Safir ''wants out'' of NYPD

By JOHN MARZULLI

August 8, 2000 Web posted at: 5:36 PM EDT (2136 GMT)

NEW YORK (The New York Daily News) -- Police Commissioner Howard Safir announced today that he is resigning.

New York police Commissioner Howard Safir

Safir, 58, disclosed in May that he had been diagnosed with prostate cancer, but sources close to the top cop said yesterday he has found a job in private security and that health is not a factor in his leaving.

"He just wants out," said a senior NYPD official. "He planned to leave after the [Senate] election; and when the mayor dropped out of the race, it just moved up the timing."

Safir returned to work yesterday from an Alaskan cruise and was expected to stay through Labor Day. But his impending departure already had triggered an exodus among the high command, with the first deputy commissioner retiring Friday and the heads of the organized crime control and personnel bureaus set to go.

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Another senior NYPD official said Safir believes he has accomplished his goals and had nothing to gain by staying.

"Why should he wait around for ... a cop shooting another civilian?" the official said. "He's been there and done that."

Sources said Safir will work for ChoicePoint, a Georgia-based private security concern. It wasn't immediately clear, though, whether he would leave the city.

Mayor Giuliani is not expected to tap a replacement this week, but several sources inside and outside the NYPD pointed to Chief of Department Joseph Dunne as a likely choice.

Dunne, 52, received extremely high marks for his relations with the racial- and ethnic-minority community when he was a commander in Brooklyn North, and is solid with the rank and file.

NYPD spokeswoman Marilyn Mode did not respond to a request for comment last night.

Safir is the seventh-longest-serving commissioner in Police Department history. His appointment in April 1996 capped months of sniping between Giuliani and then-Police Commissioner William Bratton over credit for the NYPD's historic crime reduction.

Crime continued to drop on Safir's watch, with major felonies plummeting 38% and murders dropping 44% — though 1999 marked the first year in the last decade that the murder rate increased.

Civilian complaints against cops dropped, as did police shootings — 11 last year, compared with 41 in 1990.

Still, Safir's tenure also will be remembered for the police torture of Haitian immigrant Abner Louima and the fatal shootings of two unarmed men, Amadou Diallo and Patrick Dorismond, by plainclothes cops. Combined with widespread complaints of cops violating the civil rights of minorities, the feds launched investigations into police practices that could lead to federal monitoring of the NYPD.

Safir, who underwent successful triple bypass surgery in 1997, has not decided on a treatment for his prostate cancer — the same disease Giuliani is battling. He has a close relationship with the mayor, who appointed Safir — once a high-ranking official of the U.S. Marshal Service — fire commissioner before tapping him as the city's top cop.

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