He’s the Finest family man!
Beloved NYPD Police Academy platoon commander Lt. Jose Caraballo, hung up his uniform Friday after a 20-year career on the force — and guiding over 20,000 recruits through the academy in the past seven years.
And he treated each one like they were his own kin.
“I kind of look at the recruits like my children,” said Caraballo, who spent the majority of his career as a patrolman in the Bronx, where he grew up, and in Harlem.
“Seeing these guys and girls come through and do such great things, it’s like watching my kids grow up,” said Caraballo, who has no kids but hopes to someday. “It’s just awesome to see.”
Caraballo told The Post he wanted cadets to have a memorable experience.
“I don’t even remember who my lieutenant was when I went to the police academy,” he said.
“I felt like if I’m going to be in this position, I want a lot of these young men and women to see what leadership’s supposed to look like. Every push-up I ask them to do, I do with them.”
Caraballo started out wanting to be a lawyer and attended John Jay College of Criminal Justice but was bored so walked away, he said.
He then joined the NYPD Police Cadet Corps, a paid public-service apprenticeship for college students, and quickly felt like he was part of a family, he said.
Like officers on patrol, recruits muster at the start of each shift. That’s when Caraballo made sure they were following department regulations.
“Sometimes, if they have deficiencies, if their boots are scuffed, or the uniform looks a little untidy” he would tell the recruits to drop and give him 20 or more push-ups.
“’It’s not a punishment, it’s a privilege,’” he would tell the recruits of the push-ups. “So then I give them some privilege.”
After that, the recruits would go to classrooms and learn everything from police science to the department’s rules and how to deal with emotionally disturbed people, he said.
He sometimes went into the classes and chimed in with stories from his more than 13 years on patrol.
He would also tell the stories of fallen officers that came under his tutelage, including officers Wilburt Mora, 27, and Jason Rivera, 22, who were gunned down in an ambush while on a domestic-violence call in Harlem in 2022.
He remembers Rivera, who was overweight, struggling with the requirement that all recruits run a mile and a half in 14 minutes.
“He joined a run club to make sure that he was able to pass the standard to become a police officer,” Caraballo recalled. “So I use his story to motivate a lot of young men and women who may not be in the best shape to say, ‘Hey, this guy identified that he had an issue and went above and beyond to change it.’”
One of his recruits loved the story so much he began doing all department-connected runs.
“He found a lot of love in running and getting himself in shape,” Caraballo said. “He lost like 58 pounds.”
Caraballo was the first person in his family to join the police department, and his dad was proud — so much so that when he was dying of cancer four years ago he confessed he wished he had done more with his life.
“And I said, ‘You did, because look at me,” Caraballo recalled. “Everything that I speak about with these young men and women is what you taught me and what you trained me to be.’”
Caraballo hopes that the recruits have gotten the same thing from him.
“I don’t want to see them get hurt,” he said. “I’ve been to too many funerals. They need to stay true to everything that they learn because those are the things that are going to keep them safe.”
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