DPD Officer reflects on his experiences at Ground Zero

(WXYZ) - When Detroit Police Officer Scott Sheets looks at the old newspaper photos from the days after September, 11th 2001, the memories come flooding back.

“It was something that I never thought I would ever see. It was sickening,” Sheets told Action News.

Officer Sheets tells us he zoomed out to New York about 48 hours after the attacks, hoping to help in the search and rescue mission, but it turned out his assignment near Ground Zero was a grim one.

“They had a landfill where they were taking debris. Our job was to go through the debris.”

Officer Sheets, who works as an investigator in Detroit’s fatal squad, thought he had seen it all on the streets of the Motor City, until that moment - what he found shocked even him.

“We found pairs of pants with belts buckled, empty shoes, wallets, pieces of bone, hair, skin and body parts,” Sheets said.

The Detroit officer snapped a number of photos at Ground Zero. He says the size and scope of the tragedy is hard to absorb. Pictures can only tell so much of the story. For him the sights, sounds and smells are forever seared into his memories.

“I’ll never forget it. People shouldn’t have to see something like this. It was an unbelievable set of events that occurred,” he said.