In 1997, just a few months after transferring out of Harlem’s 24th police precinct, where he had worked for nine years, Officer Rocco Farella, 43, began experiencing crippling migraines and vomiting.
His doctor prescribed the powerful pain medication Percocet and told Farella to take one pill a day.
When the police officer called the next day to say that he’d taken three, and the pain hadn’t subsided, he was rushed into surgery. “They had to crack my coconut,” Farella said.
The doctor found two brain aneurysms – swelled blood vessels that can be deadly if they rupture.
Farella missed seven months of work, but fully recovered. He is now retired, but Farella remains concerned about his old station and its basement-level shooting range, which firefighters and police officers want tested for pollutants.
“You were shooting lead bullets in a contained area,” he said. “That stuff’s got to go somewhere. And the locker room is right down there next to it. All the guys change down there.”