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Getbig Main Boards => Gossip & Opinions => Topic started by: BayGBM on June 04, 2025, 04:01:15 PM
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Bernard Kerik, New York’s Police Commissioner on 9/11, Dies at 69
by Sam Roberts
Bernard B. Kerik, the New York City police commissioner who was hailed as a hero for overseeing the department’s response to the Sept. 11 attacks on the World Trade Center, only to fall from grace after he pleaded guilty to federal corruption and tax crimes, died on Thursday in Manhattan. He was 69.
His family said he died in a hospital, where he was being treated for heart disease. He had been hospitalized with skin cancer last year.
A cocksure high school dropout with a black belt in karate, shaved head and bulging biceps, Mr. Kerik vaulted to senior public posts as a disciple of Rudolph W. Giuliani after serving as Mr. Giuliani’s bodyguard during his successful 1993 mayoral campaign.
In 1997, after Mr. Kerik had risen through the ranks of the Police Department from a street cop in Times Square and narcotics investigator, Mr. Giuliani promoted him to correction commissioner. In that position, he curbed sick-time abuse by prison guards and reduced violence by inmates.
Mr. Kerik’s appointment as police commissioner in August 2000 was not well received, in part because he had been so rapidly promoted despite his lack of a college degree, which uniformed police officers ordinarily needed for promotion to captain and above. His highest rank before becoming commissioner was detective third grade. He later went on to earn a degree in 2002.
During his 16-month tenure as police commissioner, crime continued the decline that had been largely achieved by two of his predecessors, Raymond W. Kelly and William J. Bratton. Morale among officers improved. So did relations between the department and Black and Hispanic New Yorkers who had been alienated by incidents of police abuse.
But Mr. Kerik was accused of heavy-handed management and abuse of power as commissioner until Dec. 31, 2001, when Mr. Giuliani’s mayoral term ended.
Like the mayor himself, Mr. Kerik received kudos for his response to the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. He and Mr. Giuliani rushed to the site to speed the evacuation of the World Trade Center. They were showered by debris from the collapse of the towers and were temporarily trapped in a nearby building.
Among the honors bestowed on Mr. Kerik was his appointment as a Commander of the British Empire by Queen Elizabeth II.
After leaving the Police Department, Mr. Kerik made millions of dollars as a security consultant for the former mayor’s firm, Giuliani Partners, whose clients included companies and foreign governments seeking advice on crisis management and counterterrorism.
Mr. Kerik later established his own consulting firm, which advised King Abdullah II of Jordan, President Bharrat Jagdeo of Guyana and the ruling family of the United Arab Emirates, among others. More recently, he was a security consultant to the monarchy in Qatar.
After the 2003 invasion of Iraq, President George W. Bush appointed Mr. Kerik interior minister for that nation’s provisional authority. He recruited thousands of police officers and assembled a SWAT team to pursue kidnappers and insurgents.
But his career was soon derailed by a series of embarrassing public setbacks.
In 2004, he was named by the president to head the Department of Homeland Security. But he withdrew one week later because, he said, he had employed an undocumented immigrant as a babysitter and neglected to pay payroll taxes.
That admission triggered several investigations.
It was revealed that while he was married with two children and living in the Riverdale section of the Bronx, he had rented an apartment in Battery Park City in Lower Manhattan to conduct an extramarital affair with Judith Regan, who had published his best-selling memoir. The apartment had originally been donated by a developer for use by rescue workers at the World Trade Center site.
In 2006, he pleaded guilty in State Supreme Court in the Bronx to two misdemeanors involving renovations to his apartment in Riverdale, while he was correction commissioner, by a New Jersey construction firm suspected of links to organized crime. He was fined $221,000.
In 2007, he was accused of tax fraud. The federal indictment was based, in part, on information provided by his former friend, Larry Ray, who was later accused of operating a sex cult at Sarah Lawrence College in Westchester.
Mr. Kerik was charged with making false statements to government investigators involving his failure to report a $250,000 interest-free loan from Eitan Wertheimer, an Israeli billionaire, while he was serving the Iraqi provisional government, and $236,000 that he had received earlier from Steven C. Witkoff, a New York real estate magnate.
In 2009, he pleaded guilty to two counts of tax fraud, one count of making a false statement on a loan application and five counts of making false statements to the federal government while being vetted for senior positions. He was sentenced to four years in prison and served three.
His name was stripped from the Manhattan jail complex, better known as the Tombs, that had been rebranded in his honor.
In 2020, after Mr. Kerik was granted a full pardon by President Trump, he joined Mr. Giuliani in falsely blaming fraudulent voting for the president’s loss to Joseph R. Biden Jr. in that year’s election...
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/05/29/nyregion/bernard-kerik-dead.html
https://nypost.com/2025/05/29/us-news/former-nypd-commissione-bernie-kerik-dead-at-69/
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;D
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Looked 69 back in 2001! RIP!
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If you google images of him you can see he did a few cycles in his 50s… he got a full and bloated look.