There are a few certainties that should be followed in life. One of these: don’t throw stuff at the police. Definitely don’t throw a suspicious package with flashing lights and a ticking mechanism inside a police car. I’m not exactly sure how the NYPD officer kept his bearing when said package landed in his lap. What would you have done? (Drew Dwyer)

When the suspicious device landed in his New York police car, Sgt. Hameed Armani thought he was about to die. The object made a clicking noise. Lights from the device started flashing.

Boss, this is a bomb,” his partner, Officer Peter Cybulski, said from the passenger seat. The horror couldn’t have come at a worse place. The officers’ patrol car was parked in Times Square, which was packed with tourists and locals Wednesday night.

Armani, in the driver’s seat, said he was prepared to die, but refused to let civilians die, too. We both look at each other. I was like, ‘We’re going to go, but I’m not going to have anybody else go with us,'” the sergeant said. So, instead of jumping out of the car to save their own lives, the officers drove 1½ blocks away to make sure nothing happened to the crowd of civilians. During that drive, “We both said our prayers,” said Armani, a Muslim immigrant from Afghanistan. “We thought this was it, we’re not going to make it.”

A police standoff with a suspect who allegedly threw a suspicious package into an NYPD van ended when authorities took the man away on a stretcher Thursday morning after he had barricaded himself at Columbus Circle for hours.

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