New York: The Straight Cop

Ah, take one consideration with another,

A policeman's lot is not a happy one.

—The Pirates of Penzance.

All things considered, the lot of New York City Police Commissioner Stephen Patrick Kennedy has been tough and not particularly happy. An up-from-the-ranks cop with the personality of a blunt instrument (TIME Cover, July 7, 1958), Steve Kennedy had to run an understaffed, underpaid army of 24,000 men, many of them good, some of them not, most of them as contentious as only a New Yorker —and a uniformed one at that—can be. Stubborn, straight...