Raymond Kelly

Kelly was born in 1941 and raised on the Upper West Side of Manhattan, to James F. Kelly, a milkman, and Elizabeth Kelly, a dressing-room checker at Macy's. A fitness buff since his teens, Kelly still regularly lifts weights and does aerobic exercises. He is also a fashionable dresser, favoring custom-made shirts that he takes to Geneva, a shirtmaker, for laundering. He also favors silk ties by Charvet. "A tie is the only true way men can make some sort of statement", Kelly has stated, citing Barack Obama as another fan of the high-end French label. "I can tell when someone's wearing Charvet from a distance – even dark colors stand out." Claiming that good-quality clothing enhances his public image as an authority figure, he orders custom hand-tailored suits from master tailor Martin Greenfield, who numbers politicians and movie stars among his clientele and whose suits run in the four figures.

Kelly graduated from Archbishop Molloy High School in 1959. He graduated with a Bachelor of Business Administration from Manhattan College in 1963. He also holds a J.D. from the St. John's University School of Law, a LL.M. from the New York University School of Law, and an M.P.A. from the Harvard Kennedy School.

Kelly joined the New York City Police Department as a police Trainee in 1960. Six years later in 1966, Kelly officially joined NYPD. He graduated first in his class from the New York City Police Academy and passed the sergeant's test upon returning from Vietnam. This meteoric ascent combined with relative inexperience as a beat cop has prompted some criticisms from colleagues. According to Geoffrey Gray who wrote in New York Magazine, "Some retired cops say Kelly's swift ascent makes him a boss who doesn't understand the street. 'He's not a cop,' says one retired chief, dismissively. 'He's on patrol for a blink of an eye and tells guys on patrol ten years how to do their jobs.' Says another, 'He gives you all the ingredients to make shrimp scampi and says he wants sirloin steak.'"

Kelly is a combat veteran of the Vietnam War. He received his commission as a second lieutenant in the United States Marine Corps in 1963. In 1965, he went to the Republic of Vietnam with the 2nd Battalion 1st Marines. As a first lieutenant in Vietnam, Kelly led Marines in battle for most of his 12 months in country, including participation in Operation Harvest Moon. Upon returning to the U.S., Raymond Kelly joined the Reserves and retired after 30 years of service with the rank of colonel from the Marine Corps Reserves.

On February 9, 1990 Kelly was appointed First Deputy Commissioner during the administration of Mayor David Dinkins. Kelly's boss was New York City Police Commissioner Lee Brown, who was a former Houston Police Chief and the future mayor of Houston.

On October 16, 1992 Mayor Dinkins appointed Kelly as the 37th Police Commissioner of the City of New York. Kelly took over a police department that was 11.5% black, in a city with an over 25% black population. At 9 am on his first full day as Police Commissioner, Kelly was on the "black-owned" radio station WLIB for 40 minutes talking to host Art Whaley, as well as callers, to discuss minority recruitment. He showed himself a master of outreach and even attended black church services in an effort to recruit minority policemen.

The national decline in both violent crime and property crime began in 1993, during the early months of Raymond Kelly's commissioner-ship under Dinkins. A firm believer in community policing, Kelly helped spur the decline in New York by instituting the Safe Streets, Safe City program, which put thousands more cops on the streets, where they would be visible to and able to get to know and interact with local communities. As the 37th Commissioner, he also pursued quality of life issues, such as the "squeegee men" that had become a sign of decay in the city. The murder rate in New York city had declined from its 1990 mid-Dinkins administration historic high of 2,254 to 1,927 when Kelly left in 1994, and continued to plummet even more steeply under Mayors Giuliani and Bloomberg. The decline continued when Kelly returned as commissioner under Mayor Bloomberg in 2002–2013.

The first World Trade Center terrorist attack occurred on February 26, 1993 while Kelly was police commissioner under Mayor Dinkins (1992 to 1994) and Kelly led his department through the investigation of the bombing.

In August 1993, Kelly introduced the 9mm semi-automatic pistol as an option for officers. The Glock 19, SIG Sauer P226, and Smith & Wesson 5946 pistols were approved for duty to replace the NYPD's Smith & Wesson Model 10 and Model 64 double-action only revolvers chambered in .38 Special. Himself a former street cop, Kelly was concerned about the semi-automatic pistols' propensity for sustaining firearm malfunctions. Indeed, at a media event introducing the new semi-automatic pistols in January 1993, one of the firearms malfunctioned just moments after a deputy inspector explained that malfunctions and failures were the semi-automatic pistol's major design drawback.

In November 1993, Rudolph Giuliani defeated Mayor Dinkins in his run for a second term as Mayor of New York City. Giuliani then replaced Kelly with Boston police commissioner William Bratton. Coincidentally, Giuliani and Kelly had known each other for a long time; they were two years apart at Manhattan College three decades previously.

From 1996 to 1998, Kelly was Under Secretary for Enforcement at the United States Department of the Treasury. At that post he supervised the Department's enforcement bureaus, including the Customs Service, the Secret Service and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms, the Federal Law Enforcement Training Center, the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network and the Office of Foreign Assets Control.

From 1998 to 2001, Kelly served as the Commissioner of the U.S. Customs Service, where he managed the agency's 20,000 employees and $20 billion annual budget.

