Donald Francis Cawley (September 14, 1929 – September 21, 1990) was an American law enforcement officer who served as

New York City Police Commissioner The New York City Police Commissioner is the head of the New York City Police Department and presiding member of the Board of Commissioners. The commissioner is appointed by and serves at the pleasure of the mayor. The commissioner is responsib ...

from May to December 1973.

Early life

Cawley was born on September 14, 1929, in

Woodside, Queens Woodside is a residential and commercial neighborhood in the western portion of the borough of Queens in New York City. It is bordered on the south by Maspeth, on the north by Astoria, on the west by Sunnyside, and on the east by Elmhurst, J ...

. He studied engineering at Polytechnic Institute in Brooklyn but dropped out due to a lack of money.

Career

Early career

In 1951 he joined the

New York City Police Department The New York City Police Department (NYPD), officially the City of New York Police Department, established on May 23, 1845, is the primary municipal law enforcement agency within the City of New York, the largest and one of the oldest in ...

. He was promoted to sergeant in 1959. In 1961 he began working in the First Deputy Commissioner's office, where he specialized in investigating corruption. He remained in the First Deputy Commissioner's office where he climbed to the rank of deputy inspector. In 1971 he was appointed as an inspector in charge of the Sixth Division, which consisted of most of

Harlem Harlem is a neighborhood in Upper Manhattan, New York City. It is bounded roughly by the Hudson River on the west; the Harlem River and 155th Street (Manhattan), 155th Street on the north; Fifth Avenue on the east; and 110th Street (Manhattan), ...

. In 1972, commissioner Patrick V. Murphy passed over 72 more senior officers to name Cawley chief of patrol.

Commissioner

On April 12, 1973, it was announced that Cawley would succeed Murphy as police commissioner. At 43 years old he was the youngest commissioner in the department's history. He was sworn in on May 14, 1973. As commissioner, Cawley overhauled the department's hiring practices by recruiting minorities, eliminating height requirements for officers, removing culturally biased questions from the Civil Service examination, and raising the age limit for new officers from 29 to 35. Cawley also enacted a policy that would see veteran officers found guilty of accepting minority gratuities punished with a fine instead of automatic dismissal and loss of pension. In an effort to combat street crime he assigned 1,000 detectives to patrol duty. After the

shooting of Clifford Glover Clifford Glover was a 10-year-old African American boy who was fatally shot by Thomas Shea, an on-duty, undercover policeman, on April 28, 1973. Glover's death, and Shea's later acquittal for a murder charge, led to riots in the South Jamaica se ...

, Cawley created a special panel to screen out officers with a history of violent tendencies so they could face disciplinary action, receive additional training, or be reassigned to less stressful positions. He also instituted a name tag policy despite fierce opposition from the

Police Benevolent Association of the City of New York The Police Benevolent Association of the City of New York (PBA) is the largest police union representing police officers of the New York City Police Department. It represents about 24,000 of the department's 36,000 officers. The PBA was origin ...

. Cawley was not retained by Mayor

Abraham Beame Abraham David Beame (March 20, 1906February 10, 2001) was the 104th mayor of New York City from 1974 to 1977. As mayor, he presided over the city during its fiscal crisis of the mid-1970s, when the city was almost forced to declare bankruptcy. ...

and left office on December 31, 1973.

Later life

In April 1974, Cawley was named

Chemical Bank Chemical Bank was a bank with headquarters in New York City from 1824 until 1996. At the end of 1995, Chemical was the third-largest bank in the U.S., with about $182.9 billion in assets and more than 39,000 employees around the world. Beginning ...

's vice president in charge of security, purchasing, and communication services. In 1982 he became the vice president for administration of the New York Clearing House Association. Cawley died of cancer on September 21, 1990, at his home Massapequa, New York. He was 61 years old.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Cawley, Donald 1929 births 1990 deaths New York City Police Commissioners People from Massapequa, New York People from Woodside, Queens