N.Y.P.D. Commissioner and First Deputy File for Retirement
New York — Commissioner Dermot Shea and his first deputy, Benjamin Tucker, each served in the Police Department for more than two decades.
Commissioner Dermot Shea, who was appointed by Mayor Bill de Blasio, will leave the New York Police Department at the end of the year.
The New York City police commissioner and his top deputy have both filed papers to retire at the end of the year, after long careers that will end during one of the most tumultuous periods in the department’s history.
The departures of Commissioner Dermot F. Shea, 52, and Benjamin B. Tucker, 70, the first deputy commissioner, come as Mayor Bill de Blasio’s administration winds down and paves the way for his successor to select a woman to lead the department for the first time in its 176-year history.
Mayor-elect Eric Adams has said that his appointee will most likely be a woman of color; Carmen Best, the former police chief of Seattle, and Juanita Holmes, the Police Department’s chief of patrol, are among several candidates vying for the role. Mr. Adams is expected to announce his choice after returning from a trip to Ghana.
Mr. Shea joined the department in 1991 and was appointed commissioner near the end of 2019. He led the department over a two-year period during which gun violence rose dramatically for the first time in almost three decades, the coronavirus pandemic overwhelmed the city and the murder of George Floyd in Minneapolis touched off massive protests against police brutality and racism. He is leaving as police statistics show that gun violence appears to be receding after an increase that began early in the pandemic, and as the police report record highs in gun arrests.
“I can think of few other times when it’s been so hard to be police commissioner because of the myriad of issues that he was confronting,” said Richard Aborn, the president of the Citizens Crime Commission, a public safety nonprofit. “I think through all of that he has been steady, has done some interesting innovations in the department, and it’s beginning to show some results.”
The retirement filings, which are required to be filed 30 days in advance, were first reported by The New York Post.
Mr. Shea spent 28 years in uniform before Mr. de Blasio appointed him commissioner in 2019, rising from a patrol beat in the Bronx and becoming the face of the department’s data-driven approach to crime fighting and management.
As commissioner, he is best known for disbanding plainclothes anti-crime units that had become known for using aggressive tactics to go after illegal guns, a decision made as massive protests erupted in the city. The move worried supporters of the tactic as shootings subsequently rose sharply. Mr. Adams, a former police captain, has vowed to reinvent the teams with officers who are better skilled and who know how to use community ties to find guns.
Mr. Shea’s tenure has been marked by public clashes with the mayor, a Democrat, and his frequent criticism of progressive prosecutors and state and local lawmakers, whose policies he blamed for emboldening criminals. But he also evolved in the role, acknowledging and apologizing for a history of systemic racism in the department that he had earlier denied existed.
His record on other issues is muddled. He promoted a number of women and minorities to high-level positions during his tenure, including Chief Holmes, the first female officer to hold one of the department’s top five positions, and Martine Materasso, the first woman to lead the counterterrorism bureau.
