An NYPD officer explains how field training assignments work through personal connections called a "hook" or "juice." Without connections, he got stuck in a bad precinct while a colleague's uncle placed two officers together in a better one. Those connected officers were later arrested and fired, making the speaker grateful he wasn't placed with them.
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After field training, you went to a precinct in the nypd. We call it a hook or a crane. If you have a crane, you can go wherever you want in the nypd. A hook. Maybe somebody can hook you into a more favorable place. I didn't know anybody, so I was kind of at the mercy of where I was going to wind up. And one of these guys had an uncle that had some juice, as we call it, some power in the department, and they all wound up together. This guy's uncle was able to get them in the same precinct together. And I remember asking one of them, like, because I wound up in a hellhole, and I'm like, couldn't have got me with you. And he's like, sorry, man. He could only get two guys, and he took us. A couple of years later, two of them arrested, and all three of them lost their jobs in the worst sense of the word. That's amazing. Oh, in hindsight, I'm glad I didn't go with them, exactly.