…and then when I got out, they arrested me for swindling the sons of my dead housekeeper out of the settlement they got when she fell and died on my front steps.
Okay, that was not one of the more successful Amy Winehouse songs. The scansion could probably use a little work.
Giggle. Snort. Both Mike the Musicologist and Lawrence sent this to me.
Also charged: Marilyn Louise Flynn, “who at the time was dean of USC’s School of Social Work”.
In a 20-count indictment, he and Flynn face charges of conspiracy, bribery and mail and wire fraud.
But what exactly did they do?
Allegedly, the senior Ridley-Thomas funneled about $100,000 to USC.
The Times reported that USC alerted federal prosecutors to the unusual arrangement after an internal investigation. It also described the intense budget pressure Flynn was under at the time of the alleged scheme with Mark Ridley-Thomas in large part because of her embrace of online degree programs.
Under her tenure as dean, USC’s social work program became the largest in the world, growing from an enrollment of 900 in 2010 to 3,500 in 2016.
That growth, however, was achieved largely through a partnership with a digital learning startup that received more than half of the tuition that students paid for a master’s degree through the school’s online program. The profit-sharing required Flynn to aggressively raise money and seek government contracts to increase revenue.
To fill the online ranks, the school began admitting less qualified students, who sometimes struggled to do the work and who ultimately drove down the rankings of the once-prestigious program. In 2019, USC was forced to lay off social work professors and staff members.
More fun: Ridley-Thomas is the third council member to be indicted in the past two years.
The council has been mired in corruption scandals. Former L.A. Councilman Jose Huizar is awaiting trial on racketeering, bribery, money laundering and other charges. Prosecutors allege he headed up a criminal enterprise involving multiple real estate developers looking to build projects in his downtown district when he was on the council. Huizar and a former deputy mayor who was indicted with him have pleaded not guilty and are seeking to have many of the charges dismissed.
In a related case, former Councilman Mitchell Englander is serving a 14-month prison sentence after pleading guilty to lying to federal authorities about cash and other gifts that he received in casinos in Las Vegas and near Palm Springs.
And even more fun: USC has other issues.
And the cherry on top:
I have my own set of issues with the New York City Police Department, and I don’t even live in NYC.
But I think this story is worth calling out.
In January of 1993, Katrina Brownlee was shot 10 times by her abusive boyfriend.
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She survived, but lost the child she was carrying.
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In 2001 she entered the police academy. What followed was a 20-year career of promotions to busy, dangerous areas of policing, from the streets of Brooklyn to undercover work in narcotics and prostitution stings. She ended up on the elite executive protection detail, as a bodyguard to the mayor of New York.
The entire time, through all those postings, Ms. Brownlee did her best to keep her shooting a secret. She feared what her fellow officers or her bosses would make of her traumatic injuries and her motivations for joining their ranks.
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After more than five years of being undercover, she was transferred to a quieter post in a community affairs office in police headquarters, and, now a police officer in plain sight, she saw an opportunity.
In 2012, she founded a program with the office called A Rose Is Still a Rose, which was eventually renamed and designated a nonprofit, Young Ladies of Our Future. The organization “aims to inspire, educate, mentor, and empower at-risk young ladies,” according to its website. At offices in Brownsville and East New York in Brooklyn, young women would gather for weekly workshops — “from etiquette to bullying to gun violence to nutrition,” she said.
The NYT has a good summary of the Murdaugh case(s), for those like me who have had trouble keeping up.
He’s gone, gone.
Well, technically, not quite yet:
Miami City Manager Art Noriega moved to fire embattled Police Chief Art Acevedo Monday night, ending weeks of speculation following two circus-like public hearings where city commissioners slammed the chief for everything from a tone-deaf statement about “Cuban Mafia” running the department to a tight jumpsuit he wore years ago during a fundraiser in another city.
Technically, the manager suspended Acevedo pending termination — forcing an almost-sure-to-lose hearing before a five-member commission with three vocal critics who appear likely to support his ouster after his tumultuous six months in charge.
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In just six months, Acevedo angered city leaders with a string of decisions and comments. Noriega, Acevedo’s boss and who was ultimately responsible for his hire, was left with little choice but to force the chief out.
Since early April Acevedo has taken control of internal affairs, publicly disparaged the legal community for early prisoner releases and short sentences and fired the highest ranking police couple in the department for not properly reporting an accident in which two tires were blown out of a city-issued vehicle. He also demoted four majors, including the second-highest ranking Black female officer in the department.
