John Timoney was one of a kind. But he was also the last of one kind.
From the 1860s forward, Irish immigrants came teeming to our shores, from hardscrabble streets where they knew of poverty but also laughter and how to throw a good punch if the moment called for it. The Irish suffered like all immigrants and found their way into the fabric of New York. And from the earliest days, they would come to define the NYPD.
Two of them seemed to arrive late 100 years late. In 1966, John and Ciaran Timoney came to New York from the Council Flats of Dublin. Their father found work as a doorman on Park Ave., but when he died, his wife went home to Dublin and the two boys stayed in New York on their own.
The brothers were hanging out by a corner bodega in Washington Heights when some friends went by and told them they were going to a nearby public school to take the police test. John and Ciaran decided to go with them. What the hell.
On that day, a star was born.
John Timoney was a wiry machine driven by curiosity that fueled a thirst for knowledge and a hunger for the adventures of New York that could not be satisfied as a police cadet in the 17th Precinct on Manhattan’s East Side. When he was finally sworn in, he was assigned to the 44th Precinct in the South Bronx.
The four-four, in the 1960s, was a lush and fertile field if you liked helping the poor or chasing criminals. John reveled in both. For the former, he took up Spanish, and wasn’t half bad. For the latter, he became a runner. He loved helping people as much as he loved the thrill of the chase. OK, he probably loved the thrill of the chase a little more.
There was the time in the Bronx when he chased a fleeing felon for blocks and blocks and blocks before the guy slowly ran out of gas and John finally grabbed him. John said, “There we both were, trying to catch our breath, and for just a second, I loosened my grip, and I wondered if he would try to make a break for it, and he did. He took off. I knew what I was doing when I loosened the grip. I just wanted to show this kid I could catch him twice if I had to.”
John kept at it. He immersed himself in policing and education. The sergeants test, lieutenants test, captains test, a degree from John Jay in public administration, a master’s in American history.
Timoney was a cop’s cop, but he never became trapped in the “blue cocoon” where his only friends were other cops. He was attracted to people who lived and thought totally outside the world of policing: Tom Wolfe, the McCourt brothers, Maureen Dowd, his rowing buddies in Philadelphia, so many others.
He was a Type A personality, unless there is a letter that comes before A. The legendary NYPD chief of operations, Robert Johnston, took Timoney into his inner circle. Later, Commissioner Raymond Kelly would see the same things and promoted Timoney to deputy chief.
When I became police commissioner the first time in 1994, I remember interviewing Timoney for the chief of department job. I also interviewed Mike Julian. Julian was full of ideas, and at the end of the interview, I asked him if he thought he would be a good chief of the NYPD, and he said this: “Yes, I think I would. But Timoney would be better.”
When I interviewed Timoney and John began to talk, between the rapid staccato of ideas and the Irish brogue mixed with a Bronx accent, and given my then even thicker Boston accent, we talked for an hour, and I don’t think either one of us understood two words the other one said.
But I knew there was something I liked about this young, brash chief. I gave him an unprecedented jump from one-star chief in the policy office to four-star chief of department.
He was an innovator, a leader, in New York and later Philadelphia and Miami. But as much as anything else, John was a police philosopher. John had sayings that, even 20 years later, we still quote. He said, “Those who don’t study history are doomed to repeat it . . . and those who study policing know we don’t study history.”
One night, he gave John Miller, one of my deputies, a Timoneyism that we still carry. The two were at the scene of an officer-involved shooting in Queens. When, after an hour, they were still having trouble getting even the simplest details, Miller told Timoney he didn’t understand why getting information was so hard.
“Johnny,” Timoney said. “When there is trouble getting the information, it’s usually because there’s trouble with the information!”
John was tireless. One year he ran the Dublin Marathon and flew to New York and ran the New York City Marathon in the same week. Miller was surprised to see him because he knew Timoney’s doctor had told him his knees were shot and he had to stop running. Miller asked him if he’d gotten a knee replacement. Timoney laughed and said he had gotten a doctor replacement.
When they made John Timoney, they broke the mold. For certain, he was a character. More important, he had character, and we got the best of both.
Bratton is New York’s police commissioner.
