The NYPD chief hailed as a hero for helping to chase down a pair of accused ISIS-inspired botched bombers said it was all part of being one of New York’s Finest.
Chief Aaron Edwards, the 46-year-old commander of Patrol Borough Manhattan North, was just steps away from a smoking IED dropped in front of a crew of NYPD cops during a rowdy demonstration outside Gracie Mansion — and didn’t hesitate to jump into action.
“I always say, we’re all cops, right?” Edwards told The Post Tuesday. “Regardless of rank, regardless of life, regardless of position, you’re a cop first. Once a cop, always a cop.
“When you see danger, you have that cop in you,” he said. “You react to it.”
His heroics went viral, but when his wife of 12 years saw footage of him running into harm’s way, she texted him one observation: “Wrong direction, sir!”
Edwards was part of the NYPD deployment at an anti-Muslim rally led by right-wing agitator Jake Lang on Saturday when a group of counter protesters showed up to disrupt the demonstration.
Scuffles broke out, and then two radicalized Pennsylvania teens took it one step further, hurling two homemade explosive devices onto the ground — one of them landing right in front of Edwards and NYPD Sgt. Luis Navarro, with the fuse lit.
“Sergeant Navarro alerted me first that he saw these two males with something in their hands, and he tapped me, said, ‘What are they doing?’” Edwards recalled Tuesday. “I look up and I saw what everyone saw in the videos.
“And you know, we needed to just start running towards them. We’re giving commands, we’re making verbal commands,” he said. “We start running towards them and, you know, the rest you can see on video.”
The images of the incident show the device on the sidewalk in front of Edwards and Navarro, with suspect Emir Balat, 18, ready to leap over police barricades to get away — moments before Edwards hurdles the barriers and nabs the teen with help from other cops.
Balat and 19-year-old Ibrahim Kayumi, are now in federal custody facing terrorism charges.
While the images made Edwards a social media hero, it didn’t sit well with his wife.
Here’s the latest on the bombs thrown outside Gracie Mansion
“I didn’t look at my phone for about three hours, right?” he said. “But I looked at the phone. I had a missed text from my wife…. and it’s the photo of me and Sergeant Navarro and the suspect is like dropping the device — you see the device and you see us looking at it.
“She has a screenshot of it, she has it circled. She puts in in caps — in big caps: ‘WRONG DIRECTION SIR,’” Edwards said. “One of the questions she asked is like, ‘Are they real?’ I said, Yeah. I think you know, this is very serious. And she said, ‘Alright. Come home. Come home.’”
Edwards, who was appointed to the Manhattan North command by NYPD Commissioner Jessica Tisch in December, grew up in Saint Albans “in humble beginnings.”
He attended York College as a biology major, but said the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks changed the course of his life, and led him into a career in law enforcement.
Edwards insisted that all of the cops outside Gracie Mansion on Saturday deserved credit, but admits he’s always been a hands-on guy who doesn’t wait for someone else to get things done.
“I don’t mind doing the work, get my hands dirty,” he said. “So when this happens — and it happens rather quickly — it wasn’t a thought in my mind on the danger.
“Three things gotta happen right now — we’ve got to catch this person, we’ve go to get people away from this device, and we’ve got to secure this area,” he added. “And we were able to do that.”