here the hell am I going to go??!!”

Eddie Kondrick laughs at the idea of putting in the home stretch of his 20 years on the job elsewhere than on patrol in the 77 Pct.

“I’ve been here since 1987,” the 41-year-old veteran says. “I’m not sure this old dog would even recognize a new trick, let alone learn it.”

Behind Kondrick’s self-deprecation, though, is 17 years of having had to learn — and master — a lot of things. Most obviously, there has been the Brooklyn territory covered by the command headquartered at Utica Avenue and Bergen Street.

“When I first came here, you had double-digit homicides some weeks because of all the crack. Dealers blowing one another away, guys not paying their bills, innocent victims of robberies just so the perp could get his fix. In those days, they called this place the Alamo. If you had a dark sense of humor, you said you were the natural heirs to Fort Apache in the Bronx.”

And now?

“I’m not going to say it’s a Garden of Eden, but it’s nothing like it used to be. Community relations are a hundred times better, and I got to give a lot of the credit for that to the COs we’ve had here in the last few years. You got the residents showing more of an interest in their surroundings. We can take the perps off the street, but they’re the ones who have to make their homes and stores look better. It’s a domino thing. The more the residents keep up their buildings and houses, the more they want to keep the dealers and thugs away from them. Self-investment, self-interest.”

Thinking back on the bad old days, the Glendale native concedes it’s a small miracle he’s never had to fire his gun in the line of duty. Not that this prevented some people from shooting at him.

“One day we’re parked on St. John’s Place and boom, boom, boom. The rear window of the patrol car was splattered all over the place. They later counted 10 rounds fired. We never caught the guy, though. In those days, snipers weren’t such a rare thing.”

But Kondrick doesn’t even regard that incident as his worst on the job.

“I guess the hairiest moment of all was a short time after I was assigned here. My partner and I get a call for a fire near Ralph Avenue. When we get there, no fire engines! Just people hanging out the windows of a four-floor walkup. Everybody’s screaming, flames and smoke everywhere. The parents see us and they start dropping their kids down to us. We could have been there a minute or an hour. I had no sense of time. The only thing going through my head was, ‘Where the hell are those fire engines?’ Every time I got into position to catch another kid, I had to wipe out any thought of missing him. Thank god, we caught every one of them. But ever since then, maybe I’ve been a little less impressed by these millionaire baseball and football players who catch a ball for a championship of some kind.”

Something else Kondrick has had to learn during his tenure at the 77 has been the change in relations between incoming rookies and station house veterans.

“Most of them come on the job now, they’ve got college degrees, and that already makes them edgy to leave, move on to bigger horizons, regard the job as some kind of temporary stop-off. It’s not even so much a respect issue because these kids are segregated from the older cops practically from the start. They work with their own sergeants, have little reason or opportunity to listen to the older guys. That’s one of the reasons I’d eliminate this two-year college requirement. I went to community college in Suffolk myself, but that didn’t seem to be as much a conditioner 20 years ago as it does today. There’s something really wrong when the man or woman coming on the job thinks it’s unimportant in the vast scheme of things before they go out on their first patrol! Oh, and by the way, it’s also that kind of an attitude that can get you killed sooner than later.”

Kondrick is no big fan, either, of fixed tours.

“Ask me what the biggest satisfaction on this job is, and I’d have to say the camaraderie among the cops. But you start eating into that with the fixed tours. You don’t have to tell me how convenient it’s been for a lot of people. I realize that. But nothing’s for free, and what we’ve lost through them is every guy in a command knowing everybody else. We have club meetings now where nobody shows up. There’s a vital connection we’ve lost there.”

Aside from the college requirement and the fixed tours, what would the PBA delegate change if he had the last word for 24 hours?

“If I’m only the commissioner, I couldn’t authorize raises by myself, but I’d sure make myself a pain in the neck with the mayor every hour on the hour. Then I’d address the mobility of cops, make it possible for them to move into other areas if that’s what they want. Right now you have an iceberg situation on that score. Then there’s simple cleanliness. You look at some of these station houses around the city, you wonder if Police Plaza is aiming for a holding-cell decor. Respect your work, respect your workplace.”

Which gets Kondrick back to the sorest change he has had to accept since walking off the Academy stage in the winter of 1986.

“I have three kids — a boy 13 and two girls 11 and 6. No way you’re ever going to hear me encouraging them to be cops. The job is anti-cop. Police Plaza doesn’t back you up. You’re lucky when they don’t just burn you altogether. Maybe it was always that way, and some cop from 1932 will tell you that’s how it was then too, but I don’t believe there’s ever been the kind of split we have today. Wherever you are, whatever the command, you’re trapped, prisoners in your own house.”

Little surprise, then, that Kondrick envisions wearing his uniform only until the day of his 20th year.

“I’m out,” he laughs again. “I moved with my family out to the end of the Island a few years back. My brother-in-law has a fishing boat out there, and that’s where you’ll find me on the morning of 20 years plus one day.” — Donald Dewey.

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