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Captain Timoney

There goes three lucky Saturdays.

—TOM WALSH, DEPUTY CHIEF

After numerous postponements of the captain's exam in 1984, the test was finally administered in January 1985. It was a good time to take the captain's exam since the Ward administration was committed to increasing the number of captains in the NYPD. My boss, Robert Johnston, was a strong proponent of this increase. He also supported tasking captains with additional responsibilities, including those that traditionally belonged to the front-line supervisors (such as sergeants and lieutenants). There were some who argued, quietly and privately, that Johnston was demeaning the rank of captain by giving them tasks sergeants and lieutenants usually performed. Others argued that by giving these tasks to captains, they were taking critical responsibilities from the front-line supervisors and, in fact, retarding their supervisory development. But Johnston was the clever silver fox. Times were changing, times were tough, the department was under siege, and there was a need for greater management control. There was also a need for greater accountability. You just can't keep blaming cops when things go wrong.

What Johnston understood and others forgot was that in the promotional system in the NYPD, the only ranks that the administration controlled were those above captain. This was a huge lesson for me, and it would come to haunt me in Philadelphia.

The NYPD's promotional system is a bifurcated system. Up to the rank of captain, there is a civil-service system based on open, competitive exams. Above the rank of captain, the promotions are at “the pleasure of the commissioner.” The civil-service system means the officer controls his/her own destiny. There is nothing that anyone can do for you or against you in the promotional process. In fact, there are many jokes surrounding civil-service exams and the type of supervisors they produce. The best I have ever heard was from my immediate boss, Deputy Chief Tom Walsh, who was Chief Johnston's executive officer. He was a one-star chief who one day remarked about a captain walking by his office, a captain with whom he was not particularly impressed, “There goes three lucky Saturdays.” This was a reference to the NYPD's tradition of giving the civil-service exam on Saturdays and this person's luck in passing on those days.

Above the rank of captain, promotions were controlled by Johnston, Murphy, and ultimately, Ward. They had the power to promote or not. Johnston knew that captains would be more likely to carry out new policies with the requisite understanding and enthusiasm. They wouldn't just read a series of words from some document or new policy at a roll call. Because their careers or, more correctly, their career advancement, depended upon the implementation of and adherence to these policies, captains would “buy in,” which would ensure that their officers would be made to understand the rationale of the new policy. By and large, Johnston's method worked.

It was under this emerging managerial philosophy that I became a captain in 1985. I remember the new captains’ orientation course, at which Ward was one of the lecturers. He was serious and funny, insightful and thoughtful. But most important, he was firm. He said, “The cops may screw up, and we'll deal with them. But I'm going to be looking to you and at you when things go wrong. You represent me out there, you represent the department, but most important, you represent the citizens of New York City. And if you think I'm bad, wait until Chief Johnston gets ahold of your ass.” Nobody wanted to deal with Johnston. He was every captain's worst nightmare. However, this made the rules pretty easy to understand: this is your job, and this is how you are going to do it. Johnston was the enforcer, and everybody knew it.

Regardless of the fact that I had worked for Johnston for the previous three years, I was not exempt from critical overview. The same can be said for my old boss, First Deputy Commissioner Pat Murphy.

As I was being readied for my promotion to captain, a decision had to be made about my new assignment. Some people thought I should remain at headquarters. Others, especially Deputy Chief Tom Walsh, knew better. Chief Walsh brought me to his office one afternoon for one of those “one-on-ones” that happen every now and then. He gave me what was probably the soundest piece of advice that I had received up until that point in my career. He looked me directly in the eye and told me to resist all efforts to keep me at headquarters. “Get out of here and become a duty captain and work your way to your own command!” he strongly advised. “Otherwise, it may be held against you that you never had a command. It may not seem important now, but in the future it means everything.” What he meant was, out of all of the ranks and all of the jobs in the NYPD, the most important and maybe least appreciated was a precinct commander. Running a precinct meant you had to deal with the local borough commander; the bosses in the “puzzle palace”; the politicians (either at City Hall or the local representatives); and local activists and community organizers, some who had the community's best interest at heart and others who had no heart but, rather, blind ambition. Oh, and by the way, you also had a couple of hundred cops whom you had to inspire and satisfy. To say a precinct commander had many masters was an understatement. How the precinct commander managed those masters largely determined how he fared in his career.

So I was promoted to captain. The normal route for new captains in the NYPD is an assignment as an executive officer to the commanding officer of a precinct. As the executive officer, you do a lot of the administrative paperwork, you work odd hours, and you meet with odd people. In addition, you obsess over police officer overtime. With that in mind, I was sent back to the Bronx, which I had left five years earlier. I was assigned to the 48th Precinct, which abutted the 44th Precinct on its eastern border. The 48th Precinct was based in a relatively new building. The borough headquarters was located on the second floor, having been relocated from the 46th Precinct.