#NYPD officers awarded for suicide prevention at One Police Plaza awards ceremony

An NYPD detective awarded Tuesday for saving the life of a man who was holding a gun to his head at his Brooklyn apartment used parenthood to stop him.

NYPD Detective Adrian Goodwin had just gotten to her office in Patrol Borough Brooklyn North last year when she got a call about a suicidal man who was holding a gun to his head and raced to the scene to do her job as a hostage negotiator.

“When I get there, everything is shut off,” Goodwin, who has 15 years on the job, told the Post at an awards ceremony at NYPD headquarters at One Police Plaza Tuesday. “So I knew this was something serious because everything was barricaded.”

Goodwin said she began talking to the man’s friends and neighbors at his building during the incident to find out what she could about him before going upstairs where other cops had already created a perimeter.

“I go upstairs and it’s like a TV show,” the soft-spoken detective said. “You have ESU everywhere.”

That’s when she began talking to the man over a cell phone in what would become a six-hour negotiation.

Goodwin, who has been on the NYPD’s Hostage Negotiation Team for seven years, was determined to help the man.

“I knew I had to do the job,” she said. “It was my calling to be there to help this man surrender.”

The nearly unconsolable man told her he was very upset because of problems with his ex-wife, with whom he had two children.

Goodin, a mother of twin girls herself, decided to focus on his love for his kids and coaching their sports teams.

“I just told him, ‘Your kids need you,’” she recalled. “‘They’re proud of you. You know it’s going to be the start of the season soon.’”

“He was like, ‘No, they’re going to be fine,’” she recalled.

But she kept on talking — even though the man told her he didn’t trust police officers.

“‘I don’t know if I do surrender if I’m going to be in good hands,’” he said, speaking of his fear of the officers crowding his floor.

But by that time, the other police officers had used a drone to determine the man had put down the firearm he had been holding.

“He has big bay windows,” she recalled. “They were able to see inside and see the placement of the gun.”

So with her cell phone running out of power she began talking to him through a door.

Finally, he gave in and surrendered because he wanted to see his kids again.

“And I just let him know that he was going to be ok,” she said. “that he was going to get the help he needs.”.

Goodwin was one of 22 police officers to receive the HOPE award for saving lives at the ceremony sponsored by the NYPD and the NYC Chapter of the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention.

“Thanks to each officers’ heroism and compassion, people who were contemplating suicide were given a second chance at life,” said Police Commissioner Dermot Shea at the event.

It was the second annual ceremony for the awards.