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Former NYPD commissioner Bernard Kerik, “America’s Cop,” who helped make New York the safest big city in America and led the department through the 9/11 terror attack, passed away Thursday at 69.
A high-school dropout from Paterson, NJ, he joined the Army and eventually earned his GED while stationed at Fort Bragg (and, much later, a college degree).
A few years after leaving the service, he joined the NYPD in 1986, earning the department’s Medal of Valor for saving his partner in a gun battle.
He shifted to the Department of Correction in ’94, rising to head it in ’98.
At DOC, he led a complete turnaround of the Rikers Island jail complex, ending an epidemic of inmate violence.
In 2000, recalled his old boss, Mayor Rudy Giuliani, “He became police commissioner when they thought crime couldn’t be reduced any further, yet he reduced it further. His work helped New York become the safest big city in America and a shining example of urban renaissance.”
In his 16 months as the city’s top cop, he was lauded for his hands-on leadership — even making five arrests, plus collaring two ex-cons driving a stolen van in Harlem — and presiding over a 63% drop in violent crime.
He’d just written a memoir of his rise, “The Lost Son,” when the planes hit the towers.
After 9/11, Kerik’s work overseeing NYPD rescue and recovery efforts at Ground Zero led to his honorary appointment as a Commander of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire and brought him to the attention of President George W. Bush, who tapped him to organize Iraq’s provisional police force and then named him to head the newly-created Department of Homeland Security.
Then the roof fell in, as the vetting process uncovered some stupid mistakes that torpedoed the nomination and eventually led him to plead guilty to federal tax fraud and do four years’ hard time.
Yet Kerik bounced back, eventually penning his second best-seller, “From Jailer to Jailed: My Journey from Correction and Police Commissioner to Inmate #84888-054.”
He devoted much of his later years to prison issues and (sensible) criminal-justice reform.
Bernard Kerik was a cop’s cop.
Rest in peace.