After serving in Vietnam, joins the Boston Police Department as a beat cop
1975
Graduates from the University of Massachusetts in Boston
1980
Promoted to Boston Police Department’s highest sworn position
1983
Named chief of Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority Police
1986
Becomes superintendent of Boston’s Metropolitan District Commission Police
1990
Named chief of the New York City Transit Police Department
“When I became the Transit Police chief in 1990, no one predicted that subway robberies would decline by 76 percent in the next six years, but it happened.”
1992
Returns to the Boston Police Department as superintendent in chief
1993
Becomes Boston’s police commissioner
1993
Named New York City police commissioner by Mayor Rudy Giuliani
“I did not come here to lose. We will fight for every house in the city. We will fight for every street. We will fight for every borough. And we will win.”
1995
Launches Compstat, a pioneering computerized accountability system
1996
Felony crime in New York City declines by 39 percent since 1994
1996
Resigns as NYPD commissioner amid tensions with Giuliani
“Since I became commissioner in 1994, the New York Police Department has been engaged in a full-scale attack on crime. Reported crime continued to decline in the first quarter of 1996 – 33 percent since 1993. Homicides are down 49 percent.”
2002
Becomes chief of Los Angeles Police Department
“We don’t have the certainty we had in the ’70s, ’80s and ’90s, when it was the traditional crime: murder, rape, robbery, car thefts. We had defined it. We knew its dimensions. And now we really don’t know what those dimensions are. We’ve had the unheard-of events of September 11th, planes hijacked and crashed into buildings.”
2007
Major felonies in Los Angeles decline by 30 percent since 2002
2009
Resigns as chief of LAPD
2011
Considered for position as commissioner of Police of the Metropolis of London
2013
Appointed New York City police commissioner by Mayor Bill de Blasio
“In this city, I want every New Yorker to talk about ‘their police,’ ‘my police.’”
