Safir to Leave NYPD

ByABC News
August 7, 2000, 6:33 PM

N E W  Y O R K, Aug. 8 -- New York City Police Commissioner Howard Safir said this morning he will resign to take a job in the private sector that will involve the use of DNA testing to help solve crimes.

Mayor Rudolph Giuliani called Safir the greatest police commisioner in the history of the city at a morning news conference.

Safir has accepted a job at ChoicePoint in Atlanta as the special adviser to the president of the company, which verifies pre-employment credentials for businesses.

Safir said the new job offers him the opportunity to do things with DNA and law enforecement issues he could not do while working in the public sector.

This is a day of mixed emotuions. I am going to an exciting new career, Safir said. Its just time to do something else.

His last day on the job will be Aug. 18.

Steep Drop in CrimeSafir, 58, has presided over a dramatic drop in the crime rate, but also a department beset by racial incidents over his four years in charge.

Since his 1996 appointment, crime in the Big Apple is down roughly 30 percent. But Safirs critics accuse him of being Giulianis puppet, rubber-stamping the mayors policies. Safir was never as popular as his predecessor, the affable William Bratton, who won over the men and women in blue, as well as the public.

His tenure was marked by several dramatic, polarizing shooting incidents. He was accused of being insensitive to minorities, and the cases including the fatal shooting of unarmed immigrant Amadou Diallo only served to increase tensions between the department and the citys large minority community.

Tensions in Gotham

In 1997, Haitian immigrant Abner Louima was brutalized in the bathroom of the 70th Precinct in Brooklyn by Officer Justin Volpe. Volpe pleaded guilty in 1999. Five other officers have either been convicted at trial or pleaded guilty in one of the worst police brutality scandals in city history.