Bernard Kerik, NYC's police commissioner on 9/11, dead at 69

Roni Jacobson, New York Daily News on May 29, 2025

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Bernard “Bernie” Kerik, the city’s police commissioner on 9/11 and a close ally of President Donald Trump, has died at age 69, sources said Thursday.

Kerik had been commissioner for just one year before he was faced with the biggest terroristic attack ever on U.S. soil on Sept. 11, 2001. He heroically led the NYPD through the devastating rescue and recovery efforts.

“Today, we mourn the loss of Bernard B. Kerik, a warrior, a patriot, and one of the most courageous public servants this country has ever known,” FBI Director Kash Patel posted on X Thursday night.

”Bernie passed away tragically on May 29, 2025, after a private battle with illness. With over forty years of service in law enforcement and national security, he dedicated his life to protecting the American people. As the 40th Police Commissioner of New York City, Bernie led with strength and resolve in the aftermath of the September 11th attacks, guiding the NYPD through one of the darkest chapters in our nation’s history.”

Kerik joined the NYPD in 1986. Before serving as police commissioner, he was commissioner of the NYC Department of Corrections from 1998 to 2000. After the U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003, President George W. Bush appointed Kerik as the interior minister of the Iraqi Coalition Provisional Authority, and in 2004 nominated him to lead the Department of Homeland Security. Kerik soon withdrew his candidacy, however, after it came to light that he employed an undocumented immigrant as a nanny.

Legal problems continued to dog Kerik in that period of his life. In 2009 Kerik pleaded guilty to tax fraud and making false statements in the court of the Southern District of New York, for which he served three years in prison.

Kerik emerged triumphant in his later years, however. President Trump officially pardoned him in 2020. Afterwards he proved a stalwart ally of Trump, and supported his claims of voter fraud that lead to the insurrection on Jan. 6, 2020.

Kerik was a narcotics detective in the NYPD when he went to work for then Republican mayoral candidate Rudy Giuliani’s campaign. He became his driver during the contest in which Giuliani defeated Mayor David Dinkins in 1992.

Giuliani tapped Kerik as a chief of staff and head of security for the Correction Department, before he rose to Correction Commissioner. As Commissioner, he was known for instituting NYPD-style statistical tracking and was lauded in a New York Times piece for reducing stabbings and slashings in the system which at the time was bulging with more than 15,000 detainees. In the post, he surrounded himself with a coterie of loyalists and sometimes acted as if he was head of a mob family.

In 2000, Giuliani replaced then-Police Commissioner Howard Safir with Kerik – the rise from detective to head of the NYPD was now complete. After the 2001 terror attacks, Kerik along with Giuliani became national figures for their handling of the aftermath of the attacks.

Along the way, Kerik was embroiled in a series of scandals. He used police personnel to take photos for his autobiography. He had affairs with a female correction officers and HarperCollins publisher Judith Regan, including an episode where he ordered detectives to find Regan’s purse that she believed had been stolen. One of the places he met with his paramours was an apartment near Ground Zero that had been loaned for his use by a real estate developer.

The law caught up with him when he was charged with tax fraud and lying to federal investigators in 2007 after taking $250,000 from an Israeli billionaire and another $236,000 from a New York developer. He pleaded guilty in 2009 and was sentenced to 48 months in prison and released in 2013.

He also befriended Lawrence Ray, who connected him with a allegedly mob-linked construction firm that did a free renovation of his Riverdale apartment. Kerik served as a cooperating witness against Ray, who later was embroiled in the Sarah Lawrence sex cult case and was convicted in 2022 of extortion, forced prostitution and forced labor.

In 2020, President Trump pardoned Kerik along with former Illinois Rep. Rod Blagojevich. Kerik became a sometime advocate for prison reform as well as a regular guest on conservative talk shows and cable news.

Kerik was born in Newark, N.J., to Patricia Joann (née Bailey) and Donald Raymond Kerik Sr., a veteran of the U.S. Army.

Kerik was in the hospital on May 6 after suffering a serious illness, though he was expected to recover.

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