n the acting business you have the Redgraves. Violin makers in Italy, coppersmiths in Germany, sake distillers in Japan — they’ve all kept it in the family for a long time. But beyond this handful of examples, at least four successive generations of working at the same trade is a rarity.Enter the Marinos of the NYPD.

When Joe Marino, Jr., graduated from the Academy in the summer of 2008, he added another branch to a family tree that took root in 1922 with his father’s grandfather Francis O’Neill. Then came his own grandfather, William Huzar, and his father Joe Marino, Sr., currently attached to the Operations Division at the Patrol Borough Queens South. Wearing the uniform didn’t become any more inevitable as the generations moved along, either. “My father really didn’t want me to be a cop,” laughs the 22-year-old Marino. “There was no speech about family tradition, that kind of thing. If he had his druthers, I would’ve been a doctor, a lawyer or some other kind of professional. It was really my own decision to take the test.”

The senior Marino concurs. “He’s right. Maybe most fathers see only the hardships in what they’ve gone through in a particular field and they don’t want their kids to have to go through the same thing. That’s probably as true of steamfitters as cops. But once Joe made up his mind about being a cop, I was the proudest guy in the world.”

Another thing both Marinos agree on is that their days in blue sometimes seem like light years away from the era when Francis O’Neill was swinging his baton on the mean streets of Manhattan. The picture is of a bare-knuckled, streetwise cop not unlike the one portrayed by Sean Connery in The Untouchables. O’Neill seemed to have two special talents — getting involved with the headline gangs of his era and getting shot. As the elder Marino tells it:

“He got out of the Academy in 1922 and was assigned to Hell's Kitchen, where he lived. He’s only on the street a few weeks when he stops a car he thinks is part of a bootlegging operation. He was right, and got shot in the wrist for his trouble.”

Two years later, a trio that wanted to get even with him for his testimony against them in a robbery trial grabbed O’Neill off the streets. They dragged him to an old warehouse, threw him on the ground, and opened fire, hitting him three times. “They must have really been bad shots,” Marino smiles, “because he was only laid up for a couple of months.”

As the PBQS operations officer tells the tales about his grandfather, he leaves little doubt that he has relished them for a long time. In fact, a glass-encased bulletin board outside his office features old newspaper clippings recounting some of O’Neill’s street misadventures.

“He spent his last 14 years as a detective working out of the main office down in Centre Street. The way he was promoted there was all a question of timing. In 1931, the NYPD came up with this pocket bulletin idea for helping to track down fugitives. It was given to every cop on the beat. My grandfather used his right away to identify a murderer and bring him in. Because the department wanted to publicize the bulletin as much as possible, they made a big show of telling everyone how that had been crucial for nabbing the perp and they promoted O’Neill to detective.”

The first cop in the family didn’t let the promotion go to his head. Through the rest of the 1930s, he was involved in one prominent case after another. In 1934, for example, he fired the bullet that took down Herbert Meyers, wanted on suspicion of having slain Detective James Garvey on Broadway. He was also conspicuous in the breakup of the Tri-State Gang, an outfit so notorious for its post office and bank robberies that it’s been the subject of numerous film and television stories. “You had another group called the Sweeney Gang, you name it,” says family historian, the elder Marino. “Some cops go the whole 20 without having to deal with some of the perps he had to go up against in a month or two. Different times, I suppose.”

Certainly, they were already different when Marino Jr.’s grandfather, Huzar, put on the blue during World War II. A patrolman right up to his retirement in 1968, Huzar probably had his language talents to thank for not having to relive O’Neill’s gunplay career.

“He spoke Ukrainian and that was considered a real asset over on the East Side for the 9th Pct. where you had so many Ukrainian immigrants. Most of the calls over there were bar and restaurant brawls or domestic disturbances. He was as much a peacemaker and referee than anything else.”

As for the teller of the stories, Marino Sr., he was almost as slow about joining the NYPD as he wanted his son to be. “I got a degree in pharmaceutical studies from St. John’s,” says the 50-yearold Astoria native, “and worked for Wallace Laboratories for a few years. Then one day in 1986 my sister calls and asks me to go down with her because she wants to take the test. I had nothing better to do so I went with her. Both of us ended up passing. She turned it down when there was an opening and then there was the hiring freeze thing. But when they came back to me about two years later and asked if I was still interested, I said sure. I haven’t thought about Wallace Laboratories or the pharmaceuticals trade since.”

Marino is also the first to acknowledge that he has had it a little easier than his grandfather. “I guess if you ask me what my hairiest moment on the job has been, it’s been a couple of robbery collars. No Wild West stuff. And that’s what I hope happens with my son, too.”

One difference already on the record between father and son is that, while the older man says he has always been satisfied on patrol and in operations in uniform, Joe Junior concedes he wouldn’t mind giving orders as much as taking them. A member of the Impact Response Team (IRT) like other recent Academy graduates, he confesses: “I really can’t see myself doing patrol for 20 years. I count on doing all the tests and maybe being a boss some day. Hey, not even O’Neill did patrol for 20 years!”