Cop With 9/11-Related Cancer Gets Surprise Promotion From Chief

NEW YORK CITY — An NYPD cop battling 9/11-related cancer can combat crime from his home laptop after Police Commissioner Dermot Shea promoted him to detective.

Newly-promoted Detective Ross Dichter found out the good news via Skype Wednesday morning, when Shea called him from the State of The NYPD address at the annual Police Foundation breakfast.

"Amazingly, he insists on keeping busy by continuing to crunch numbers as part of his crime-analysis duties," Shea told the audience. "I bet he’s working on something like that right now — let’s check in on him."

Dichter — who crunches numbers with the NYPD's crime-analysis team, even when receiving treatments at Sloan Kettering — later told the New York Post the NYPD chief caught him completely off guard.

“[Shea] said, ‘Since you’re the crime analysis guy, you should know everything about the numbers,’” Dichter told the Post. "I started to sweat."

Shea then gave him a crime number Dichter couldn't crack, he told the Post, because it was his new shield number.

“I couldn’t believe it," Dichter said.

Dichter's story hit the airwaves earlier this week when Pix11 reported on the NYPD veteran who worked on Ground Zero in the weeks following the Sept. 11 attack.

The 20th Precinct cop was diagnosed with an aggressive tongue cancer that spread to his neck and forced him to work from home, Dichter told Pix11.

"He's a very hard worker," said his wife Karen. "He's fighting every day."