Acevedo also “accidentally” posed for a picture with one of the local leaders of the white national movement Proud Boys.
Some of the complaints seem quite petty, like the one about the tight white jumpsuit. But others…
His relationship with the city’s five commissioners — who direct Noriega — only worsened. Three weeks ago he penned a memo to Noriega and Mayor Francis Suarez accusing Commissioners Joe Carollo, Diaz de la Portilla and Manolo Reyes of interfering with police investigations. The chief also said he had informed federal investigators and compared the trio’s actions to Communist Cuba.
Like Acevedo, two of the city’s three Cuban-American commissioners fled Cuba as children and the families of all three have suffered since Castro’s takeover 60 years ago. Infuriated, commissioners called for a pair of public hearings in which they excoriated the chief without rebuttal.
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Noted:
The Zodiac Killer has been identified!
Again.
For about the 16th time, based just on my rough count of Wikipedia entries. (Even if you throw out the Manson Family and Ted Kaczynski as not serious candidates, that still leaves what, 14? 15 if you count Ted Cruz?)
Oh, yeah: the Riverside Police Department says these people are full of you-know-what.
I would have missed this one if Mike the Musicologist hadn’t pointed it out to me.
Remember Lovely Warren, the soon to be former mayor of Rochester, New York? Indicted for criminal possession of a firearm and endangering the welfare of a child?
She’s going to be the former mayor sooner than expected: Ms. Warren took a plea.
Also taking pleas: “campaign treasurer Albert Jones Jr. and Rosiland Brooks-Harris, treasurer of political action committee Warren for a Strong Rochester”.
The campaign finance charges go back to an earlier indictment. But as part of the deal:
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So the way I’m reading this, she pled guilty to a single misdemeanor, if she keeps her nose clean for a year that goes away, and she gets to keep her law license.
But as part of the deal, she has to resign by December 1st. She’d already lost the Democratic primary, so she would have been out as of January 1st next year anyway: this just speeds things up a bit.
As best as I can tell, the charges against her “estranged husband”, the alleged dope dealer, are still pending.
Here’s a surprise for you:
Federal investigators on Tuesday morning raided the Manhattan office of one of New York City’s main police unions in connection with an ongoing investigation, according to two people with knowledge of the matter.
The union, the Sergeants Benevolent Association, represents about 13,000 active and retired police sergeants in New York. Its headquarters were searched as part of an investigation by the F.B.I. and the public corruption unit in the U.S. attorney’s office in Manhattan, the people said.
The home of the union’s president, Edward D. Mullins, was also searched.
Though the focus of the investigation into the Sergeants Benevolent Association is unclear, it comes as Mr. Mullins faces departmental discipline over his conduct on social media. Known in recent years for making brash and incendiary remarks on Twitter, particularly about Mayor Bill de Blasio, Mr. Mullins declared war on the mayor last year after two officers were shot, accusing Mr. de Blasio of promoting anti-police attitudes.
Mr. Mullins is being brought up for department discipline over his posts on Twitter, including for sharing a police report documenting the arrest of Mr. de Blasio’s daughter, Chiara, during protests over police brutality and racial justice in New York last year. The Police Department does not typically release internal reports, and the one that Mr. Mullins shared contained personal information about Ms. de Blasio.
A disciplinary hearing on the charges started last month and is scheduled to resume on Oct. 27. Mr. Mullins’s lawyer, Andrew C. Quinn, has defended his conduct as free speech and as part of his obligation to advocate on behalf of the union’s members.
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Mr. Mullins also faces internal discipline over tweets in which he used profane language against Dr. Oxiris Barbot, the former city health commissioner, and Representative Ritchie Torres, a Democratic congressman who represents the Bronx.
Mr. Torres, who has called for Mr. Mullins’s resignation over what he has described as racist, misogynistic and homophobic remarks, tweeted on Tuesday that Mr. Mullins had received a “first-class raid” from the F.B.I.
Mr. Mullins has also drawn scrutiny for his outspoken right-wing politics in a city where Democrats significantly outnumber Republicans. Both the sergeants’ union and its larger sister union, the Police Benevolent Association, have been run mostly by conservatives whose views are not widely shared by many in the metropolis they police.
