When Gerard Abbene arrived on the roof of a tall building one day in his previous life as a New York City police officer, he encountered a person preparing to jump from a ledge.
Abbene approached and began to speak to the man. After an hour or so of conversation, Abbene convinced the would-be suicide victim to step back from the ledge. The man would later recall that four words uttered by Abbene had convinced him to step back from the ledge.
“I care about you.”
That was just one of the vivid memories that Abbene accrued during his years in New York City law enforcement. A typical day as a New York City police officer consisted of doing life-changing work, like convincing the man to step back from a ledge, according to Abbene.
Now, in his work as a Greenhill campus security officer, Abbene applies the wisdom and judgment gained from those intense experiences in New York City.
Law Enforcement
Fresh out of high school and hungry for adventure, Abbene says he decided to become a police officer. In 1992, he started his law enforcement career with the New York City Transit Police Department, before it was merged into the New York City Police Department.
“It’s something I always wanted to do,” said Abbene. “All of my friends did the same thing. They were getting out of high school and going right to the NYPD for the action. I knew a lot of people that were going in, so it was just something I decided to do.”
Abbene says he rode trains at night from 8 p.m. to 4 a.m. with the goal of preventing crime.
After about two years as a transit police officer, Abbene was assigned to patrol one of the 77 precincts covered by the New York City Police Department.
In his precinct, Abbene responded to reports of robberies, assaults, stolen vehicles and other crimes. Sometimes he was on the scene fast enough to try to prevent crimes from happening.
“That precinct was very, very notorious for its amount of violent crime,” Abbene said.
Abbene says he was always responding to calls, handling anywhere from 20 to 30 incidents per night.
After eight years, Abbene was offered the chance to work in the NYPD’s Emergency Service Unit in Brooklyn. The unit handles any emergency in its assigned area or elsewhere if needed.
“After a while you start to get a lot of arrests and people start to notice you and then they start to offer you different units,” said Abbene. “That’s one of the reasons why I got into the ESU.”
Abbene says he handled a wide range of situations with the Emergency Service Unit, from water rescues to fires to suicide prevention.
“It made you feel really, really good,” Abbene said. “You changed lives.”
The city gave members of the ESU a lot of responsibility, including handling expensive equipment.
“We didn’t have a lot of supervision,” said Abbene. “They trusted you to handle the job by yourself.”
Abbene recalls receiving many commendations, but saving lives was what mattered most to him.
“We saved a life,” Abbene said. “We didn’t want [accolades] but they give them to you anyways.”
Transition to Greenhill
After 28 years in New York City law enforcement, Abbene retired in 2019. By that point, he had already visited Dallas many times to see family members.
“When I retired, most of my family had moved to Texas,” Abbene said. “I had a very good friend of mine who happened to be an old one of my sergeants, who came to McKinney in 2012.”
Abbene says he became familiar with Dallas during his visits.
“I got to like [Texas],” Abbene said. “I like the weather. I like the people. Everything about Texas, I really enjoy it.”
While he liked the environment, Abbene says he was surprised by the stark contrast between New York City and Dallas.
“It was an eye opener,” Abbene said. “If you’ve ever been to Manhattan, the buildings, the people, Times Square at four in the morning is the same as it is at four in the afternoon. I was used to that fast-paced life, so fast forward now, I went to go visit Dallas and it was 12 a.m. and there was nothing going on.”
This didn’t deter Abbene. He says he decided to move to Dallas to be closer to family and friends and live a slower, more serene life.
Abbene says he was recruited to work at Greenhill through a friend who knew the old head of security.
“I just turned up,” Abbene said. “I love it here.”
In New York City, Abbene says he was occasionally assigned to patrol a public school. There was constant chaos in his assigned schools, he recalled.
“On a regular basis there was always a fight, there was always gangs, there was always something I should have been doing,” Abbene said.
When he arrived at Greenhill, Abbene says he was taken aback by everything.
“Everybody was super, super nice, very polite,” Abbene said.
Abbene says he was also pleasantly surprised by the students he encountered.
“I’m very impressed by the amount of discipline here and kids going on to do bigger and better things from here because of their education,” said Abbene.
At Greenhill, Abbene says he continually draws on his law enforcement past in his interactions.
“I see a lot of what I did come to help me out in a situation like Greenhill,” Abbene said. “You just got to treat people with fairness and things will work out.”
Security officer Rob Stebbing says Abbene helps out with Lower School carpool in the mornings and is well-liked by the students.
“He’s a really nice guy,” Stebbing said. “He was in law enforcement for a long time, and I feel like some of the kids look up to law enforcement people as a role model.”
