It didn't seem possible the largest city in the US could go bankrupt, but in 1975 that's exactly what happened—NYC went bust. In what was called The Layoff Period, younger officers were sent home, their careers on hold, while NYPD veterans went back to patrol the streets. Meanwhile, with the thin blue line stretched to the breaking point, life as usual went on in the Big Apple, and Police Officers Jimmy Kavanaugh and Tommy McInerney, 13th Precinct, Gramercy Park, Manhattan, saw it all. Here, with sardonic humor he recounts the mix of tragedy and comedy, life and death, the bizarre and the mundane of life in New York city, and how its police personnel coped.