bleachers and I told 'em, look, you wanna go there to work?

I'm not gonna allow it.

I want you to go back to the com, go, back to the commands, go home and get sleep.

Because you're gonna be working a lot of overtime in the months to come.

Yeah.

Yeah.

How many days, How many days after, after 9/11

before you actually went home?

I could, I, I went home that night around, I, at, I left there

around I guess nine o'clock at night.

I went over to the command center over at Journal Square TransPortation Center.

I went home.

And again, I, I never called home.

I, always told my wife, bad news travels fast.

I got home around, I guess quarter to 12 and my sons were there and,

about three or, both of them had graduated college, one of my older.

So there were guys there in their early twenties that they grew up with.

That was, wonder, whatcha doing?

I went home, I woke up at, 3 30, 4 o'clock, and I went back to work five

o'clock in the morning going command post.

So part of the decisions we made with Tom Farrow was the staffing.

What we did was, again, knowing, knowing the contract, it was deemed

an emergency ordered overtime so that there was no days off.

You work 12.

Everyone's gonna work a 12 hour tour, at your normal tour and four hours

overtime and you are your days off.

You were working 12 hour tours, your vacations, you came in work,

you got paid, but you worked.

That's how we covered that Lasted and no days off, right?

No days off.

So I wanna, I want to ask you, because it's, it, I had a similar

experience in 1993 when Hurricane Andrew, struck South Miami Dade County,

and at that time in this nation, it was the worst natural disaster in

the history of the United States.

And it was the same kind of thing.

We went on to Alpha Bravo shifts.

I, we, worked.

18 hour days for six months straight.

But there's always that aha oh shit moment.

And that was what I was getting at when I asked you about when you first went home.

more so in, I guess digging in more specifically is when you had your

first moment of, just quietness your me first, me moment where you could sit

and reflect on this and say, holy shit.

How this just changed not only so many people's lives and so many people

perished, but how it changed you?

To be quite honest with you, it was probably the Friday morning

following it going to work because you were down there, the smells and

the debris, you can't even describe the how gruesome it was, but just the

carnage of people and property persons.

And, the Thursday the weather wasn't great and Friday we had the

president coming and I literally, on the way in driving, I was stopped.

And I remember I stopped at a light when you get off Route three to

go towards the Holland Tunnel on.

the, road, there was a light there and I said, God, how

am I gonna get through this?

And then I thought of my dad who did 32 months overseas in North Africa, Sicily,

D-Day Cherbourg, the Battle of the Bulge.

I said, if he's gonna do it, he watch over me.

That was the first time it really hit me.

Otherwise, it was business to do.

I had things to do.

I couldn't ref, I didn't have time to reflect on that kind of stuff.

Yeah.

So what was, your most proud moment and then your most tragic moment?

When we finished, when the job was done, that was my most proud moment.

The closing ceremony, actually, I have a picture on the wall over me.

I'm standing with Joe Esposito, the chief of NYPD, chief of the

department, and Tom Purtell, who was chief of their, ESU together there.

And that was the proudest just before the closing ceremony there,

because what we achieved with them,

how long ago was that, Joe, after the attacks?

That was the closing was in May, may 20.

May the attacks September, the closing in May.

Wow.

That was the proudest.

The d the day that really affected me the most is the lieutenants that I picked.

And the other two key thing that I did was that I took two of the most

hardheaded lieutenants that I knew that, you had tr they wouldn't,

they were independent and but I knew that would represent the PAPD’s.

Billy Keegan worked midnights at the tent.

John Ryan, who he, I could tell you, he, he is one big, I hate to,

ballbuster and I put him there because I knew he was gonna do it right.

and I told them, look, I'm not gonna be making a lot of decisions here.

Here's what I want our department to do.

And they understood me for having worked me.

I'm not gonna be o over everything.

You make the decisions and you come back and if I don't like it, I'll let you know.

But that was the key decisions though.

Two, those two people because we didn't get short change in representation

because there in the first weeks there, the fire department, you needed to

get a pass to go and I said passed to get in and then so that way NYPD and

they, it was butting heads, believe me.

The Port Authority I always thought was like Switzerland.

We would, get the between them and try to get the best deal

outta it most of the time.

So that's the, that, that's the kind of stuff there.

The most tragic Craig was at, Saturday morning in February, following

February, where the debris got down to almost the basement and it was

the, stairway that we last placed.

Jimmy Romito and Captain Kathy Mazza.

And it was Officer Walter Lesczynski was one of the police officers and

they were rescuing a woman when it collapsed and we found their bodies.

So I actually, I came in, it was early in the morning, I came in to take part,

taking them out and, the only way we represent identified Romito it was

by teeth in the stomach and his name from his utility shirt that he had on.

That's the way it was.

Two two.

You about,

captain Mazza was one of them, as was Officer Huczko.

We didn't find out till we got the bodies up to the fire department at the top that

their bo, they thought it was one body, their bodies were entwined, the ribs.

Okay.

that's the kind of stuff you are finding and what, was, I can never say enough

about cops that worked there, the fire department and, all the construction

workers, what they had to put up, what they put up with and what they saw.