Mr. Mullins has praised former President Donald J. Trump, a Republican who was deeply unpopular among city residents. He also came under fire from liberal lawmakers after giving an interview to Fox News surrounded by paraphernalia linked to QAnon, a fringe conspiracy theory popular among Trump supporters.
(Side note: “one of New York City’s main police unions”? You may be asking: how many police unions does NYC have? Mike the Musicologist asked me that same question a while back, in relation to a different scandal. Other than the Sergeants Benevolent Association, there’s also the Police Benevolent Association, which represents the line officers, and the Detectives Endowment Association, which represents the detective ranks. It isn’t clear to me if the command ranks (above sergeant) and the civilian staff have their own unions.)
Edited to add 10/6: Sergeant Mullins resigned his union presidency last night, after I posted this. The Post reports that he remains a NYPD sergeant, and that he made “$88,757 from the union and $133,195 from the NYPD” last year.
When was the last time there was a shootout on a train? Maybe the Long Island Rail Road, but was that a shootout?
.@Amtrak! Come for the crappy service, stay for the random drug sweeps!https://t.co/4mKFkH87I5
Did anyone else know that the DEA does "routine" sweeps of Amtrak trains?
— BattleSwarm (@BattleSwarmBlog) October 5, 2021
Alan Kalter, David Letterman’s announcer on CBS.
The red-haired Kalter took over for the retired Bill Wendell as the Late Show announcer in September 1995 — about two years after Letterman moved from NBC to CBS — and remained through the host’s final program on May 20, 2015. On his first day on the job, Letterman tossed him into a pool.
With musical accompaniment from Paul Shaffer and the CBS Orchestra, Kalter announced the guests and cheekily introduced the host at the top of each show, then voiced the comic one-liner over the Worldwide Pants title card on the end credits.
In between, Kalter often acted in funny sketches that included hosting “Alan Kalter’s Celebrity Interview” after Letterman was finished with the guest and speaking from his announcer’s podium as the studio lights dimmed, trying to come on to lonely, divorced women as “Big Red” — much to the dismay of a “shocked” Letterman.
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Pearl Tytell has passed away at 104. She was a leading examiner of questioned documents.
Mrs. Tytell worked with her husband, Martin, at their typewriter repair and rental business on Fulton Street in Lower Manhattan, which branched out into the scientific examination of documents in the early 1950s. A rare woman in a male-dominated field, Mrs. Tytell ran that end of the business and trained her son, Peter, a widely known examiner of documents until his death last year.
Mrs. Tytell was an expert witness for the federal government in 1982 in the tax-evasion case against the Rev. Sun Myung Moon, the head of the Unification Church. By analyzing changes in his handwriting — particularly how his printed “S” had turned cursive — she testified that he signed checks in 1974, not in 1973 as his lawyers had said.
At another point, Mrs. Tytell used paper-mill records and her knowledge of watermarks to prove that a piece of paper had not been produced until after the date written on it.
“She was an exceptional witness,” Martin Flumenbaum, a prosecutor in the case, said in a phone interview. “She dominated the courtroom. I remember the jury being enthralled by her testimony.”
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In one of her best-known cases, she was hired in 1972 by International Telephone and Telegraph to analyze a politically explosive memorandum written a year earlier by one of the company’s lobbyists, Dita Beard (who denied writing the memorandum). Its existence was revealed by the investigative journalist Jack Anderson.
It suggested a connection between the settlement of a government antitrust lawsuit against I.T.T. and a pledge by the company to pay $400,000 in costs for the 1972 Republican National Convention.
A report issued by I.T.T. said that Mrs. Tytell and a chemist, Walter McCrone, had used “microscopic, ultraviolet fluorescence and highly sophisticated micro chemical analyses” of the memorandum and other samples that had been typed on Mrs. Beard’s typewriter between June 25, 1971 (the date on the document) and February 1972. They determined that the memo had most likely been written in January 1972, nearly six months after the antitrust settlement, meaning a connection to the payment was not likely.
Their report — submitted to the Senate Judiciary Committee, which investigated the financial pledge made in the memo — contradicted the F.B.I.’s analysis of the document, which suggested it had been written on June 25.
Todd Akin, former House member from Missouri. He gave up that seat to run for the Senate, and lost after making some controversial remarks about rape.
Angelo Codevilla, conservative author and theorist. (The Ruling Class: How They Corrupted America and What We Can Do About It)
I was not expecting this.
When last we left Art Acevedo, he was the new police chief in Miami.
How’s that working out for him?
