Beat Cop to Top Cop. John F. Timoney

and become a duty captain and work your way to your own command!” he strongly advised. “Otherwise, it may be held against you that you never had a command. It may not seem important now, but in the future it means everything.” What he meant was, out of all of the ranks and all of the jobs in the NYPD, the most important and maybe least appreciated was a precinct commander. Running a precinct meant you had to deal with the local borough commander; the bosses in the “puzzle palace”; the politicians (either at City Hall or the local representatives); and local activists and community organizers, some who had the community's best interest at heart and others who had no heart but, rather, blind ambition. Oh, and by the way, you also had a couple of hundred cops whom you had to inspire and satisfy. To say a precinct commander had many masters was an understatement. How the precinct commander managed those masters largely determined how he fared in his career.

      So I was promoted to captain. The normal route for new captains in the NYPD is an assignment as an executive officer to the commanding officer of a precinct. As the executive officer, you do a lot of the administrative paperwork, you work odd hours, and you meet with odd people. In addition, you obsess over police officer overtime. With that in mind, I was sent back to the Bronx, which I had left five years earlier. I was assigned to the 48th Precinct, which abutted the 44th Precinct on its eastern border. The 48th Precinct was based in a relatively new building. The borough headquarters was located on the second floor, having been relocated from the 46th Precinct.