Raymond Walter Kelly (born September 4, 1941) is an American police officer who was the longest-serving commissioner in the history of the New York City Police Department (NYPD) and the first person to hold the post for two non-consecutive tenures. According to its website, Kelly, a lifelong New Yorker, had spent 45 years in the NYPD, serving in 25 different commands and as police commissioner from 1992 to 1994 and again from 2002 until 2013. Kelly was the first man to rise from police cadet to police commissioner, holding all of the department's ranks, except for three-star bureau chief, chief of department and deputy commissioner, having been promoted directly from two-star chief to first deputy commissioner in 1990. After his handling of the World Trade Center bombing in 1993, he was mentioned for the first time as a possible candidate for FBI Director.; (video of broadcast) After Kelly turned down the position, Louis Freeh was appointed.
Kelly was a Marine Corps Reserve colonel, director of police under the United Nations Mission in Haiti, and an Interpol vice president. During the Clinton administration, Kelly served as Treasury Department Under Secretary for Enforcement, as Customs Service Commissioner and was in the running to become the first United States Ambassador to Vietnam, after President Bill Clinton extended full diplomatic relations to that country in 1995.
In March 2011, New York Senator Chuck Schumer endorsed Kelly to become the next director of the FBI,Lemire, Jonathan .(March 13, 2011). Sen. Charles Schumer loves idea of NYPD commissioner Ray Kelly taking over FBI Daily News Hoboken, NJ Archived(Tabloid) on December 13, 2013. Retrieved June 15, 2022. and in July 2013, he endorsed Kelly to become Secretary of Homeland Security.
In March 2014, he was appointed as President of Risk Management Services at Cushman & Wakefield, a New York City-based commercial real estate services firm.RAYMOND W. KELLY NAMED PRESIDENT OF RISK MANAGEMENT SERVICES-March 5, 2014-Cushman & Wakefield
Early life and education Kelly was born September 4, 1941, in New York City and raised on the Upper West Side of Manhattan, to James F. Kelly, a milkman, and Elizabeth Kelly, a dressing-room checker at Macy's.
Kelly graduated from Archbishop Molloy High School in 1959. He graduated with a Bachelor of Business Administration from Manhattan University in 1963. He also holds a J.D. from the St. John's University School of Law,St. John's University Web Site a LL.M. from the New York University School of Law,NYU Notable Alumni and an M.P.A. from Harvard Kennedy School.NYPD Crimson Harvard Kennedy School Magazine, Winter 2011
Kelly has also been the recipient of honorary degrees from Marist College, Manhattan University, the College of St. Rose, St. John's University, the State University of New York, New York University, Iona College, Pace University, Quinnipiac University, St. Thomas Aquinas College and the Catholic University of America.
Military career Kelly is a combat veteran of the Vietnam War. He received his commission as a second lieutenant in the United States Marine Corps in 1963. In 1965, he went to the Republic of Vietnam with the 2nd Battalion 1st Marines. As a first lieutenant in Vietnam, Kelly led Marines in battle for most of his 12 months in country, including participation in Operation Harvest Moon. Upon returning to the U.S., Raymond Kelly joined the Reserves and retired after 30 years of service with the rank of colonel from the Marine Corps Reserves.
Early police career Kelly joined the New York City Police Department as a police trainee in 1960. Six years later in 1966, Kelly was appointed to the entry level rank of Patrolman. He graduated first in his class from the New York City Police Academy and passed the sergeant's test upon returning from Vietnam. This meteoric ascent combined with relative inexperience as a beat cop has prompted some criticisms from colleagues. Geoffrey Gray wrote in New York Magazine that, "Some retired cops say Kelly's swift ascent makes him a boss who doesn't understand the street. 'He's not a cop,' says one retired chief, dismissively. 'He's on patrol for a blink of an eye and tells guys on patrol ten years how to do their jobs.' Says another, 'He gives you all the ingredients to make shrimp scampi and says he wants sirloin steak.'"
However, his long service stands in stark contrast to that of his predecessor, Bernard Kerik. Kerik served as an NYPD officer for only 8 years before he was appointed commissioner by Mayor Rudy Giuliani.
First Deputy Commissioner On February 9, 1990, Kelly was appointed First Deputy Commissioner during the administration of Mayor David Dinkins. Kelly's boss was New York City Police Commissioner Lee Brown, who was a former Houston Police Chief and the future mayor of Houston.