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Chief Acevedo has accused several commissioners of thwarting his attempts to “change the culture” of the department, as he said he had been hired to do, by improperly meddling in personnel decisions.
“These events are deeply troubling and sad,” he wrote in an eight-page letter on Friday in which he denounced how commissioners tried to influence an internal affairs investigation and then retaliated by defunding top positions in the Police Department’s budget. “If I or M.P.D. give in to the improper actions described herein,” he added, “as a Cuban immigrant, I and my family might as well have remained in Communist Cuba, because Miami and M.P.D. would be no better than the repressive regime and the police state we left behind.”
The commissioners can’t directly fire him, only the city manager can. But they can make things uncomfortable.
…he wasted no time in generating controversy of his own. He terminated two high-ranking officers and demoted the department’s second-highest-ranking female Black officer. He said his own department — rather than the Florida Department of Law Enforcement — should investigate police shootings. And he angered the police union by telling a local radio station that officers should get vaccinated against the coronavirus or risk losing their jobs.
Last week, a majority of members polled by the Fraternal Order of Police said that they had no confidence in the chief and that he should be fired or forced to resign.
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At one point, Commissioner Joe Carollo frame-grabbed a video clip of Chief Acevedo, taken before he worked in Miami, performing a raunchy dance at a fund-raiser. (In another clip, he was dressed like Elvis, prompting Mr. Carollo to tut-tut the tightness of the chief’s pants.)
A supporter of the chief at one point yelled at the dais and, as he stomped out of the chambers, extended a finger to the commissioners.
Mr. Carollo spent several hours reading news clippings and other documents about Chief Acevedo’s record in law enforcement agencies in California and Texas, including at least one allegation of sexual harassment that the chief has denied. Mr. Carollo repeatedly asked Mr. Noriega if he had been aware of those controversies before hiring Chief Acevedo.
“No, sir,” Mr. Noriega responded.
“He’s not accountable to anyone,” Mr. Carollo said of Chief Acevedo. “He’s not accountable to the city manager, not accountable to the residents of Miami — not accountable, period.”
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Chief Acevedo is the sixth police chief in 11 years.
Well. Well well well. Well.
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The former client, Curtis Edward Smith, 61, of Walterboro, S.C., was arrested and charged with assisted suicide, aggravated assault and battery, and insurance fraud in connection with the shooting on Sept. 4, the South Carolina Law Enforcement Division said.
The state police agency said that Mr. Murdaugh, 53, had admitted to the scheme on Monday and that Mr. Smith had admitted to being at the scene and getting rid of the gun. Mr. Murdaugh’s lawyer did not respond to inquiries about the arrest, and it was not clear if Mr. Smith, who was booked in the Colleton County jail, had a lawyer.
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I haven’t written a lot about the Backpage trial, though I have been following it from a distance. Yesterday’s development: the judge declared a mistrial. Why? Grotesque misconduct by the prosecution.
The government’s goal with prosecution is “not to win at any cost” but to “win by the rules, to see that justice is done,” [U.S. District Judge Susan] Brnovich pointed out. “If the government can prove that the defendants … knowingly facilitated prostitution, then they will be punished. But it should be done correctly.”
In her view, that hasn’t happened. The opening statement from federal prosecutor Reggie Jones “was close to causing mistrial,” she said. Then, despite agreeing “to minimize the focus on child sex trafficking” from then on out, the government continued to harp on it. And despite being told that witnesses could only talk about Backpage’s general reputation if it was tied to communication with specific defendants in this case, government witnesses like Sharon Cooper “talked about the reputation of Backpage untethered from communications with the defendants,” Brnovich pointed out.
This is a kind of long, but interesting (to me, anyway) piece about how corrupt San Francisco’s Department of Building Inspection is.
Infamous engineer and permit expediter Rodrigo Santos has been hit with a bevy of both federal and local charges. Former DBI senior inspector Bernie Curran has resigned after being suspended for taking an undisclosed “loan” from a developer and then traveling out of his district to sign off that developer’s projects.
The feds on Friday announced fraud charges, in fact, against both Santos and Curran. The former is accused of expediting his permits by instructing his clients (in writing, and captured by the feds) to write charitable checks to Curran’s preferred youth hockey and rugby organizations. Curran then returned the favor by issuing certificates of final completion on these projects, however shoddy or incomplete they may be.
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The Murdaugh story just gets stranger.
