Brian Plunkett has been around the 44 Pct. long enough to remember when there was more to complain about than 311 situations being phoned in as 911 emergencies. He’s also been around long enough to know that he doesn’t have a patent on what he likes and doesn’t like about the job.

“How many guys say the same thing?” the 42-year-old Bronx native asks. “You like the fixed tours because you can make plans weeks ahead, but you don’t like them because you end up working in what comes out to be three different commands — one shift never knowing the people on another. You admire some of the kids coming out of the Academy, but, boom, before you get to know them, maybe just six months after they’ve reported in, they’re gone. Some of the vets around when you came on the job could be crusty as hell but, on the other hand, they showed you the ropes, took it for granted you were interested in the job and wanted to do it as well as you could. Nothing original about any of that, right?”

So dig deeper, Plunkett. Come up with something more uniquely Brian Plunkett. Suppose you were commissioner, for instance, and you could change three things. What would they be?

No hesitation. “Sure as hell get rid of the Operation Impact program for one thing. Instead of that, there should be stress on putting kids back in the cars and giving them time there so they can learn the job thoroughly. Number two, I’m not asking for special favors, but the longer you’ve been around, shouldn’t that seniority count for some consideration with your superiors? You got to take care of the guys on the job. Instead, what happens? As soon as you hit 17 years, it’s a red alarm. They start micromanaging you to death like you’ve gotten some disease. ‘Make sure his hat is on right,’ that kind of thing. Number three? Would it really be so hard for them to arrange the schedules so that every cop in a command gets at least a piece of the weekend off? That just doesn’t seem like such a big deal to me, and every cop with a working wife or husband would appreciate it.”

But since he doesn’t count on being commissioner even for a day, Plunkett has to work with the 17 years he’s put on the job and hope it has smoothed at least a little of the path for those following him. “Being a cop wasn’t exactly something I was thinking of in the crib,” he says. “It was my father who was really hot for it. He did a lot of janitorial work and wanted to make sure I didn’t do the same. The only way to stop hearing about how I had to take the test was to take the damn test. And even after that he insisted on driving me to the Academy, for my physicals, everything. He wasn’t really happy — or maybe even convinced — until the day I took the oath.”

As a patrol officer, Plunkett has had more than his share of close calls, and calls he didn’t even realize were close until after the fact. Case in point: the cyclist. “Call comes in that there’s somebody on a bike hanging around Yankee Stadium. I go over for a look and the guy takes off as soon as he sees the patrol car. I chase him down and find a Glock in his saddlebag. What was he going to use it for? He had no idea! It was just there!”

Plunkett, who now lives in Montrose with his public school-teacher wife and 16-month-old son, laughs at such incidents. But there have been others that haven’t been so funny. And, unfortunately, they have been more numerous than the cyclist.

“For starters, I was there in 1994 when Sean McDonald was shot going after those clothing store guys. Anybody who’s ever seen a fellow officer go down like that doesn’t forget it. But then there have been a couple of things right out of some horror movie. One time I was called to the scene of an accident and there was a guy bleeding to death. You get to feel so hopeless because he was long gone. His breathing seemed like just the last thing he had to let go of. And there’s been worse.”

He still has to pause and shake his head at the memory of it. The words come out in more staccato style. “Building call. Woman is in an elevator screaming her lungs out. No wonder. Sitting on the floor of the elevator car with her is a head. Nothing more. Just a head. The rest of the guy is down at the bottom of the shaft. And the thing that I’ll still think about almost every week? The head had earphones on. And because they were a little off the ears I could hear Barry White singing!”

As grotesqueries go, it isn’t bad. But for Plunkett, the entire 44 Pct. offered enough bad scenes on a daily basis when he first began working the area after his December 1989 graduation from the Academy. “Drugs and guns, drugs and guns, you had them all over the place back then. Then little by little, it got better. Why is it so much better today? You hear a lot of theories, but mine is the simplest — the cops up here. We stick together and we do it the right way.” He chuckles again. “Why try to be original when the facts are what they are?”