The Emergency Service Unit of the NYPD is an elite team of 450 men and women, on call day and night. Unique in this country, they are a combined rescue and SWAT team. These urban cowboys can do it all - from rescuing people from car and subway accidents or talking down suicidal jumpers from bridges, to SWAT-style raids on guntotting drug dealers. Their ten-ton rescue trucks carry the tools for all forms of urban rescue and tactics, and they have skills to match - they are all trained as Emergency Medical Technicians (EMTs), and are qualified in high angle rope rescue, scuba, and a variety of heavy weapons. For saving the emotionally disturbed and suicidal from themselves, they have a range of tactics and non-lethal weapons to get these people the help that they need. Thousands of times a year, whatever the emergency, the men and women of ESU respond with speed, sophisticated equipment, and experience.

NYPD EMERGENCY is an extraordinary action-packed look at a day in the life of ESU, as they save lives and capture criminals around the clock and across five boroughs. The film follows ESU officers on their shifts in Manhattan, Brooklyn, Queens, and the Bronx, and also goes behind the scenes into a rigorous training that allows them to be so versatile. We see the challenges of the intense work they do on a daily basis - its stresses and rewards - and come to understand why the men and women of ESU take on the hazards of this often life threatening work. Among the many cases shown - they rescue a suicidal man, high on cocaine, threatening to jump from the Triboro Bridge; capture dangerous drug dealers in a Brooklyn SWAT raid; use the jaws of life to extricate a family trapped and seriously injured in a terrible car wreck; and talk a distraught boy out of suicide. The film shows what it takes to be part of this elite unit that has set the highest standards in the field, and what makes modern day heroes tick in the city that never sleeps.