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Lured partly by the prospects of job security, Kennedy decided to join the force. Two people had to be sold, Kennedy's father still remembered the British-bossed constabulary back in Ireland, took a dim view of having a policeman in his own family. And a vivacious Jewish neighbor named Hortense Goldberger, who shared Kennedy's fondness for long walks and Caruso records, was not certain she cared to be a policeman's wife. Kennedy sold them both. On March 22, 1929 he was sworn in as a probationary patrolman and assigned to the police academy. Seven months later he and Hortense Goldberger were married in the rectory of Brooklyn's St. Alphonsus Church.
The Little NeedLer. Kennedy's progress upward from his post (police word for beat) near Times Square was methodical and sure: from Manhattan's homicide detective squad to sergeant and, after eleven years on the force, to lieutenant. At 36 Kennedy went back to school during off hours, finished high school in 18 months, a pre-law college course at St. John's University in 24. After St. John's, he enrolled in New York University's law school, graduated in five years. In 1951 Kennedy was promoted to inspector, one year later he was admitted to the New York bar.
In 1954 Robert Ferdinand Wagner became mayor, and polished, energetic Lawyer Francis W.H. Adams became police commissioner. Adams looked for a chief inspector (the top uniformed cop on the force) who could help him rebuild a department shaken by recurrent graft scandals. Says Adams: "I had heard from a judge on the court of appeals and from some others that this man Kennedy, an inspector, was an outstanding individual." Adams summoned Inspector Kennedy to a meeting, questioned him, decided the judge was right. Adams jumped Kennedy over 18 senior officers to chief inspector.
Kennedy made good. When Commissioner Adams after 18 months went back to his law practice, he picked his own successor—"When the time came, Kennedy was the obvious choice." Few cops were pleased; neither were New York's politicians. Mayor Wagner, who had and still has reservations about Kennedy's toughness, went along with Adams, and Tammany Boss Carmine De Sapio got his orders to keep his hands off the department.
"I Am the Commissioner." Sliding behind the mahogany desk that Theodore Roosevelt used 60 years earlier as one of New York's most spectacular police commissioners, Kennedy took command of an organization with a frequently clouded history. New York's finest started as Dutch "schout-fiscals," who were both sheriffs and prosecuting attorneys, became in 1844 the Western Hemisphere's first fulltime force, patterned after Sir Robert Peel's London bobbies. But by Civil War's outbreak, the new-model police had become crazy over graft and hazy about their responsibilities. Rookies shelled out $40 to captains to serve under them, $200 more to the politicians who paved the way. The energetic recouped these outlays by obvious means. In return for such opportunities, police kept a tolerant hands-off attitude toward the hoodlum gangs—the Dead Rabbits, Empire Club and O'Connell Guards—whose services Tammany Hall used to steal ballot boxes and bar anti-Tammanyites from the polls at election time.