On March 5, 2007 it was announced that a Rikers Island inmate offered to pay an undercover police officer posing as a hit person to behead Kelly as well as bomb police headquarters in retaliation for the controversial police shooting of Sean Bell.

In April 2009, Kelly abstained in a vote to remove Quadrangle Group from doing business with the NYC police pension fund.

Kelly may have been aware of the alleged NYPD conspiracy against whistleblower Adrian Schoolcraft. According to the Village Voice: "If proven true, [NYPD spokesperson Paul] Browne's presence at Schoolcraft's home on Oct. 31, 2009 suggests that Commissioner Kelly was aware of the decision by Deputy Chief Michael Marino to order Schoolcraft handcuffed and dragged from his own apartment just three weeks after he reported police misconduct to the unit which audits NYPD crime statistics."

As commissioner of the NYPD under Mayor Michael Bloomberg, Kelly had often appeared at outreach events such as the Brooklyn's annual West Indian Day Parade, where he was photographed playing the drums and speaking to community leaders. Bloomberg and Kelly, however, continued to place heavy reliance on the CompStat system, initiated by Bill Bratton and since adopted by police departments in other cities worldwide. The system, while recognized as highly effective in reducing crime, also puts pressure on local precincts to reduce the number of reports for the seven major crimes while increasing the number of lesser arrests. The two men continued and indeed stepped up Mayor Giuliani's controversial stop-and-frisk policy, which was determined in Floyd v. City of New York to be an unconstitutional form of racial profiling. In the first half of 2011 the NYC police made 362,150 such stops, constituting a 13.5 percent increase from the same period in 2010, according to WNYC radio (which also reported that 84 percent of the people stopped were either black or Latino, and that "nine out 10 stops did not result in any arrest or ticket.") According to New York State Senator Eric Adams, "Kelly was one of the great humanitarians in policing under David Dinkins. I don't know what happened to him that all of a sudden his philosophical understanding of the importance of community and police liking each other has changed. Sometimes the expeditious need of bringing down crime numbers bring out the worst in us. So instead of saying let's just go seek out the bad guy, we get to the point of, 'Let's go get them all.' If Kelly can't philosophically change, then we need to have a leadership change at the top."

Also during his service as commissioner under Mayor Bloomberg, Kelly has been a member of the Harvard Club of New York, with membership and expenses charged covered by the privately funded New York City Police Foundation. The gift was not reported in Kelly's financial disclosures, but indications upon public revelation in 2010 were that the disclosures would be amended.

A 2010 report on gifts "reported six shared plane flights to Florida in 2008 and five more in 2009, provided by Mayor ... Bloomberg at an undetermined cost".

On October 16, 2011 the New York Civil Liberties Union filed a lawsuit in New York State Supreme Court in Manhattan seeking to force the New York Police Department to release the daily schedules of Commissioner Kelly, whom it characterized as "the most important appointed official" in city government. According to the suit the details of whom Kelly meets with remain largely shrouded in secrecy, in marked contrast to those of other high-placed officials, including the President of the United States, who are required to publicly disclose portions of their schedules. New York Governor Andrew M. Cuomo last month began posting a detailed version of his daily schedules online. "There is no good reason for Commissioner Kelly to withhold this information from the public," Donna Lieberman, the executive director of the civil liberties group, said in a statement. "If it's safe for the leader of the country to disclose his schedule, then it's safe for the N.Y.P.D. commissioner to do the same."

On September 25, 2011 Mr. Kelly was interviewed on the television program 60 Minutes by Scott Pelley about anti-terrorism measures taken in New York City's financial district in the 10 years following the 9/11 attacks. One of these has been the development of a $3-billion NYPD Joint Operations Center that includes representatives from the military, FBI, FEMA and state and local first responders. During the interview, Mr. Kelly averred that the New York City police department now even possesses missiles that could take down a plane, if necessary.

In 2012, Kelly oversaw the rollout of the Domain Awareness System, a computer system used for Police surveillance in New York City.

In 2013 his visit to Brown University was met with a demonstration against what protestors saw as increased racial profiling and violations of civil rights under Kelly's leadership as NYPD Commissioner.

In July 2013, Secretary of Homeland Security Janet Napolitano announced that she was resigning and Kelly was immediately cited as an obvious potential successor by New York Senator Charles Schumer and others.

On October 17, 2013 President Obama moved to nominate Jeh Johnson to be United States Secretary of Homeland Security. The Washington Post reported "Johnson, an African-American, would bring further racial diversity to Obama's Cabinet. The first black U.S. president has been criticized for having a high number of white men in top Cabinet roles." In November 2013, a rule change in the United States Senate prevented the minority party from seriously contesting any executive nominee; Johnson was confirmed as DHS Secretary in December 2013.

In November 2014 it was reported that Kelly would no longer require a $1.5 million security team after completing his transition into the private sector. Prior to relieving his security detail and since leaving office, Kelly had 24-hour-a-day protection consisting of an NYPD lieutenant, three sergeants and six detectives. With their $140,000 salaries (plus overtime), the ten-man team cost New York City taxpayers $1.5 million. The NYPD had argued this was a necessary expense due to the threats Kelly and his family received as a result of his work. Kelly determined he was no longer the target he once was.

Kelly, a retired Marine Colonel, was appointed as the Grand Marshal of the 95th annual Veterans Day parade in New York City in 2014. He marched with his wife who was a member of the Coast Guard reserve.