By COLlive reporter
Ray Kelly intimately knows the streets of Crown Heights as he helped the Brooklyn neighborhood battle crime during his tenure as commissioner of the New York Police Departement.
Soon, he might be roaming the corridors of the FBI headquarters between 9th and 10th Streets in northwest Washington, DC.
White House sources told the media that Kelly is one of the candidates being considered by President Donald Trump to head the Federal Bureau of Investigation.
Trump fired James Comey as director of the FBI on Tuesday in a move that White House spokeswoman Sarah Sanders described as the result of months of rising frustration.
Jim Pasco, a Trump ally and executive director of the Fraternal Order of Police, told Bloomberg Politics that Kelly would be an FBI director “right out of central casting.”
During his tenure as the longest-serving commissioner, Kelly achieved a historic drop in crime. Crown Heights activist Eli Slavin remembers Kelly as a hands-on operator “making spot checks himself” and making unannounced visits to the streets.
Kelly at one time served as the chief of the 71st Police Precinct in Crown Heights, and has since kept close ties to the neighborhood. “We’ve always had a close relationship with the Lubavitch community,” he once told COLlive.com.
Kelly is particularly a fan of the Jewish Children’s Museum in Crown Heights. “In the world that we live in today, we cannot have too many organizations promoting tolerance and respect for diversity,” he said.
New York Magazine said Kelly’s tough-on-crime reputation fits right in with Trump’s “law-and-order” talk. Others point out that Kelly also brings with him an understanding and respect of other cultures.
Chanina Sperlin, governmental liaison of the Crown Heights Jewish Community Council, once noted how Kelly often met with both Jewish and Caribbean community leaders frequently.
“When he speaks to us, he’s not speaking to strangers,” Sperlin once told the Village Voice.
I don’t like this phrase or its mentality…our society puts too much emphasis on style and looks over substance.
Kelly has a good record. Go with that, not his appearance
How often does anyone severely abuse an animal (like horribly beating it or killing it for ‘fun’ or something as sever as that?) in NYC? If there is a single case, it makes the news as a headlining story. A few weeks ago, there was a story about a dog that someone put into a trash compactor. The machine was not turned on, and someone get the dog out totally unharmed, without so much as a scratch. The police offered a $2500 reward to find whoever put the dog in there, in the first place. That same day, in the… Read more »
The biggest threat the public has is not crime, it’s the government. Were there much tougher laws, crime would be drastically reduced. ‘People would swallow each other alive,’ were is not for the fear of the government. Look at the crime in NYC. It should be 1/10 of what it is. DeBlasio bragged that there were 400 muders per year under Mayor Bloomberg, now it’s only 200. Imagine this is a business: “We only lost 200 clients this year. We’re great!” Someone responded: “The current mayor is doing very well..give him a chance!” I responded, if a business, after a… Read more »