John F. Timoney

John F. Timoney, a blunt Irish-born cop who could outrun crooks and quote Yeats and who, as a ranking police official in New York, Philadelphia and Miami, plotted innovative strategies that helped reverse years of skyrocketing crime died Tuesday at the age of 68 in Miami from complications of lung cancer. He was surrounded by his family and friends.

John F. Timoney had a remarkable career in law enforcement starting with his 29 years in the N.Y.P.D. first as a trainee and leaving as The First Deputy Commissioner. He then went on to serve as the Police Commissioner in Philadelphia and then Police Chief in Miami.

A Bronx street kid with an antipathy toward the police, Mr. Timoney grew up to become, at 46, the youngest Chief of Department in New York, holding the city’s top uniformed post, as the third in command, in 1994, and then ascending to the second in command as the First Deputy Commissioner.

Mr. Timoney presided over decreases in crime in all three cities. He was responsible for imposing protocols that typically reduced the number of shootings by the police and other kinds of violent confrontations with civilians. And he shifted priorities from summons quotas and radio car patrols to shoe-leather crime prevention and enforcement. He believed in a definition of community service that represented the core of true community policing and public trust. The Timoney philosophy came through in actions that personified the best ideas, policies and procedures.

When Commissioner Bratton held his first retreat for executive officers in 1994, the newly promoted Chief of the Department. Timoney appeared before the city’s police leaders and audaciously proclaimed what is widely accepted today. As Tom Junod wrote in an Esquire article, Timoney said his colleagues “were wrong, and had been wrong all along, the last 25 years, for they had built an entire organization on the probability of failure when they ought to have built one on the possibility of success.”

“They were reacting,” Timoney added, “when they should have been anticipating; they were out containing crime when they should have been attacking it; they were out cleaning up dead bodies when they should have been out saving lives.”

John F. Timoney speaking to New York City police officers in 1994, after he became chief of department, the top-ranking uniformed officer. Credit John Sotomayor/The New York Times

Mr. Timoney was a swaggering cop, straight out of central casting, with a Bronx brogue.

“He walked on his toes, like James Cagney in ‘Yankee Doodle Dandy,’ like a hoofer or a fighter in the ring…. He was the N.Y.P.D. personified. He was my rock” said William J. Bratton, who was the New York police commissioner from 1994 to 1996 and will end his second run as commissioner next month,).

In an interview on Wednesday, Mr. Bratton said, “He was an integral part of the turnaround, and his legacy is the safest city that he left behind.”

Mr. Timoney rose meteorically through the New York ranks. His mentors, he said, were three commissioners: Benjamin Ward, the city’s first black police commissioner; Raymond W. Kelly, under whom he served as commander of the Office of Management Analysis and Planning, the department’s think tank; and Mr. Bratton, who promoted him over 16 senior officers to the rank of four-star chief, in 1994, and, a year later, to first deputy commissioner.

According to legend, the author Tom Wolfe wrote, “Timoney never once had to draw a weapon to arrest a felon and take him in. He just gave him a good look at ... that face ... and even the most obtuse and poisonous viper became a mewling little pussy.”

(Mr. Wolfe acknowledged, though, in the foreword to Mr. Timoney’s 2010 memoir, “Beat Cop to Top Cop: A Tale of Three Cities,” that the folkloric face was insufficient to cow two drug dealers with whom Mr. Timoney once engaged in a shootout.)

He is recognized nationally and internationally as a leader and expert in law enforcement and democratic policing. In the last several years, he served as the chief advisor to the government of Bahrain. He helped formulate strategies and develop implementable policies with the Police Executive Research Forum, headed by Chuck Wexler. In his final years as Chief of Police for Miami, he created a Law Enforcement College for recruits from around the world. In doing so, he included a high school component to provide a pathway to law enforcement careers for the next generation

John Francis Timoney (known to his family as Sean) was born on July 2, 1948, in Dublin, the son of Ciaran Timoney and the former Catherine Kenny. The family immigrated to New York in 1961, when he was 12 and settled in the Washington Heights section of Upper Manhattan.

While in a graduate program, he taught history at Westchester County high schools

He graduated with a bachelor’s degree from John Jay College of Criminal Justice of the City University of New York, in 1971, and earned a master’s from Fordham University. Both degrees were in American history. (He received a second master’s, in urban affairs, in 1981 from Hunter College and held a fellowship at Harvard University after leaving his post in Miami.

He is mourned by many from different backgrounds, walks of life. He touched lives and served the community in ways beyond policing and law enforcement. He coached his son and daughter in soccer, baseball and softball and served on the boards of sports organizations, university boards, and many other entities. He connected with people in neighborhood, intellectual, media and other settings. He was an avid physical fitness enthusiast and enjoyed his years of running marathons, playing league football, and rowing.

He is survived by his wife, the former Noreen Carroll; their children, Christine and Sean; his brother, Ciaran, his sister, Marie Nash; and two granddaughters, Leah and Ryan.