The two police officers looked at each other, briefest of glances.

“We knew immediately what had to be done,” says Const. Randall Arsenault. “We were going in.”

“Didn’t think twice about it,” says his partner, Const. Marleen Conley.

Off came the Kevlar vests. Off came the Glocks. Off came the duty belts: handcuffs, radios, pepper spray, batons.

No time to unlace the heavy boots.

Arsenault and Conley dived into the pool at the Grand Motel on Kingston Rd.

There were two middle-aged males in that pool, unconscious, eyes closed. One was at the bottom, one was closer to the surface, either floating up or floating down.

It was unknown how long they’d been in the water. But a bystander would later claim he’d seen the men go in. Ten minutes later, when he looked again, they weren’t visible. Somebody must have called 911.

At 43 Division, on Lawrence Ave., Arsenault and Conley were doing paperwork and had just been called out to investigate a theft. The “hot-shot” that came over the radio took priority. With Conley at the wheel of their cruiser, it took mere minutes to cover the distance, around 5:30, Friday afternoon.

“We each went after one of the men,” says Conley. “I got hold of one guy and swam him over to the side of the pool.”

“My guy was towards the bottom, face down,” says Arsenault. “It couldn’t have taken even a minute for us to pull them up and to the side.”

But what you should know about drowning: Generally, except for those trained in holding their breath, such as free divers, the average human can hold his or her breath for only 30 to 60 seconds. Carbon dioxide levels accumulate quickly in the blood. The urge to open one’s mouth and inhale is irresistible, even if that means gulping water. Water fills the lungs and unconsciousness follows soon thereafter. Bodies sink as air in the lungs is replaced with water. It is possible, however, to revive a drowning victim even up to two hours after the event, if proper and optimum steps are taken.

Arsenault and Conley couldn’t ponder any of that. With the assistance of another officer, from the Public Safety Response Team which had just arrived, they heaved the lifeless men onto the pool deck, rolled them on their backs and began CPR.

“They were vital signs absent at that point,” says Arsenault, who may be familiar to Torontonians because of his wildly active social media presence — 44,000 followers on Instagram, 30,000 on Twitter.

No pulse but the sodden officers continued their compressions. No water gurgled out of the victims’ mouths, no coughing or sounds from either. Then, the faintest of pulses from Conley’s guy. EMS and Toronto fire, just getting to the scene, took over. Then, a feeble pulse from the other, before more sophisticated life-saving equipment was applied, the men bundled into ambulances that made an emergency run to Centenary Hospital.

“I can’t tell you what a great feeling it was, when we got a pulse, this jolt of excitement,” says Arsenault. “I’ve been to scenes before, something like that, but never jumping into a pool. And it’s not every day that you deal with such high-pressure situations.”

Conley: “I’m pretty proud of the whole team that I was a part of. That we were able to save lives.”

Police have not identified the victims, except that they are reportedly Sri Lankans and were staying at the motel. I can’t even say that there will be a happy ending to this story. The latest report on the men, Sunday afternoon, was that they had been intubated and were in critical condition.

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The why of it, how this could have happened, can only be speculated as police continue their investigation, though it appears to have been an accident.

But how did two grown men almost drown in a motel pool unless, possibly, one had gone to the assistance of another in distress and then got into his own trouble. The deep end is nine feet and no ledge more than a few yards away, unless a person is overwhelmed by panic and discombobulation.

There were bystanders in the vicinity yet crucial minutes passed with no one giving assistance.

“I can’t speak to that because I don’t know the circumstances,” says Conley. “You never know how you’ll react in an emergency.”

But she and Arsenault knew. Their training kicked in immediately.

Arsenault has been a cop for 18 years, Conley for 15 years. They’ve been partners only since April.

We need reminding, sometimes, of the good deeds cops do on a daily basis. Certainly we get an earful of bad deeds because that’s how news rolls.

At the Grand Motel on Sunday, along that strip of Motelville Scarberia, the pool was locked shut. A perimeter fence is plastered with warnings: 24-hour video surveillance, access denied to anybody with an open sore or communicable disease, no unsupervised children.

A good time to remind that Sunday was the start of National Drowning Prevention Week. About 500 Canadians die in preventable water-related incidents annually, 65 per cent of them occurring in natural bodies of water, lakes and rivers. In Ontario, there were 46 drowning deaths this year, as of Friday, including the tragedy of an Oshawa mother who died while trying to save her young son.

Water, like fire, is lethal. But we don’t play in the flames.

There’s not always a heroic cop nearby. Be careful out there.