NYPD chief known for driving crime down

‘Keeps you up at night’

Shea had been a cop for just three years in 1994 when the NYPD, led by then-Commissioner Bill Bratton, became the first department in the nation to launch CompStat, a revolutionary stat-based system for fighting crime that’s now the norm in bigcity departments.

Since then, crime in New York City has plummeted 73%. Shea’s job is to nudge it even lower.

“We’re not really in a profession where you can pat yourself on the back,” he says.

Shea grew up in Sunnyside, one of five kids in an Irish-American family. His brother, James Shea, retired two years ago from the NYPD as a deputy chief.

He remains focused on holding on to New York’s title as the safest big city in America by expanding the NYPD’s trademark method of precision policing in the post-stop-and-frisk era while concentrating greater resources in crime-heavy areas.

He points to the opioid crisis as a key policing challenge, and speaks passionately about his aim to drive down gun violence.

“I would like to think, before I leave, we make significant progress on how we process guns in New York City,” he says.

Cops, he believes, need to be more than a step ahead. They need to be “three blocks ahead and around the corner.”

With his eye on that prize, he’s been known to send emails while most other people are sleeping.

“I can count probably four people paralyzed by gunshots in the last month and a half. So it’s hard to sit up and say, ‘You know what, we’re at levels never seen before in New York City,’ which is true.

“Well, at the same time you have an 18-year-old kid paralyzed,” he said.

“Every one of those incidents keeps you up at night.”

‘A straight shooter’

Blue and red scribbles on his 11th-floor office whiteboard read “fentanyl,” “probation,” “parole shooters,” “sex trafficking” and “gang intel.” Papers spread across a table show a link analysis, a confidential web of gangs, weapons, ballistic evidence and mug shots.

If Shea had a mantra, it would be balance.

“We don’t want to throw a million people into prison,” he explains. “But we definitely don’t want someone with three sealed gun arrests walking the streets.”

A rare glimpse into a threehour CompStat meeting earlier this month showed Shea putting all his prep to use, questioning commanding officers from Brooklyn North precincts who had been called to the hot seat that week.

The leader of one Brooklyn precinct was grilled on why his detectives had dropped the ball, failing to test DNA from a gun.

“If I’m wrong, tell me and I’ll publicly apologize,” Shea barked at the officer. “But I’m not wrong on this.” In a shooting arrest that didn’t result in a conviction, Shea demanded more info.

“Now he’s out? How does he get out with shooting someone in the head? Can you get back to me? I mean, this person is crying to get off the streets.”

When detectives failed to requestion a convict who was fresh out of an upstate prison because the ex-con claimed he didn’t have an address, Shea cried BS.

“He’s currently on parole and he tells us he’s homeless? We talk to parole on this?” Shea asked.