Alex Murdaugh, the prominent South Carolina lawyer whose wife and son were shot to death months ago in an unsolved murder mystery that has captivated the state and confounded the police, was pushed out of his powerful law firm over claims that he had misused funds the day before he called 911 from a rural road to say that he had been shot in the head, the firm disclosed on Monday.
Leaders of the Hampton, S.C., firm said they had discovered that Mr. Murdaugh had misappropriated money from the law office and that he had resigned on Friday. The next day, Mr. Murdaugh told the police he had been changing a tire at the side of a road in Hampton County — where members of his family have established a powerful legal dynasty over three generations — when someone in a truck pulled up and shot him in the head.
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Mr. Murdaugh, 53, was a partner at the law firm P.M.P.E.D. — known by the initials of its partners — which was founded by Mr. Murdaugh’s great-grandfather more than a century ago and is well-known in South Carolina’s Lowcountry. In a statement to The New York Times, the firm said that it had hired a forensic accounting firm to investigate the suspected misappropriation of funds and that it had also notified the police and the South Carolina Bar.
The law firm said it had told Mr. Murdaugh of the accusations on Friday, and that he and the firm agreed that he should resign. Mr. Murdaugh’s lawyer said his client had expressed his “regret and sorrow.”
The law office did not say how much money was missing, but a member of the firm, speaking on the condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to disclose company information, said the amount was in the millions.
I’m on vacation, but I’ve got a little bit of time, so a couple of quick notes:
Remember the Murdaugh murders I wrote about a few months ago?
On Saturday, someone shot Alex Murdaugh. Mr. Murdaugh is the father of Paul and husband of Maggie. Reports are that he was shot in the head, but the wound is “superficial” and he’s expected to recover.
Obit watch: Willard Scott.
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Though he was meant to represent the new, late-model television weatherman, Mr. Scott brought to the job a brand of shtick that harked back to earlier times. He seemed simultaneously to embody the jovial, backslapping Rotarian of the mid-20th century, the midway barker of the 19th and, in the opinion of at least some critics, the court jester of the Middle Ages.
There was the time, for instance, that he delivered the forecast dressed as Boy George. There was the time he did so dressed as Carmen Miranda, the “Brazilian bombshell” of an earlier era, dancing before the weather map in high heels, ruffled pink gown, copious jewelry and vast fruited hat. There was the time, reporting from an outdoor event, that he kissed a pig on camera.
The pig did not take kindly to being kissed and squealed mightily.
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From 1952 to 1962, Mr. Scott also played the title character on “Bozo the Clown,” the WRC-TV version of a syndicated children’s show. In the early ’60s, on the strength of his Bozo, McDonald’s asked him to develop a clown character to be used in its advertising.
As Ronald McDonald, Mr. Scott did several local TV commercials for the franchise but was passed over — in consequence of his corpulence, he later said — as its national representative.
Apologies for the slowdown in posting. I’ve been working on my paper for the 2022 MLA convention on “Sexual Politics in ‘Hobgoblins‘”.
(Lawrence pointed out an interesting fact: “Road Rash” in “Hobgoblins” is the same actor who played “Maynard” in “Pulp Fiction”.)
Anyway, a couple of interesting gun politics stories by way of the NYT:
San Francisco’s district attorney on Wednesday sued three online retailers for selling “ghost guns,” untraceable firearms that can be made from do-it-yourself kits, part of an intensifying nationwide effort to stem the flood of deadly homemade weapons into American cities.
In a civil complaint filed in California Superior Court, District Attorney Chesa Boudin accused the companies — G.S. Performance, BlackHawk Manufacturing Group and MDX Corporation — of marketing a range of products in the state that furnish buyers with parts and accessories that can be quickly assembled into a functional firearm.
Note the phrasing: “…parts and accessories that can be quickly assembled into a functional firearm”, not firearms themselves. I am not familiar with California law, so I don’t know what the status of 80% parts kits is there, nor do I know if any regulations against same would pass constitutional muster.
But it feels like this is one of those things that doesn’t matter, much like Remington and Sandy Hook: they might be able to beat the case legally, but the criminal DA of San Francisco can make it expensive enough to cripple or even bankrupt the vendors.
Great and good FotB (and official firearms trainer of WCD) Karl put up a long – and, I think, fascinating – review on his blog of a vintage (1981) firearms/self defense guide from South Africa. I don’t recommend you follow the advice (and Karl does an excellent job of pointing out where it deviates from evolved practice today) but it is an interesting slice of history from a place only a few of us are familiar with.
