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TopVet 
Ray
Kelly/New
York City's Top Cop/
A Baptism of Leadership in The Corps
by
Bernard Edelman, Special to Veterans Advantage
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The
terrorist attack that collapsed the Twin
Towers in Lower Manhattan seared the
souls of Americans everywhere. For Ray
Kelly, it was a defining moment.
Kelly,
who had served as New York City police
commissioner a decade earlier, who
lived a block away from the World
Trade Center, and who was then senior
managing director for global corporate
security at the investment bank Bear,
Stearns and Company, saw the first
tower crumble. "It
was just hard to believe," he
said. "I had been there the
first time, right after the first
bombing in 1993, and I remember looking
around and thinking, This building
can never fall. To see it crumble
was just devastating."
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At
that moment, Ray Kelly knew he wanted "to
get back into the game." With the election
of Michael Bloomberg as New York City’s 108th
Mayor, he got that chance – and became a
footnote in history: Raymond W. Kelly is
the first commissioner to serve two separate
tours under two different mayors as New York
City’s top cop.
It
is a position he fills with grace, humility,
conviction, determination, and an unstinting
instinct to do what is right.
Call
to the Corps
Being
the PC of one of the most active police forces
in the nation is not the culmination of any
boyhood ambition. It was never Ray Kelly’s
intention to join the NYPD. What this ramrod-straight
fitness enthusiast wanted to be – what he
was destined to be – was a Marine.
Ray
Kelly is a native New Yorker. One of five
siblings, he was raised in Manhattan and
Sunnyside, Queens. His three older brothers
had been Marines, and "from a very early
age, when I was eight or nine years old,
I knew I would go into the Corps. I had no
choice."
He
was attending Manhattan College and working
as a stockboy at Macy’s in midtown Manhattan
when he saw an ad for a police cadet program.
He had no relatives in the department, no
emotional connection or abiding interest
in police work. The cadet program, though,
piqued his interest. To join he would have
to pass the test to become a police officer.
Which he did. And he in fact served as a
police officer for five days before he entered
the Marine Corps after his graduation.
With
the shooting war in Vietnam heating up in
1965, it wasn’t long before Lt. Kelly was
sent halfway across the globe. Assigned to
the 2nd Battalion, 1st Marines,
he saw his share of combat. There were a
lot of "difficult days," he said
during a recent telephone interview from
his office at One Police Plaza. One of the
most difficult occurred during what was later
named, ironically, Operation New York.
"We
trapped a VC battalion on a peninsula," he
recounted. After being choppered in, his
Marines formed a defensive perimeter. The
night was uneventful. The next day, the Marines
moved down a skirmish line, hoping to force
the enemy into an untenable position. They
encountered no resistance. Suddenly, a whole
tree line opened up. Marines fell under withering
small-arms fire. In this battle, as in countless
other encounters with the VC, Ray Kelly saw
the courage of young men who exposed themselves
to enemy fire to come to the aid of fellow
Marines.
When
bullets are whizzing by, and you know what
they can do to the human body, to put someone
else’s life before your own personal safety
embodies the essence of courage, he said.
It
was in such situations, that Ray Kelly first
put into practice the lessons of leadership
that had been drummed into him by the Corps:
how integrity, initiative, judgment, job
knowledge, confidence, and decisiveness all
meld together and become second-nature.
"I
still use the lessons I learned in the Corps
every day," he said. These lessons have
formed the foundation of his career.
'Velvet
Trap'
After
he was released from active duty, Ray Kelly
was faced with decisions about the path his
life would take. His first son had been born
while he was overseas, and while he wanted
to go to law school, he had a family to feed.
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He
saw going back to the police department
as the first step on the path to a
career in law.
While
he did achieve his degree – he would
earn law degrees from both St. John's
and New York Universities as well
as a master's degree in public administration
from the Kennedy School of Government
at Harvard University along with
a slew of honorary degrees – he never
went into practice. Because Ray Kelly
fell in love with police work.
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"It
was a velvet trap," he said. "Responding
to calls on a 4-12 tour has all the elements
that make it one of the most exciting – and
rewarding – jobs" around. Even as PC,
he is known to take unannounced runs with
officers on patrol.
Police
work was his calling. In 31 years with the
NYPD, he had 25 commands, culminating with
his appointment as police commissioner by
Mayor David Dinkins in 1992 (At the same
time, he remained a Marine, not only in bearing
but in fact: He would serve 30 years before
he would retire as a full colonel from the
Marine Reserves.)
As
a senior police official, Ray Kelly has been
an innovator. He was one of the department’s
chief architects of the Safe City/Safe Streets
program, which put an additional 7,000 cops
out into the communities. He was the first
commissioner to target so-called quality
of life crimes, epitomized for many by the
infamous "squeegee men" who greeted
vehicles entering Manhattan with dirty rags
and attitude.
"He
laid the groundwork for many of the changes
that took place during the Giuliani administration," Robert
Louden of the Criminal Justice Center at
John Jay College of Criminal Justice told
the Christian Science Monitor. " I
don’t think he ever got much positive credit
for what he did."
Take
Two
| With
the election of Rudolph Giuliani to the
mayoralty in 1994, Ray Kelly moved on.
During the crisis in Haiti in 1994, President
Bill Clinton named him Director of the
International Police Monitors of the
multinational force that went to that
beleaguered nation to quell civil unrest
and end human rights abuses. The monitors
helped to establish Haiti's interim public
security force. For his service, Kelly
was awarded the Exceptionally Meritorious
Service Commendation by the President
and the Commander’s Medal for Public
Service by the Chairman of the Joint
Chiefs of Staff. |
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From
1996-98, he served as Under Secretary for
Enforcement at the U.S. Treasury Department,
charged with supervising that agency’s enforcement
bureaus, including the Secret Service, the
Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms,
the Federal Enforcement Training Center,
the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network,
and the Office of Foreign Assets Control.
In October 1997 he was elected Vice President
of the Americas for INTERPOL, the international
police organization.
Kelly
chafed a bit in what was essentially an administrative
role. He craved...police work. His cravings
were assuaged when he was named Commissioner
of the U.S. Customs Service, where he directed
more than 19,000 employees responsible for
enforcing hundreds of laws and international
agreements that protect the American public.
By all accounts, he did another exemplary
job.
With
the election of a new president, his long
career in public service seemed over. He
was offered, and accepted, the prestigious
position at Bear, Stearns. This detour from
public service was to be short-lived, however: 9/11
happened.
And
thanks to Michael Bloomberg, Ray Kelly is
back in the game he loves.
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