Patrolling The Times
New York City NY March 6th, 2023 Steve T. Moore, shield No. 424, has worn the blue patrol uniform of a New York Times security officer longer than anyone else on the current force. At age 69, he will retire soon.
Mr. Moore was born and lives on the Lower East Side of Manhattan. He has many stories about guarding The Times’s headquarters at 620 Eighth Avenue and, before that, at 229 West 43rd Street, off Times Square. Only some are fit to print.
When he arrived in 1981, Times Square was dicey — illicit sex, gambling, off-hour drinking, loan-sharking. And that was inside the building.
Mr. Moore patrolled the perimeter in those days, wearing a police-style tunic and an eight-point hat, so called for its softly octagonal shape. Mr. Moore still has his hat. (The one in the Museum at The Times — which honors the men and women who have safeguarded Times employees through the decades — was donated by Michael Kenny, a security officer who retired in 2022.)
Moore joined The New York Times in 1981, when the news organization was in a different building and the neighborhood was in a different condition.
Mr. Moore once had a .38-caliber revolver pointed at him in the 43rd Street lobby by a man who had been found prowling on the ninth floor. On another occasion, he aided a stabbing victim on the street in the last moments of the man’s life.
But the real peril came from clearing the streets and sidewalks in front of The Times’s loading docks. One day, Mr. Moore had to block the path of the actor and producer John Houseman. “He took his cane and whacked me,” Mr. Moore recalled.
Then there was the time Mr. Moore, with a smack on the windshield, ordered a parked car to move. Out of the vehicle stepped Joe Frazier, the former heavyweight boxing champion. Rather than tangle, the two struck up a friendly conversation.
And Mr. Frazier was allowed to keep his temporary parking spot.
NYT