My, my youngest guy ended up working for Tully down airs again,

I was blessed that my, my godson, I hadn't seen him four or five years.

He was the, job boss for Tully and the whole site was cut into four quadrants.

So he had one quadrant with Tully.

My son ended up working for him and he stayed in construction to this day.

But Ed, and we had it in, we never told anybody.

We connected so that if we needed to get something in or quicken them, it worked.

So connect.

You talk about connections.

I.

I remember, the story about Kathy Maza.

She was the head of the police academy there for the Port Authority,

a captain when she perished.

And I remember the story, the woman you mentioned that she was helping get

out of the tower, basically she knew the tower was about to collapse and

she knew that she was about to die.

And she ordered her other officers who were with her at the time,

trying to assist this woman who was incapable of walking on her own.

She ordered them out of the building so that they could spare their own lives,

but she knew that she was gonna remain with this woman till the end, and she

knew the end was probably, coming soon.

And, she would probably die along with the woman who couldn't get out.

quite a story.

one heroism.

It.

Unbelievable.

help me understand, Joe.

I know we're nearing the end and we gotta wrap this up, but, there's

one thing that always, I wondered, and that is when did it go from a.

Rescue effort to a recovery effort.

we moved along, but at some point you must have thought, okay, there's

still people that we can rescue.

Maybe these officers who were missing initially.

Maybe they're not dead.

Maybe we can recover them and, rescue them before, the end.

when, did all that change?

'cause I was there a week after the attacks and as I understood

it, then there was still hope that maybe you would find some, people

that were still alive in the rubble.

Realistically, that, following Saturday in my own mind, it was, just

because of what you were finding.

You weren't finding whole bodies, the people that were alive.

We had the, the two cops rescued the, the next morning and, John McLaughlin.

Is that right?

Correct.

You had a gentleman that came out at eight o'clock and it was a

Marine that went down so that you.

What you were, we were finding were pieces of bodies.

that first day, like we found, one of our officers, Howard, he got hit

in the head with a falling while he was at a command post with the fire

department with Daniel Nigro, the Chief of the fire department, he was

with them when they, it got hit with debris when the South Tower came down.

And I had seen them, maybe they were about 12 yards west of me.

I was, they were in the, The southbound lanes of West Street, and

I was in the north, the northbound lane I saw, and I turned, that's

from the South Tower debris.

What, I, what protected me that from the South Tower was the bridge.

it stopped the debris from going further north.

That's what I.

Oh, and I think that, you should be absolutely credited.

I'm sure that this has come up before that you made the right choice and

the right decision, and that you had the foreknowledge to pick that spot,

knowing that would be the safest place.

that's probably that I look back, Greg.

That's probably the best decision I made that when I first got there.

Just myself and SPI would go, and I told them, don't go any place because,

you would've talked, you talk another 40 cops or 30 cops when I look back.

you could have,

you know, that was probably, you know what I exercise again.

I learned from working with, my job again, it, you should go off the ranks.

It's command and control.

I'm, it's not my job.

the ones that got before me, it was their job to go rescue people.

I could tell by what was there, there was no people for me to rescue.

It was all, people, that's their job.

and that was subconscious.

That, but that's, probably the best decision I made was not letting them go.

And, like I said, it, changed the way police or anybody.

You gotta create, you gotta send people in to be like the,

miners send the birds in to die.

Question here.

we all know, those of us that were working or alive at, that time of 9/11,

we know how it affected the country.

We know how it affected New York.

We know how it affected multiple families and people and whatnot.

How did it affect you?

How was, how did your life change from 9/10 to 9/11?

So there's one thing also that was imPortant that afternoon,

and they showed up on their own.

You had people that come in for psychological cops.

The cops, they came and I made every cop and even myself sit down and talk

with this.

And we developed a program, again, very close with the Port Authority, risk

management, and medical department.

People in and we created a program so that helped.

the other motion, there was one of my neighbors who's one cops, the cop,

he's a lieutenant in Glen Ridge, had told me that the Oklahoma City 19

rescue workers committed suicide.

And I made up what?

that's not gonna happen.

So that the Port Authority, that's another thing, There's a lot of things, but we

in instituted a program and when we were closing down, all the commands during

that whole period, were seeing people, we had daily people going and talking

through psychological and direct, and at the end of the operations, down at the

site, in October, we also did, closed out.

We didn't let.

Any cop come.

We had special, the guys, we picked who we wanted.

There's 75, a hundred cops that worked there at arrest from October till we

closed down in May because the lieutenants picked them, they said they're ready.

So we had debriefing that took place, with, the cops.

The cops with Jim Reese from the FBI, who we met.

When I met before that, he came to give court Authority high command.

Talking about retirement in August of 2000.

But we did that program and I could say great pride after all of this.

One Port Authority police officer committed suicide since that day and had

hurt suicide, had nothing to do with 9/11.

So that, that's something with time I'm proud of.

Absolutely.

we've lost people with diseases and stuff there.

Not one person has committed suicide.

Yeah, that's an amazing achievement right there.

So I'm just curious, what was that counseling that you provided?

Was that mandatory or was it voluntary?

No, mandatory.

Out of the commands.

