NEW YORK (WCBS 880) — It was a year ago Friday that Rodney Harrison was promoted to chief of detectives at the NYPD, becoming the first African-American to hold that role in the department's history.
"I've had some highs and some lows," Harrison said as he sat down this week with WCBS Newsradio 880's Kevin Rincon to reflect on his one-year anniversary.
Among the lows was the loss of six detectives to COVID-19: Jeffrey Scalf, Raymod Abear, Chris McDonald, Cedric Dixon, Jack Polimeni and Robert Cardona.
"It had a major impact to the detective bureau, the investigators and the men and women that do this God's work," Harrison said. "Our prayers continue to go with the families that lost their loved ones and we're going to continue to remember our fallen soldiers."
For Harrison, this year was nothing like what he had expected, but he said there were plenty of highs on the jobs.
"It's an absolute blessing seeing some of the great work that's being done by the investigators that work within this detective bureau," Harrison said. "Just take a look at some of the great work that's been done on some of the cases we had to deal with even through a pandemic."
Harrison commended investigators for their work which resulted in arrests in several high-profile cases.
Among them was the arrest of a 22-year-old man in the murder of Brandon Hendricks, a 17-year-old basketball star who was gunned down in the Bronx just two days after graduating high school in June, as well as the apprehension of a suspect in the death of 43-year-old Bertha Arriaga, who was fatally struck by a stray bullet in front of her son in Queens.
Harrison also gave credit to the detectives who cracked the Tessa Majors murder case early in his tenure and investigators from the cold case squad who solved the Jam Master Jay case.
Majors, a freshman at Barnard College, was stabbed several times in a mugging gone wrong and attempted to reach a security booth located at the top of a flight of stairs in Morningside Park. According to police, the 18-year-old’s last words were “help me, I’m being robbed” as she staggered up the staircase.
In August, federal prosecutors announced charges against two men nearly two decades after the slaying of hip hop star Jam Master Jay.
"A lot of great work is being done under extreme, difficult circumstances," Harrison said.
Harrison said the year ahead will be critical for the entire NYPD to focus their energies on community policing to help reverse some negative trends that have emerged during the pandemic.
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