Beat Cop to Top Cop. John F. Timoney

my master's degree would disqualify me from applying. The woman said, “No. That's not a problem.” “But I don't have a rabbi,” I replied. (In NYPD parlance, a rabbi is someone who can get favors done for you.) “You don't need a rabbi,” she replied. “This is legit. It's an open, competitive process, and the winner is chosen by committee. The only thing you need to do is retake the Graduate Record Examinations.” I took the GREs a few months later, scored well, and was awarded the scholarship to study urban planning at Hunter College later that year.

      My first master's was in American history, as had been my bachelor's. The next year at Hunter College a whole new horizon was opened up for me. I began to mingle with professors and others who introduced me to this whole new notion of public policy. It was at Hunter where I met Donna Shalala for the first time. She had come from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development to be the president of Hunter. She would later go on to become the president of the University of Wisconsin, serve for eight years in the Clinton administration, and then become the president of the University of Miami. Professor Peter Salins, a market-oriented housing expert, was affiliated with the Manhattan Institute, a think-tank policy group that would have huge influence on the so-called “new mayors” of the 1990s. Professor Eugenie Birch, a historian by training but one of the forerunners of “mapping” housing patterns—including abandoned areas and their relationship to social ills, such as crime—was working with early computer programs that examined the relationship between housing, abandonment, poverty rates, and a whole host of quality-of-life issues. It was Genie who, in 1993, shared with me a new computer program that looked at the correlation between housing abandonment, poverty, and unemployment rates. (Years later, when I became the police commissioner of Philadelphia, Genie played a critical role in providing the Philadelphia Police Department with young, talented computer mappers from the University of Pennsylvania, where she is now a professor.) And there was Professor Donald Sullivan, a great housing advocate and policy wonk who proved that he could still have fun in the sterile atmosphere of academia. Donald unfortunately died of AIDS much too young.

      In September 1982, I returned to Harlem, this time to the 25th Precinct. I had my new master's degree, but I was wondering, What happens next? It was clear to me that past recipients of these scholarships were eventually brought to headquarters, usually sooner rather than later. I was ambivalent regarding working at headquarters. I wanted to return to the Narcotics Division as a sergeant. Narcotics had been so much fun the first time around.

      My first day back on patrol in the 25th Precinct was a Sunday. I was the patrol sergeant on the 8:00 A.M. to 4:00 P.M. shift. My driver was a young, good-looking, six-foot-three-inch-tall Italian American named Michael Verde. Verde filled me in on his career to date. He had gone through the academy and had arrived at the 25th Precinct while I was away on leave. Most of the morning was spent visiting police officers on post and signing memo books. At one point in our conversation, Verde was talking about the precinct commander and what a good guy he was. A month earlier, Verde had gotten married, and in a very unusual step, the precinct commander had given Verde the first two weeks of August off for his wedding. The notion of a rookie getting two weeks in August off is unheard of. Recognizing that, Verde wondered out loud to me why the commander had given him the time off. He stated, “I just kind of got here, just came on; I don't know why he gave me the time. He didn't need to mollify me.” I immediately directed Verde to stop the car, and I asked him, “Who are you?” He said, “Huh?” I said, “Who are you?” “I'm Michael Verde from Astoria, Queens.” I said, “Not where are you from, who are you? Cops don't use words like mollify, so who are you?” “Oh,” he said. “Before becoming a cop, I graduated from Columbia University.” He was clearly a smart, up-and-coming young officer with the balls to match his brains. I made a conscious decision that day that, going forward, I would always keep Verde in the back of my mind.

      Four months later, I received a phone call to report to the Chief of Operations Office at One Police Plaza, where I would be assigned as a research analyst for the then four-star chief of operations officer, Patrick Murphy. I had never met Murphy but had seen him numerous times on television. With his tightly cropped silver hair and steely blue eyes, he looked like a typical Irish cop: tough. Some would say he looked nasty. It may be the first time in my life when I met someone whose personality in no way matched his looks. Pat Murphy was a kind, gentle man with self-effacing good humor, and he was always considerate of those who worked for him, including the civilian staff (which was not always the case in the NYPD). The one word that constantly comes to mind regarding Pat Murphy is class. It was not uncommon for him as he got his coffee in the morning to sit around for a half hour or so, talking to my fellow sergeant Bobby Nardoza and me about the department, policies, or whatever police news was in the morning headlines. He became an enormous influence in my life.

      As a research analyst, it was my job to review proposed changes in policies and procedures that had been suggested or created by other entities within the NYPD, in the hope that we would improve the delivery of police services. Part of that included determining that any new policies and procedures did not conflict with any existing ones. After doing this rudimentary and boring work for three months, I was finally given an assignment I could sink my teeth into. I was assigned the task of developing the NYPD's new policy on high-speed police pursuits. My attitude toward high-chases was a typical cop's attitude. You blow a red light, you run from the police, you try to escape, and we'll get you, no matter how fast and how well you can drive a car. We'll get you. And most of the time we did. Clearly, there was the possibility of an accident, but with the testosterone level screaming and the pedal-to-the-metal approach, who thinks about accidents? We're gonna get the guy, even if it kills us, even if he is guilty only of running a red light.

      As I began to research what was going on across the country, it became clear that most cops thought like I did. What also became clear was that an awful lot of innocent people paid with their lives so that guys like Timoney could get their guy. There needed to be some kind of balance. In the midst of my research, I discovered that the agitation for these policies was the result of lawsuits. In one particularly tragic case, a man sued a police department in the Midwest after he lost his two daughters when his car was T-boned by some knucklehead being chased by police because he had run a red light. All across the country, there was case after case with similar horrific endings. Once I began the research, it became clear that police departments needed to strike a balance. It's actually very simple. When the danger to the community outweighs the danger of allowing the person to get away, it's incumbent upon the police to terminate the vehicle pursuit. Creating the rationale for the policy is the easy part. Creating rules and procedures within the policy is what's difficult.

      After numerous iterations, we created the policy that still stands today. The lesson for me was transformative. For years I had viewed the mindless memos and policies emanating from the “puzzle palace”—a derisive term for police headquarters—as an effort by the top brass to handcuff police officers, to dissuade them from doing their duty, to make their lives miserable. But as I read one tragic case after another, it became clear that there was a real need for such a policy. At the end of the day, the policy was meant to support our primary mission: to save lives. If by not pursuing some sixteen-year-old kid joyriding in a stolen car we save the life of an innocent pedestrian or motorist, then that's what we're all about. Ironically, I had heard this policy articulated a dozen years earlier by the informal leader of the 44th Precinct, police officer Desi Flaherty, who on more than one occasion would call off a chase that he felt was too dangerous and not worth the risk with the admonition “Don't worry. God will get him.”

       Congressional Hearings on Police Brutality

      Not only can policy affect police shootings; so can the press. In 1983, a congressional oversight committee came to New York to investigate the issue of police brutality, including police shootings. The mayor and the police commissioner were among the many people asked to testify. The hearings were politically and racially charged, and unfortunately the committee had reached a foregone conclusion—before the hearings had even begun. They felt the NYPD was a racist organization whose cops indiscriminately shot and killed members of minority groups. I was given the task of researching police shootings over the previous fifteen years. This really piqued my interest in the issues surrounding deadly physical force, and it is an interest I still have to