That program was mandatory to go to, actually it was, conducted at, two

days at Ano, at the Marriott Hotels.

We fed them and the, after first, the first day you had, a dinner,

they can invite their wives, or partners would come for the dinner.

And the next day, part of the counseling involved them also

so that it was, planned out.

And again, Port Authority put out the monies and everything needed.

Again, working with our risk management people thought we had

the right breathing of gears.

The both right masks they brought for us, we were, whatever they could do for us.

Medical and risk management.

Got the equipment, Port Authority did what they had to do to take care.

Joe, you lost 37 officers on 9/11.

you had, many months long, recovery effort.

many of your officers at Ground zero, some of whom unfortunately have died

of diseases related to their work at ground zero and breathing in the

toxins during that difficult time.

I'm just curious, the department.

Today is thriving.

I, think there's great pride in the fact that you are working for the

Port Authority Police Department of New York and New Jersey.

you're following in the footsteps of those who died on 9/11.

But what, in those months after 9/11, what was the wellbeing of your officers?

Was that the toughest challenge, or how would you describe the

challenges, the toughest challenge you faced to build, rebuild this

department after such a tragedy?

It again, Port Authority's an, unique where I

had to talk to the, again, 9/11.

After 9/11 when I became the chief.

Authority, high executives from the same police area they had, they

lost their officers so that the interrelationship that I had wasn't

just business, but it was personal.

We knew each other so that we worked to get everything done.

again, we had an existing list of 7,000 people on it and I needed

to rush people through it, but it was an old list, five years.

We identified who were active police officers and we put

'em in the first class.

We, had, from a night or 23, week course or 26, we went down to 10

for active police officer and we worked with the union because even

if you are on that list to get on, we had, you had seniority rights.

So we worked with the unions GU for the, funds.

So you had that working.

So that when we needed the classes, I had, the medical, who was there to do

the testing for the, human resources to do all the administrative work and the

acade, the, the, Fairleigh Dickinson.

Now the other key thing that I had was, again, it's always the people and the,

the Deputy Direct, the deputy, Director of Public Safety, Mike Scott, he survived.

He was on the phone with Fred Morrone.

Fred's last word was, "oh shit" when the building came down, poor

Mike was on the phone with him.

But Mike was, 25 year, pro with the Port Authority, ran the path

trains Chief Superintendent was on the ethics board for 20 years, and

I tell people I was the cop or the teenager and he was the businessman.

Because he took care of all the, logistics, the rentals,

the cost contractors contract.

That was key.

And I, to this day, we are best of friends.

We even went into the TSA when we retired together and we both

recognized that matters, but the

that's how things got back people.

let me, Dennis, I'm gonna turn it over to you to close it, but let

me just say that today the Port Authority is bigger and stronger than ever.

The Port Authority Police Department of New York and New Jersey.

And, Joe Morris, you're the man responsible for, that.

the fact that they're thriving today after such a devastating

loss and, tragedy on 9/11.

I'm proud to be your friend, sir. I'm so glad you joined us here on

Heroes Behind the Badge because you are truly a hero behind the badge.

Ed Cetnar, who's the superintendent of police now, retired

state Jersey State Police who was injured on, yeah, he has injuries

from 9/11 when they were, they went, the recovery, rescue recovery when

they volunteered to go injured.

But he's, always the most respect and anything he wants anything I

want, he, he would, he'd give, gives to me so I get the most respect

and, You know what I, was blessed.

As I said, some people said, it's like winning the lottery.

When you became a PA cop.

I was blessed to have seen the ad in the paper while cleaning a

window, trying to take the test.

I looked back.

That's how I became.

Chief, you're a great storyteller.

We could go on and on Boy, you have the stories and I wanna thank

you for coming on and retelling.

I'm sure you've told this story hundreds of times.

No, not a lot.

I'm glad maybe we're one of the first we got the inside scoop guys because.

We can't ever forget what happened.

And as we said at the beginning, a lot of people that are alive today

have no direct knowledge of this.

This is how we keep people informed of the heroic activities by our police

and our fire department on 9/11.

So thank you for coming with us on Heroes Behind the Badge.

Thank you Also.

For your decades, your three over three decades of service to the

people of New York and New Jersey.

and I look at.

The terrible loss of life, the terrible destruction, the whole concept.

I remember exact, we all remember what we were doing when this

happened, we gotta remember that tens of thousands of people survived.

And of your 400 officers, god forbid, 37 passed.

But most of your officers on the scene survived.

the terrible.

Tremendous loss of life overshadows that, but you guys that were out

there on the scene did a lot of things right, and let's not forget that.

Let's not forget that.

And its great you are,

again, it it's the people, but it was the people in the Port

Authority, in the right spots that, civilians and how you, the evacuation

drills and everything else, that's what, why most people survived the numbers.

Just it worked.

It was just, if you look at who died, it was above where the planes hit.

That's, who most of the deaths were,

which was almost a death sentence from, the be.

Oh, absolutely.

There was not much you could do, but you guys did an unbelievable job.

You and your team clearly are heroes behind the badge.

You exemplify exactly what this podcast stands for.

So thanks again for joining us.

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