Arlene Beckles walked into a crowded beauty salon in downtown Brooklyn Saturday to get her hair done and emerged a hero.
A police officer who was off duty at the time, Officer Beckles emerged from under a hair dryer to shoot and wound three robbers and to face death.
Yesterday, at a City Hall ceremony to honor her valor, Police Commissioner William J. Bratton promoted her to detective; Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani promised to officiate at her wedding to a retired housing police officer on Valentine's Day, and a reporter asked her what it was like to see a gun aimed at her head and hear it misfire, not once but twice.
"I really counted myself out," she said calmly to a room packed with department brass, politicians and reporters. "And I said to myself, I'm going to do this. This is the job that I took, not just to save myself but to save everyone. And I said, 'If I get out of this, God, thank you.' "
Emptying Her Revolver
Ms. Beckles, 30, a Police Academy instructor, was sitting under a hair dryer when the three armed men came in about 5:45 P.M. and announced a robbery. She stood up, she recalled, announced she was a police officer and opened fire. After she emptied her five-shot, off-duty revolver, a gunman who had been shot in the hand rushed her, knocked her down and put his gun to her head.
She said it all happened so quickly.
Click.
He tried to unjam the weapon and pulled the trigger again.
Click.
"I really didn't think I had a chance," she said. "There were three of them and there was just me."
She added quickly, "I should say, me and God. And we won."
The gunman ran away, followed by a companion whom Officer Beckles had shot in the elbow and buttocks. They were arrested later when they showed up at hospitals.
But then the third gunman, who had been shot in the nose and was lying on the floor, jumped up and began to scuffle with her.
A transit police sergeant, William O'Brien, who was walking by on a meal break and heard the commotion, ran into the salon and helped Ms. Beckles make the arrest.
Ms. Beckles, 5 feet 7 inches tall and weighing 110 pounds, has been an officer for six years, with the housing police and then with the city Police Department. She had never before fired her gun in the line of duty.
The Department's Best
"I don't expect to hear in my time as Police Commissioner another remark directed toward the suitability of women in policing," Mr. Bratton said. "This woman exemplifies the best in the New York City Police Department."
Officer Beckles's mother, Ethel, praised her as "nervy." Her father, Cuthbert, said that "even the perpetrators would commend her for what she has done."
Officer Beckles said she had been frightened at first, but then "I thought to myself, 'Arlene, remember your Academy training, take your time, take a deep breath, think about what you're going to do.' "
In contrast to Officer Beckles's composure, her fiance, Steve Imparato, showed his emotion.
"I was just glad, glad she was alive," he said. "She only had five shots, and if you're not a cop, you don't really understand. Three guys. Two or three guns.
She thought she was going to die."
He turned away abruptly from the lectern, and they embraced. She had said she was not a Dirty Harriet. But with police officers, she said, "there's a hero inside all of us."
