arbara Lester likes to keep things simple. She just wishes sometimes that other people would, too. “I could sit here and make great pronouncements about everything that’s wrong and right about working for the NYPD today,” the PBA delegate for the 102 Pct. in Richmond Hill says. “But I’m not going to be inventing the wheel. The problems are obvious to anyone who has ever been in a stationhouse or talked to a police officer.”

For example?

“Right,” she laughs. “So I get to make the big statements anyway. Okay, try this: So much of what’s not working on the job is around the importance of patrol — who does it, who doesn’t do it, how long they do it, how fast they move out of it. Nobody down at Police Plaza — or only a silent minority — seems to get it.”

Get what, specifically?

“The recruits come out of the Academy today and they look at patrol as practically something you get through like orientation. You can count on the fingers of one hand how many of them aren’t jumping off to some specialist unit after a few years. And why’s that important? Because the streets are still the best way to learn the job and patrol is the best way to learn the streets.”

And if you don’t learn the streets?

“The biggest practical problem is not just not knowing the neighborhood, not knowing the deli owner by his first name. It goes much deeper than that. Most of all, you start secondguessing yourself. You don’t have the necessary experience in dealing with the public so you stay inside your own head more even when things start happening around you. Nothing good about that. Should I? Should I have? Maybe if I had ... All that stuff. You’re slower on the draw in every way. There’s simply no getting away from the need to associate with the public, making yourself feel comfortable in the street. You can’t do this job, at least not do it well, if you’re a slave to your radio. Like it or not, the dispatcher won’t be there next to you when it’s life or death.”

Her disclaimers notwithstanding, Lester pauses to smile that she may indeed be reinventing the wheel in pushing her argument for more emphasis on patrol. “One of those things that should be obvious to anyone, right? But the fact of the matter is, there are no senior guys out there anymore, at the 102 or most other commands. So that means even if you want to learn patrol, you can’t have any shortcuts to it, the way NYPD cops did for generations. No more older guys tapping you on the shoulder and saying ’See that? Don’t ever … et cetera, et cetera.’ You practically have to self-educate yourself, and that certainly doesn’t make the job more attractive.”

The Bronx native herself learned how to be sociable very quickly when she was born into a family of seven siblings. After growing up in Suffolk County and trying her hand at some retail jobs, she says she was attracted to the NYPD’s benefits and job security, graduating from the Academy in February 1994 and then moving directly to the 102. Despite occasional eruptions from gangs, she pinpoints car theft as the command’s greatest ongoing problem. “Sure, we have the Latin Kings, the Flying Dragons, the Bloods, the Ghost Shadows, MS 13 and all the rest of them putting in an appearance every once in awhile,” she laughs, “but they get trumped by the Van Wyck, Grand Central Parkway, the L.I.E., and all the other highways nearby that gets you and your stolen vehicle to another part of the city in no time.”

But where she has been concerned personally, it was neither a gang nor a car-boosting ring that gave her her worst moment in blue. “It was a fire on 111th Street, back in 1997. A woman set it deliberately for whatever reason. By the time my partner and I got there, people were jumping out of the windows to save themselves. I grabbed this seven-year-old who was totally burned and ran with him to the ambulance. When they took him out of my arms, pieces of his charred skin were all over my uniform shirt. He didn’t make it. Ever since then, I haven’t had to think too long when I’ve been asked what’s the worst part of the job — seeing children die.”

Lester cites her work as a PBA delegate as one of the most satisfying parts of her job. “Everybody says they like being a cop because they can help people. Being a delegate lets you extend that into helping other cops. No question it keeps me around here longer every day, but that’s all right with me. How else would I get to hear somebody complaining that he’s been assigned a patrol car where the FM radio doesn’t work?”

For somebody so drawn to the streets (“I have too much fun on patrol ever to think about being a supervisor with an inside job“), she admits her private moments accent just the opposite. “My idea of time off is a long Caribbean cruise — something I’ve been doing now for 13 years. And you want a dinner companion who likes fancy restaurants and elaborate waiter service? I’m the one you’re looking for. I don’t mind spending a couple of hundred on a great meal in a great place if the conversation is good.”

And after the 102? Another answer Lester doesn’t need prompting to come up with. “Sun City at Hilton Head,” she shakes her head, already picturing it. “Total retirement. No security jobs, no nothing, except me and the sun. Think the sun can handle it?”