o Rosales doesn’t really understand what’s so special about most of what passes for special assignments in today’s NYPD. Outside the boost in pay, anyway. “If they really want to reward special duty,” he says, “they should be starting with cops on patrol. We’re the ones on the front line every day. We’re the ones who take the brunt of it all — all the people on the street, the criticisms. But who are they rewarding all the time? The fat inside commands. If they’re really serious about improving morale, they should be starting with the most special people they have — the men and women out on patrol.”

Does he see that happening?

The 41-year-old Cuban native lets the sardonic twinkle in his eye supply the answer. If he has learned anything about NYPD politics by now, it seems, it is to take his shot, but not crack his head up against a wall. The most he will elaborate is to say: “You hope people will change what needs to be changed, you let them know what has to be changed, but then it’s up to them to change it. A little knowledge of what somebody on patrol does — and the good will to recognize it — can go a long way.”

Rosales himself has come a long way since being born in the central Cuban province of Las Villas and moving to the United States with his parents and two older sisters at the age of five. He grew up in North Bergen, N.J., attending schools in the area all the way through to studies at Jersey City State College. After graduating from the Academy in December 1984 and doing a six-month stint at NSU4, he was assigned to the 23 Pct. in July 1985. “Those were the bad old days,” he laughs. “Drugs and robberies all over the place.”

And the difference today? “I think it’s mainly because of COMPSTAT. You still have a lot of drug problems, especially with heroin and marijuana, but it’s nothing like it used to be. I’m not saying it’s paradise, but whatever it is — drugs, the gangs, break-ins — you can find it a lot worse in other commands.”

Rosales, who now lives in Rockland County, traces his own worst moment on the job to a gun call at Madison and 104th some years ago:

“It was a parking lot, and sure enough, there’s this guy swinging this gun around, threatening to shoot anybody who gets close to him. My partner and I crouched down behind the squad car and asked him three or four times to drop his weapon. He wouldn’t. All this time later, I can still feel my finger putting pressure on the trigger to take him down. But at the very last second, suddenly there’s this tap on my shoulder. It’s the guy’s mother, who somehow has gotten through all the people watching us. ‘It’s a toy gun,’ she says, calmly as possible. ‘That’s only a toy gun, don’t worry.’ Worry? I’m about to maybe kill the guy, and she’s looking at me like I shouldn’t take his little joke too seriously. But she was right. It was a toy gun.”

Rosales admits to being not as sentimental as some other cops about the greater number of veterans on the job ten or 15 years ago:

“When I came here, you had gray hair all over the place. But they wouldn’t talk to you. They had all this experience that could’ve really helped, but it was, like, it was theirs and you couldn’t have any of it. By the time they felt easier about dealing with you, you’d put in your own time and didn’t need them as much as you had. Nowadays, you’re a rookie and you go into a house where maybe the senior people have only a couple of years there. That makes it easier because everybody talks, and the rookies aren’t at all as intimidated as they used to be. They don’t go pussyfooting around, afraid to say the wrong thing to the wrong people. The downside, of course, is that sometimes you have the blind leading the blind.”

On balance, he prefers job conditions today to those of yesterday. “The biggest difference is the fixed tours. It’s completely true what they say about not knowing half the people working the other tours, and I guess that’s not going to do much for a command’s morale in the long run. But let’s not be so fast to forget what the alternative was. Jumping all around the clock was no picnic.”

A resident of Rockland for some years, Rosales is divorced and has his free hours pretty much to himself. His favorite pastimes are reading sports biographies and swimming. The swims bring out what he considers his roots. “I especially like going to the Jersey Shore,” he says. “I guess it’s partly because I grew up in Jersey and you never get away from that.”

This time the twinkle in his eye is for the unasked question. He anticipates it. “Cuba? I don’t have any relations there. Sure, I’d like to go someday, but maybe not all that much more than I want to go to other places. New Jersey will always be home. — Donald Dewey