Beat Cop to Top Cop: A Tale of Three Cities (The City in the Twenty-First Century)
From a rookie in the streets of the South Bronx to police chief in Miami, lifelong cop Timoney reflects on a career that put him at the center of many recent debates and advances in law enforcement. Born in Dublin, Timoney moved to New York in 1961 as a child and joined the NYPD after graduating from high school. He describes patrolling the streets during the turbulent late '60s, when protests and civil unrest ripped at the city's social and political seams. Picking up a bachelor's degree and two master's degrees along the way, Timoney rose steadily through the ranks, working directly for famed police commissioners like Ray Kelly and Bill Bratton. An advocate for community policing as the way the NYPD addressed quality of life issues (e.g., vandalism and truancy) that are often precursors of major crimes, Timoney helped develop and refine departmental policies on everything from the use of deadly force to race relations. After retiring from the NYPD in 1996, Timoney spent four years as police commissioner of Philadelphia before becoming Miami's chief of police in 2002, retiring in 2009. Both the ugly side of police work—particularly corruption—and the achievements of his beloved NYPD are showcased in this intriguing look at what it takes to fight crime.(June)Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.