Pubdate: Sat, 26 Jan 2008
Source: New York Times (NY)
Copyright: 2008 The New York Times Company
Contact:  http://www.nytimes.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/298
Author: Al Baker
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/corrupt.htm (Corruption - United States)

FOR POLICE FIX-IT MAN, A SCANDAL TO WORK ON

Police Officers Sum Up Different Bosses In Different Ways.

There are "hatchet-men" and "yes-men," police commanders who can cut 
you down or sell you out. A "Nervous Nelly" is a liability; a "cop's 
cop," an asset.

In this street matrix of management styles, Deputy Chief Joseph J. 
Reznick might well come under the heading "Dominant/Aggressive," 
maybe even "Hostile."

"A lot of his decisions, I opposed, vocally, and he and I have 
disagreed time and time again, though he was always open to the 
discussion," said Detective First Grade Robert Rodriguez, 37, who 
worked for Chief Reznick in the warrants division. "And in the end, 
time and time again, I was wrong."

Now, the arrest of four narcotics officers in Brooklyn has given the 
Police Department a black eye, and Chief Reznick, a veteran whose 
name pops up in all manner of big cases, and who began his career on 
a foot patrol in Washington Heights, has been brought in to clean up 
a scandal that has caused 80 drug prosecutions to collapse.

He is a fixer, of sorts.

In an interview Friday, joined at times by two members of the 
department's public affairs office, the chief would not discuss the 
drugs-for-informants scandal in Brooklyn South Narcotics, nor what 
his plans were in dealing with it. But he spoke at length about his 
career, and his outlook.

Chief Reznick, 56, grew up on Third Avenue and 33rd Street in 
Manhattan as the middle child of a city housing employee and a housewife.

"My father would bring home bikes from the development that were 
discarded by people that lived there, and he'd have like a 20-inch 
wheel on the front and a 24-inch wheel on the back and we'd look at 
it and he'd say, 'Just ride it until the wheels fall off,' that was 
his motto," the chief said. "I look at life like that now."

His father, Walter, died of complications of pneumonia in June 1967, 
when the chief was 15.

Chief Reznick joined the department in December 1973 after a stint in 
the Navy. He is about 100th on the N.Y.P.D. seniority list out of 
roughly 36,000 men and women.

But more remarkable than his longevity is the number of times he has 
been in the middle of the latest hot issue at the department, whether 
it be an internal scandal or a high-profile crime. In the process, he 
has made friends, and some enemies.

In 2006, when he oversaw the cold case squad, Chief Reznick sent a 
scathing memo threatening to transfer six detectives he saw as 
unproductive, drawing fury from the Detectives' Endowment Association 
but praise from the higher-ups.

He was involved in the investigation of the torture and killing of 
Jonathan M. Levin, a teacher, in his Manhattan apartment in 1997; the 
murder of Irene Silverman in her Upper East Side town house in 1998; 
and the murder of the girl they called "Baby Hope," a 5-year-old 
whose body was found packed into a picnic cooler off the Henry Hudson Parkway.

"Baby Hope is still on my mind," he said. "Still unsolved, 1991. July 21st."

Days after Officer Russel Timoshenko, 23, was fatally shot in 
Brooklyn last July, Chief Reznick led the chase for the suspects in 
the killing; they were captured in an area off Interstate 80 in 
Pennsylvania. In 1988, he was equally determined in solving the 
killing of Officer Michael J. Buczek, 24, Police Commissioner Raymond 
W. Kelly recalled.

"Chief Reznick is a no-nonsense police executive; a consummate 
professional who gets the job done, no matter what," Mr. Kelly said 
in an e-mail message. He added: "In short, Chief Reznick doesn't quit."

It's been just a few days since he got the assignment to Brooklyn 
South Narcotics, and it promises to be among the most challenging in 
a busy career.

Two narcotics officers, Detective Sean Johnstone and Officer Julio 
Alvarez, are accused of lying in September about the amount of 
cocaine they recovered from a suspect. Detective Johnstone was later 
recorded talking about withholding drugs and the practice of giving 
them to informants.

A subsequent inquiry led to the arrests last week of two other 
officers in the unit, Sgt. Michael Arenella and Officer Jerry Bowens. 
The two are accused in court papers of taking drugs and cash they had 
recovered and of giving them to a confidential informant as payback.

As a result, four high-level police commanders have been transferred, 
and Chief Reznick has been brought in.

Chief Reznick would say only that he'll use "my skills, my 
experience, as I've done in the past, to make good" in Brooklyn South 
Narcotics.

He is a timepiece in a sea of fresh faces, a dinosaur on a department 
filled with "Smurfs" -- slang for a young officer in a blue uniform. 
He has the big hands of a boxer and the brutish frame of one, too. He 
fixes things at home, in Queens, where he and his wife, Patricia, a 
teacher at a Catholic grammar school, raised their three firefighter sons.

"He likes it when bad guys go to jail," said Inspector Ken Cully, the 
commanding officer of the Manhattan North narcotics bureau, who met 
the chief in the early 1980s when they both patrolled in the 30th Precinct.

Looking ahead, the chief would say only, "Some people come here, take 
this as a job and you'll see that when they hit their 20th year, 
they're gone. I've far exceeded that by 14 years now. I have no 
intentions of leaving."
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MAP posted-by: Jay Bergstrom