9/11 NYPD Dispatcher to Newsmax: Need Unity, Compassion Again

Candace Baker, a New York Police dispatcher on Sept. 11, 2001 who spent the whole day taking missing persons calls, tells Newsmax that Americans need to return to the sense of unity and compassion that united them in the days following the terrorist attacks that left nearly 3,000 fellow Americans dead.

"I think that immediately after 9/11, you saw a lot more kindness," Baker said Monday on "The Chris Salcedo Show." "You saw a lot more camaraderie. You saw a lot more respect for law enforcement."

But as time has passed, a lot of that has diminished, she lamented.

"Right now, it's like we unfortunately, remember September 11th every time it comes around, and everyone then recalls all of the lives that were lost," she said. "And there's also a lot of lives that have been lost in the aftermath of that that has passed in the last 20 years.

"Unfortunately, I wish I could say that we were closer like I saw back at that time," she added.

But have Americans learned something from it?

"I really I don't know," she admitted. "It's hit or miss sometimes. I think we need to have a little bit more unity, a little bit more camaraderie, a little bit more compassion, and just think back and reflect on all the lives that were lost that day, and the sacrifice that was made."

Baker lost a friend on 9/11 and another years later to cancer as a result of the attacks. She plans to participate in a 9/11 commemoration ceremony on Saturday to mark the 20th anniversary of the attacks that took down the World Trade Center and other buildings in New York. Others were also killed at the Pentagon and in a Shanksville, Pa., field where passengers foiled another attack where a plane was believed to be set to crash in Washington, D.C.

"It still feels like just yesterday," Baker told Salcedo. " I can recall seeing the towers, the flames, the smoke above. All of the tension, the stress, the fear."

"I think if you touch base with people, there are a lot of people that lost a lot of loved ones, friends, family," she said. "The grief is just insurmountable."

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