Noted: the Smith and Wesson M&P 12. I’m kind of happy to see S&W back in the shotgun market, but I’m not wild about this particular gun.
Alex Cord. He may have been best known as “Archangel” in “Airwolf”, but he had a significant body of work going back to the 1960s. No “Mannix”, but a lot of other cop shows, and multiple appearances on “Fantasy Island”, among other credits.
Patricia Hitchcock. Yes, Alfred’s daughter.
She had a few other credits, but retired in the 1970s.
Tony Esposito, Hall of Fame goalie for the Chicago Blackhawks.
Walter Yetnikoff, legendary head of CBS Records.
In one of his first acts as president, Mr. Yetnikoff somewhat reluctantly let Ron Alexenburg, the head of CBS’s Epic label, sign the Jacksons. Epic had wrested the group from Motown Records (which retained the rights to the group’s original name, the Jackson 5), and though Mr. Yetnikoff wasn’t overly impressed with the Jacksons’ initial albums for Epic, he cultivated a relationship with the group’s key member, Michael, supporting the young singer’s interest in expanding into solo work.
In 1982, that encouragement resulted in “Thriller,” still one of the top-selling albums in history.
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Unfortunately, he was one of those people who didn’t just have issues: he had a lifetime subscription and a complete run of bound volumes.
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Brian Mulheren. He was the man in the NYPD in the 1970s and 1980s. Specifically, and to quote the NYT, he was a “veteran detective who as an audacious, deft and indefatigable one-man emergency management liaison between City Hall and the New York Police and Fire Departments became known as ‘Mr. Disaster’ and the ‘Night Mayor’…”
Mr. Mulheren played an outsize role for a first-grade detective. He was armed with a gold shield, but his uniform, such as it was — it typically consisted of a rumpled beige trench coat and a crumpled Irish tweed hat — was devoid of the stars and bars that define status on the police force.
Yet by sheer force of personality and the connections he had cultivated, he was deferred to by city commissioners and by police supervisors who outranked him when he arrived, often first, at the scene of a crisis in his black Lincoln Town Car, which was crowned with a forest of antennas that linked him to every emergency radio frequency in the city.
In the 1970s and ’80s, he served as City Hall’s wake-up call when an officer was shot or a firefighter was felled. Before the city established a full-fledged emergency management department, he seamlessly and almost single-handedly coordinated interagency strategies.
“He was one of those rare people who kept the N.Y.P.D. and the Fire Department together,” John Miller, the Police Department’s deputy commissioner for intelligence and counterterrorism, said in an interview. “He basically created the organized response to chaos that we replicated and have used ever since.”
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Mr. Mulheren was credited by Officer Steven McDonald’s family with saving his life when he was shot in Central Park by a teenage bicycle thief in 1986 and rushed in a patrol car to Metropolitan Hospital, where doctors said he was unlikely to survive.
In 2016, Mr. McDonald told Columbia, the Knights of Columbus magazine, that he vividly remembered Mr. Mulheren’s dauntless intervention.
“You might think he’s not going to make it, but we’re going to Bellevue,” Mr. Mulheren announced on his own initiative, according to “New York’s Finest,” a forthcoming book by Michael Daly.
“He had no rank or high station but stepped forward and said, ‘No, he’s not going to die; he just needs a second chance,’” Mr. McDonald recalled. “I believe that was the Holy Spirit speaking through Brian to everyone there. Just like that like they loaded me up on a special ambulance and flew down to Bellevue Hospital, where they saved my life by the grace of God.”
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In another emergency, when a firefighter was overcome and no ambulance was immediately available, Mr. Mulheren was said to have commandeered a city bus, told the passengers to debark and ordered the driver to take the injured man to the hospital.
Serving mostly under Mayors John V. Lindsay, Edward I. Koch and David N. Dinkins, Mr. Mulheren, a police buff since childhood, insinuated himself into the department’s decisions to buy smaller patrol cars to economize on gas; change their color from green, black and white in the early 1970s to “grabber blue” with white accents to make them more visible and less intimidating; modernize lights and sirens; air-condition the cars; and improve radio communications. He also encouraged the Fire Department to requisition a hyperbaric oxygen therapy chamber to treat burn victims.
He was 73 years old, and passed away due to COPD. His family attributes his condition to inhalation of debris at the WTC site after the 2001 attacks.