New York police officers scolded for mocking pigeon at Ground Zero

He’s one angry bird — and now, it’s war between him and the police at Ground Zero. Fred, an unmistakable brown and orange pigeon, recently took up residence on a metal fence surrounding the World Trade Center’s memorial plaza — and has been dive-bombing officers stationed nearby ever since. That’s ruffled the feathers of the officers, who were caught jokingly mocking him this week. But it looks like the foul-tempered fowl, dubbed Fred by site volunteers, will have the last laugh.

Someone ratted out the bird bullies to police higher-ups — and cops assigned to the World Trade Center site were actually admonished by superiors at their 8 a.m. roll calls on Thursday and yesterday about hurting Fred’s feelings, sources said. “Your appearance in public has to be professional,” a supervisor chided the cops at the First Precinct station house. “We’re receiving complaints about police officers’ demeanor regarding a bird [at the WTC site].”



Incredibly, officers manning the security system at the memorial have even been ordered to pore through surveillance tapes to try to root out the officers who laughed at the bird, sources said. The fact that they haven’t had any luck finding the perpetrators so far has infuriated police brass even further, the sources said. One cop grumbled that from now on, “We were told that if we didn’t go easy on the bird, we would get in trouble.” The plucky pigeon is said to hate other birds, aggressively chasing them from its territory. But it saves most of its orneriness for the officers, sources said.

“Either their uniforms or the hats seem to trigger its behaviour,” one law-enforcement source laughed over the bizarre pecking order. Another officer insisted that the bird isn’t really at war with the police — he’s just angry because they are supposed to ignore him now. “At first, he was playful, you know?” the officer said. “He would fly down and perch on our shoulders sometimes. It was really funny! So we started feeding him and goofing off with him. But then someone saw us playing around with the bird and complained, so now we can’t really have anything to do with him.”