Trini cop is NY ‘Hero of the Month’

Heroes of the month spotlights those men and women, civil servants and civilians who go beyond the call of duty to make New York a better place.

Detective Second Grade Shanhai and ATF Special Agent Anthony Melchiorri were the two gun trackers who broke an arms ring.

The story in the New York Daily News stated that 60 guns were laid out on a table at the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives office last week, evidence from an all-too typical gun-running ring that sent firearms from the South’s “Iron Pipeline” to the city.

Shanhai, a 20-year NYDP veteran, had posed as a gun buyer and purchased 36 guns, bringing the number of firearms he removed from the city’s streets to 250.

Melchiorri was the lead agent in the case. He has been an agent for less than three years, but had four years experience in computer analysis of gun trafficking trends.

The men are partners on the Joint Firearms Task Force.

For their work on this recent case, in which ten people were indicted following arrests in New York and in South Carolina, and for their years of helping to put a dent in the flow of illegal guns, Shanhai and Melchiorri are the Daily News Heroes of the Month.

Shanhai said, “I feel our job is not finished, we’re only interdicting firearms, not stopping them. It’s just something that has to be done.”

Shanhai, 42, has been an investigator and undercover agent for the task force for 12 years.

He has worked on cases involving nearly 1,500 firearms.

Shanhai, who was born in Trinidad but grew up in Queens, is married with three children.