NYPD Commissioner Shea Files for Retirement

Police Commissioner Dermot Shea and First Deputy Commissioner Ben Tucker have filed for retirement on Thursday, the New York Post reported. Their retirement comes before mayor elect Eric Adams is scheduled to take office. Adams has already announced that he intends to hire a female police commissioner.

Police pension board records show that both Shea and Tucker have listed Dec. 31 as their last day with the NYPD.

Shea began his career as a cop in 1991 in the South Bronx. Before becoming commissioner, Shea was the department’s Chief of Detectives, Chief of Crime Control Strategies, and the Deputy Commissioner of Operations.

He was appointed police commissioner by Mayor Bill De Blasio in November, 2019 after Commissioner James O’Neill retired. Like O’Neill, Shea was considered a protege of Bill Bratton, De Blasio’s first police commissioner.

During his career, Shea helped developed precision policing tactics implemented by the NYPD, where cops focus on a small number of people responsible for most of the city’s crime.

Among the highlights of his tenure, Shea disbanded the anti-crime unit — a controversial plainclothes patrol that is credited with reducing guns in the city but also accounted for many police shootings and the chokehold death of Eric Garner.

Tucker became a police officer in 1972 and a sergeant in 1987. He also served on the Civilian Complaint Review Board and worked for Mayor Ed Koch, according to the New York Daily News,

In 1995, joined the Department of Justice under President Clinton and later as a deputy director in the Office of National Drug Control Policy under President Obama.

Tucker returned to the NYPD under Police Commissioner William Bratton in 2014 as head of training and then became first deputy commissioner overseeing personnel, training, criminal justice and the department’s disciplinary system.