Kelly was promoted from a two-star assistant chief to the first deputy position over several three-star bureau chiefs and the four-star chief of department, Robert J. Johnston Jr.
At the time Johnston was so powerful, Brown altered the traditional hierarchy by announcing that Johnston would report directly to the police commissioner rather than the first deputy as had been called for under the former departmental structure. This was done to prevent Johnston from having to report to his former subordinate, Kelly.
37th NYC police commissioner On October 16, 1992, Mayor Dinkins appointed Kelly as the 37th police xommissioner of the City of New York. Kelly took over a police department that was 11.5% black, in a city with an over 25% black population. At 9 am on his first full day as police commissioner, Kelly was on the "black-owned" radio station WLIB for 40 minutes talking to host Art Whaley, as well as callers, to discuss minority recruitment. He showed himself a master of outreach and even attended black church services in an effort to recruit minority policemen.
The national decline in both violent crime and property crime began in 1993, during the early months of Raymond Kelly's commissioner-ship under Dinkins. A firm believer in community policing, Kelly helped spur the decline in New York by instituting the Safe Streets, Safe City program, which put thousands more cops on the streets, where they would be visible to and able to get to know and interact with local communities. As the 37th commissioner, he also pursued quality of life issues, such as the "squeegee men" that had become a sign of decay in the city. The murder rate in New York city had declined from its 1990 mid-Dinkins administration historic high of 2,254 to 1,927 when Kelly left in 1994,http://www.gothamgazette.com/article/crime/20011130/4/226 | Julia Vitullo-Martin, The New And Old Police Commissioner Ray Kelly, The Gotham Gazette, Nov. 2001. and continued to plummet even more steeply under mayors Giuliani and Bloomberg. The decline continued when Kelly returned as commissioner under Mayor Bloomberg in 2002–2013.
1993 World Trade Center terrorist attack The first World Trade Center terrorist attack occurred on February 26, 1993, while Kelly was police commissioner under Mayor Dinkins (1992 to 1994) and Kelly led his department through the investigation of the bombing.
1993 NYPD handgun transition In August 1993, Kelly introduced the 9mm semi-automatic pistol as an option for officers. The Glock 19, SIG Sauer P226, and Smith & Wesson 5946 pistols were approved for duty to replace the NYPD's Smith & Wesson Model 10 and Model 64 double-action only revolvers chambered in .38 Special. Himself a former street cop, Kelly was concerned about the semi-automatic pistols' propensity for sustaining firearm malfunctions. Indeed, at a media event introducing the new semi-automatic pistols in January 1993, one of the firearms malfunctioned just moments after a deputy inspector explained that malfunctions and failures were the semi-automatic pistol's major design drawback.
Transition In November 1993, Rudolph Giuliani defeated Mayor Dinkins in his run for a second term as Mayor of New York City. Giuliani then replaced Kelly with Boston police commissioner William Bratton. Coincidentally, Giuliani and Kelly had known each other for a long time; they were two years apart at Manhattan University (Then Manhattan College) three decades prior.
41st NYC police commissioner As commissioner of the NYPD under Mayor Michael Bloomberg, Kelly had often appeared at outreach events such as the Brooklyn's annual West Indian Day Parade, where he was photographed playing the drums and speaking to community leaders. Bloomberg and Kelly, however, continued to place heavy reliance on the CompStat system, initiated by Bill Bratton and since adopted by police departments in other cities worldwide. The system, while recognized as highly effective in reducing crime, also puts pressure on local precincts to reduce the number of reports for the seven major crimes while increasing the number of lesser arrests. The two men continued and indeed stepped up Mayor Giuliani's controversial stop-and-frisk policy, which was determined in Floyd v. City of New York to be an unconstitutional form of racial profiling. In the first half of 2011 the NYC police made 362,150 such stops, constituting a 13.5 percent increase from the same period in 2010, according to WNYC radio (which also reported that 84 percent of the people stopped were either black or Latino, and that "nine out 10 stops did not result in any arrest or ticket.") According to New York State Senator Eric Adams, "Kelly was one of the great humanitarians in policing under David Dinkins. I don't know what happened to him that all of a sudden his philosophical understanding of the importance of community and police liking each other has changed. Sometimes the expeditious need of bringing down crime numbers bring out the worst in us. So instead of saying let's just go seek out the bad guy, we get to the point of, 'Let's go get them all.' If Kelly can't philosophically change, then we need to have a leadership change at the top."