Cop's Cop Dies: John Timoney Helped Lead Departments in NY, Philadelphia, and Miami

NEW YORK, NY — It was 1994 and Commissioner Bill Bratton was leaving the New York Police Department — for the first time. He had been clashing with Mayor Rudy Giuliani who did not like that Bratton was getting credit for that reduction in crime.

Bratton wanted his first deputy commissioner, John Timoney, to take his place. Giuliani, though, had other ideas. He appointed his friend, Howard Safir, who was serving as fire commissioner, to the job.

Timoney, whose reputation for honesty was respected and a magnet for trouble, died Tuesday after a long battle with lung cancer. He was 68 years old.

Timoney was asked to stay on after being passed over for the commissioner job, but the move was seen as an affront by a lot of people at the NYPD — from officers on the street to the department's brass.

Timoney, who had risen from a beat cop in the Bronx to the first deputy commissioner's office and was known as a cop's cop, wasn't a fan of his new boss.

After word got out that he was calling Safir "a lightweight," Giuliani asked Timoney to go.

Timoney, who was born in Dublin and moved to New York at age 13, became a New York police officer in 1969.

He was assigned a beat in the Bronx.

He worked his way up the ladder — earning two master's degrees in criminology along the way.

In 1994, when Bratton took over the department, he named Timoney the chief of department, the youngest person to ever hold the job.

After leaving the department in 1995, he worked in the private sector.

In 1998, at Bratton's recommendation, he was offered the job of chief of the Philadelphia Police Department. He held the job for four years and — as in New York — crime went down.

It wasn't all smooth sailing, though. He was in charge when the Republicans held their national convention there in 2000 and it came out that the police had infiltrated protest groups.

In 2003, after about a year and a half back in the private sector, he was back in the public eye — taking over the Miami Police Department.

In his first 20 months in charge, no Miami officer fired his gun. He stayed there for seven years.

In 2010, he signed to be a consultant with the Ministry of the Interior in Bahrain.

Photo Credit: C-SPAN