I was invited on the program to speak about crime in Philadelphia and the new leadership of Philadelphia Mayor Philadelphia Mayor Cherelle L. Parker and Police Commissioner Kevin J. Bethel.
I happen to mention the late John Timoney, the Philadelphia police commissioner from 1998 to 2002. He told his officers to go out and make arrests and not be concerned about whether or how the district Attorney prosecuted those suspects.
Timoney said the police were not responsible for the DA’s actions. Their job was to arrest the bad guys in Philadelphia.
As a newspaper crime reporter and columnist, I met John Timoney
several times when he was the Philadelphia police commissioner. I later
interviewed him for Counterterrorism magazine when his book, Beat Cop to Top
Cop: A Tale of Three Cities.
John Timoney died on August 16, 2016. He was 68.
You can read my 2010 Crime Beat column about John Timoney below:
John Timoney, the man Esquire magazine called “America’s Top Cop,’ has written a book about his experiences commanding police forces in New York City, Philadelphia and Miami.
The book is called Beat Cop to Top Cop: A Tale of Three Cities (University of Penn Press).
Although Timoney rose from a patrolman to become
the youngest four-star chief in the history of the New York Police Department,
he was not asked to be the police commissioner.
In 1998 Philadelphia Mayor
Ed Rendell asked Timoney to come 90 miles south to become Philadelphia’s Police
Commissioner, making him the city’s top cop.
So, speaking before an audience of about 100 people
on April 11th at the Philadelphia Free Library in Center City,
Timoney said it was appropriate that he was kicking off his national
book tour in Philadelphia.
I was in the audience that night as Timoney said
that unlike many cops who say they always wanted to be a police officer, he
didn’t want to be a policeman. He said he didn’t much like cops as a child
growing up in Dublin, Ireland or later in Washington Heights, New York City.
“Like parents and teachers, they told you all the
things you couldn’t do, and they arbitrarily took stickball bats from you on
175th Street just because Mrs. Randolph was complaining we were hitting her
window,” Timoney told the amused audience at the library.
Timoney went on to say that he followed a group of
friends who all took the police exam in 1967 and entered the NYPD. While he
initially didn’t like being a police officer, he said that after some weeks he
began what was up to now a 40-year love affair with the police profession.
Timoney added that he was also fortunate to live
through some tumultuous times and he saw the process of much social change over
those 40 years.
I first met Timoney outside his office at
Philadelphia Police Headquarters - the place old-time cops, crooks and reporters called the "Roundhouse" due to its circular structure.
On assignment for Counterterrorism magazine, I was on my way to interview
then-First Deputy Commissioner Sylvester Johnson about “Operation Sunrise,” a
major Philly police, DEA and FBI counter-drug operation in “the Badlands” of
North Philadelphia.
Timoney was talking in the hall to then-Chief
Inspector Patricia Giorgio-Fox, the commander of the South Police Division. I
knew the South Philly chief inspector, as I wrote a column for the South Philadelphia American at the time.
She said hello and introduced me to Timoney.
Although Timoney is critical of the press and he has had some difficulty with
the press over the years, he is very smooth and personable with reporters.
I would later see Timoney at South Philly and
Center City community meetings, at crime scenes, and at CompStat meetings held
at the Philadelphia Police Academy.
I also witnessed him dealing with rioting
street protesters during the Republican National Convention in Philadelphia in
2000.
Many hard-core protest groups came to the city
with the intent to disrupt the convention and to cause general mayhem. Timoney
decided not to deploy officers in full riot gear as he believed the look was
provocative. Instead, he opted to use the city’s bike cops, who wore their
standard bike helmets and rode Raleigh Mountain bikes.
The protesters knew that the city’s convention
center in South Philadelphia was heavily protected, so they opted to take their
disruptive demonstrations to the Center City restaurants and hotels where the
delegates were staying.
On Tuesday night of the week of the convention,
nearly 300 protesters were arrested as they overturned trash dumpsters, defaced
buildings and police cars and assaulted police officers. Chemicals and urine
were also tossed on some of the officers. Timoney was out on the street on a
bike and he and another officer scuffled with a group of protesters.
I was there, covering the protests for Counterterrorism magazine, and I witnessed how Timoney led the
police response to the violence organized by the protesters. I saw how the police effectively used their bikes to move quickly in and out of crowds.
The bikes were also used as barriers when the officers turned them sideways and held them waist high. The mountain bikes were also a useful tool to ram, prod and herd the unruly and violent protestors. The bikes were used much like earlier police and military used a more deadly tool - spears.
I was impressed with Timoney’s leadership of the
police that week.
That is not to say that I subscribe to all of
Timoney’s views. I disagree with his view on gun control. Timoney believes that
strict gun control can control crime. Strict gun control in Chicago has
hardly curbed violence, as the government’s ban on drugs has hardly curbed
illegal drug sales and use.
Although initially I wanted a commissioner
promoted from within the Philadelphia Police Department, as did the police
rank-and-file, I came to believe Timoney was a very good police commissioner. I
was sorry to see him leave Philadelphia.
“Ecce facies! Behold the face!” author Tom Wolfe
wrote in his introduction to Timoney’s book.
“That face, belonging to John Timoney, now chief
of the Miami Police Department, has become a legend in its own time.”
“According to the legend, Timoney never had to
draw a weapon to arrest a felon and take him in. He just gave him a good look
at…that face…and even the most obtuse and poisonous viper became a mewling
little pussy… and that face became a legend in its own time.”
Wolfe went on to write that he met Timoney when he
had risen to Inspector, the third highest rank in the NYPD. Four years later,
Wolfe writes, Timoney would become, at age forty-five, the youngest four-star
chief in the department’s history.
“Even someone in the grandstand, like me, could
read the lines incised in that face, punctuated by a blunt nose, and
immediately make out the words “tough Irish cop,” Wolfe wrote.
Wolfe, a great journalist and novelist, wrote a
fine introduction to Timoney’s book.
In the book Timoney writes of his early days as a
patrolman and his steady rise to high rank in the department. The 1970s were a
tough time to be a cop and perhaps it was even tougher to be a police
supervisor and commander. I especially enjoyed the account of his time as the
captain of the Chinatown precinct.
Timoney’s observations and insights into crime
fighting and police management are thoughtful and serious, but he also adds a
dash of good humor. Serving under Police Commissioner Bill Bratton, Timoney and
the rest of the command staff instituted radical means of fighting crime,
including CompStat and other initiatives that drastically reduced crime in New
York.
His account of his time as the Philadelphia Police
Commissioner in Beat Cop To Top Cop interested me the most. I know some
of the people he writes about, and I was interested in his impressions of them
and of Philadelphia.
He writes about quickly identifying the department’s problems and making sweeping personnel and policy changes. He also writes about the cases, issues, events and his missteps of his time here.
Timoney left Philadelphia in early 2002 to take a job in private security, but a year later he was back in uniform as Miami’s Police Chief.
Miami held a new set of issues and problems, including the accusation that his used his position to receive a favorable lease of a Lexus SUV from a local car dealer. Timoney explains the situation and how it was resolved.
When a new mayor was elected in 2009, Timoney resigned as the chief of police. He is now working for a private security firm.
“I have learned more from my mistakes than I have from my successes,” Timoney wrote in the book. “That doesn’t mean mistakes are good. Mistakes are bad, but they do teach.”
Timoney’s book outlines both his successes and mistakes in policing three cities. Timoney has led an interesting life, and he has written an interesting book.
http://www.pauldavisoncrime.com/2010/08/interview-with-americas-top-cop-q-with.html
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