Beat Cop to Top Cop. John F. Timoney

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СКАЧАТЬ 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 this day.

      The research was fascinating in what it revealed. The NYPD was probably the most progressive and restrained police department in the nation, and the numbers proved it. More important for me was that the research showed that good, sound policy can have an immediate, dramatic, and lasting impact. Prior to the implementation of the shooting policy in August 1972, the records of the police shootings in the NYPD were unreliable. Police statistics for police officers discharging their weapons were kept at the police firing range. The statistics regarding those killed and wounded were pretty accurate. However, accidental discharges and “misses” were completely unreliable. So the numbers maintained at the range should be considered conservative numbers. But what they indicated was that in 1970 and 1971, the NYPD recorded around eight hundred discharges. Between ninety and a hundred people were killed, and dozens more were wounded.

      The 1972 numbers showed a slight decrease. But that is deceiving. You don't appreciate the dramatic decrease until you separate the shootings from before and those from after the date the policy was implemented. Looking at police shootings for the first eight months of 1972, they appear to be quite similar to those from 1970 and 1971. However, when you look at the last four months of 1972 and prorate these numbers, there is an immediate decline in shootings of about 40 percent. There is an additional decline in 1973 and another decline in 1974. This trend continued, and a decade later, the number of all reported discharges was around 350, and the number of people killed was around twenty.

      My research clearly indicated numbers that showed the NYPD had greatly improved in the area of deadly physical force. But the statistics dealt only with officers discharging their weapons. What about when officers don't discharge their weapons, even when they would be fully justified in doing so, including times when they are being shot at? Unfortunately, those statistics were not readily available. I conducted a rather laborious hand check of all Firearms Discharge and Assault Reports and was able to uncover numerous instances in which police officers could have discharged their weapons justifiably but elected not to do so. This was another indication of the restraint used by members of the NYPD. Going forward, I instituted a policy that captured these instances under the title Shot at but Did Not Return Fire.

      My research put me in touch with James Fyffe. In 1977, Fyffe, a police lieutenant assigned to the police academy, completed his doctoral dissertation on police shootings in the NYPD, using the 1972 policy as the impetus for his thesis. Jim went on to become a college professor, the author of numerous books on police use of deadly physical force, and America's number one expert on the subject. Jim passed away in 2006, but his contribution to this field will live on.

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