Law and O’rder

This issue’s interview with Yonkers Police Commissioner Edmund Hartnett is a case in point. The recent news that Dublin-born John Timoney, the police chief in Miami, had resigned his post after seven years leading the force in one of America’s most important cities is yet another. And we can’t forget Ray Kelly, NYPD’s top cop, the 2010 New York St. Patrick’s Day Parade Grand Marshal.
Three Irish cops, two born here in the United States, one in Ireland and all doing their part in maintaining and advancing an extraordinary story, an outstanding legacy that go back to the very first days of the American Republic.
It’s certainly appropriate, and even in a way ironic, that a people that were often treated as little more than bandits in their native land should embrace with such fervor, and play such a crucial role, in the establishing and enforcement of law and order in a country that history required them to adopt as a new homeland.
But that is precisely what so many Irish immigrants and their descendants have achieved down the years, consistently, vigorously and with honor.
The Irish contribution to law and order in the United States is difficult to calculate for the simple reason that it is impossible to place a finite limit on it.
The “Irish cop” is as American as apple pie and that, even today, applies from police academies around the fifty states all the way up to the very top ranks of big city department. It applies, too, in other law enforcement areas, in sheriff’s offices, corrections departments and in federal law enforcement agencies.
The Irish role in American jurisprudence, which began to take noticeable form a little later than the policing one, gave the law of a growing America much of its style and flavor, especially as the twentieth century progressed. Irish American judges and lawyers, defenders and prosecutors, dot the legal landscape today.
Irish associations such as the Emerald societies and lawyer groupings like the Brehon Law Society have given Irish America a voice in the reshaping of Northern Ireland in a way that has been difficult for governments to dismiss or ignore.
High-ranking Irish American police officers have played their own role in the emergence of a new policing mandate in the North, sometimes directly and in full public view, sometimes behind the scenes.
As the United States grows and diversifies it will probably be the case that the “Irish cop” will not be as often seen, or be as dominant a presence in police departments as has been the case for so many decades.
But they will still be out there, often following the footsteps of grandfathers, fathers, brothers, and, in more recent times, moms and sisters.
The story of so many Irish families in America has been born of a call to serve the law and to maintain society’s order. That call will not fade, and neither will the response.