camp in German-occupied Poland. Briscoe's father suffered from Alzheimer's, and is dead by 1994. Briscoe did not get along with his father, and once described him as a "schmuck". Nevertheless, he took several days off when his father died. He mentions having voted for Al Gore in the 2000 U.S. presidential election. He supports the Iraq War. He plays golf, and he is also revealed to be a skilled pool player, in one episode defeating an opponent in eight-ball after the break without giving up a turn. Character highlights Briscoe is one of many characters on the show to have served in the military; he was at one point a corporal in the United States Army. On several occasions he has referred to his service in the Vietnam War. After leaving the Army, Briscoe joined the NYPD in the 29th Precinct in Manhattan and walked a beat there with stops at the 31st and 33rd Precincts, also in Manhattan, and the 110th and 116th Precincts in Queens, at some point reaching the rank of detective. In the 1999 episode "Marathon", he is revealed to have spent three years in the Anti-Crime Unit. Briscoe's detective shield number is 8220. Briscoe typically has a wise-crack or joke about the victim or circumstances of death at the close of the opening scene, with the joke usually exhibiting a very deadpan delivery while at the same time being highly "on target". He likes music, but mostly music that was popular in his youth; in one episode, Curtis chides his musical taste for stopping with Bobby Darin. Briscoe used to read Langston Hughes back when he was a beatnik "for about five minutes" because "it used to work pretty good on Jewish girls from Riverdale." Many of Briscoe's former partners and colleagues outside the series (offscreen before Briscoe joined the 27th Precinct) have been or ended up becoming corrupt. In the 1993 episode "Jurisdiction", Detective Brian Torelli (Dan Hedaya) forces a confession from a mentally handicapped man; at the end of the episode, Briscoe is present when Internal Affairs arrests Torelli for suborning perjury and obstruction of justice. In the 1994 episode "Kids", the son of Briscoe's former colleague Detective Ted Parker (Robert Hogan) is arrested for shooting another teenager. Parker and Briscoe have a private conversation during which Parker, speaking hypothetically, essentially relays to Briscoe that his son killed the other boy in self