Weekend Buff

NYPD's Break in the Case (2019-2023)

Break in the Case

When I found out that the NYPD was creating its own podcast, I assumed it was going to be a boring, self-promoting, propaganda piece worthy of the pages of Pravda. I was surprised to hear from the producers of the podcast while I was still working for the NYPD. They wanted to feature a few cases that the Financial Crimes Task Force had worked on. Maybe this thing was legit!

Not wanting to be a part of some hokey publicity stunt, I took a listen to some of their content. It’s quite good and it is our recommendation for this installment of Weekend Buff.

Break in the Case podcast is an in depth look at some of the biggest cases that New York’s Finest has taken on in the past 40 years. The podcast is broken up into 3 seasons and uses first person interviews with members of the NYPD to tell the story of how cases were solved, and dangerous situations were resolved.

The first season deals with the infamous Baby Hope case in the 34^th Precinct. The podcast spends five episodes on this tragic death of an unidentified infant found dead in a cooler in Inwood Hill Park. Members of the 34^th Precinct paid for a funeral and burial for the poor child. They worked diligently for decades on trying to identify the baby and identify her killer.

The second season looks at several individual cases including two from the Financial Crimes Task Force (Detective Anthony Napoli’s dark web investigation and Detective Mike McCaffrey’s Anna Delvey fraud case), the case of the tiger in a Harlem housing project, a fatal shooting on 9/11, the Queens sniper, and other fascinating crimes. You can check me out on Detective Anthony Napoli’s investigation into a dark web identity theft perp known as Alpha. Anthony is a great Bronx detective who took on the challenge of conducting dark web investigations. He was an innovator in the field and brought the NYPD into the realm of crypto currency and cyber investigations.

The third season focuses on the Zodiac Killer copycat that terrorized the city in the mid-1990’s. This case took thousands of man hours and the hard work of some great investigators to solve. The Zodiac copycat was on a mission to kill one person for each sign of the Zodiac.

Sergeant Wally Zeins hosts Break in the Case. It is well produced and carefully documents some great work by the NYPD. Seasoned cops and curious civilians will both gain something from listening to the episodes.

Each episode runs between 15 and 50 minutes. You can catch them on Apple Podcasts, Spotify and NYC’s webpage at https://www.nyc.gov/site/nypd/media/podcast/podcast.page Appreciate this look at some real serious crimes solved by some real serious detectives. Enjoy!

Thanks for reading The Ops Desk. Stay Safe!