He worked his way up the ranks from a transit cop to an undercover detective patrolling Times Square and the 42nd Street train station at 8th Avenue, and finally becoming a deputy police commissioner in Mayor Guiliani's administration.

The Crime Fighter : Putting the Bad Guys Out of Business
by Jack Maple & Chris Mitchell

In 1999 Jack Maple authored this book that chronicles his rise from cop on the beat to Deputy Police Commissioner. It also would later inspire the TV series, "The District". To read more about this book and to order click here.

Rumor has it that Jack Maple's flamboyant dress, style and attitude may have been influenced by the way he was kidded on how he resembled the actor Edward G. Robinson.
 

Two Tough Guys

Edward G. Robinson photo found here	Photo of Jack Maple

When Jack Maple passed away, all major NYC daily newspapers ran a story on his life and how he is credited for reducing crime in New York City and beyond.

Newsday Photo, 1986 / Bruce Gilbert
Former Deputy Police Commissioner Jack Maple, a former transit cop, was a key aide to Bill Bratton.
 

Jack Maple, the flamboyant deputy police commissioner credited with implementing the Police Department's successful crime-fighting strategies, died Saturday of colon cancer. He was 49.
Maple, who had only a high school equivalency diploma, was an unheralded transit police lieutenant when he was discovered by Bill Bratton, who headed the Transit Police in the early 1990s.
Realizing Maple had a unique understanding of crime patterns, Bratton took Maple with him to One Police Plaza when he became police commissioner in 1994.
Resented by much of the police brass, which looked down on the transit police, Maple developed the crime strategy program known as COMPSTAT, in which he and then-Chief of Patrol Louis Anemone grilled top police officials on their borough or precinct crime strategies.
The COMPSTAT program revolutionized the department and became a symbol of police accountability.
"I'd say he created the beginning of change in the Police Department," current Police Commissioner Bernard Kerik said yesterday. "He was a brilliant man."
Mayor Rudolph Giuliani praised Maple yesterday as "one of the truly great innovators of law enforcement" in a statement issued by a spokesman.
Giuliani visited Maple in recent weeks at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center "to thank him for his work on behalf of all New Yorkers,” the spokesman said. The mayor also extended his condolences to Maple’s family yesterday.
Maple, who was 5 feet 8 inches tall and weighed 220 pounds, became known for wearing  bow ties and black and white spats. 
In his office at One Police Plaza, he kept an espresso machine from which he delighted in serving visitors coffee.
Maple served in the Police Department for only two years. He left shortly after Giuliani, upset that Bratton was receiving more favorable publicity than he was, forced Bratton out as commissioner.
Maple, with another Bratton aide, John Linder, founded a police consultant business, traveling to cities around the country to help departments with their crime problems.
He described himself during this period as kind of “deputy commissioner of the world.”
In 1999, Doubleday published Maple’s book, “The Crime Fighter: Putting The Bad Guy Out of Business.” The cover jacket featured a picture of Maple with a beard, wearing his patented bow tie and sunglasses.
He also began co-writing the prototype for the weekly television series “The District.” The series features a newly appointed police chief in Washington, D.C., played by Craig Nelson, that is based on Maple.
At the same time, Maple learned that he had colon cancer. He urged reporters who knew of his illness not to write of it and tried - and largely succeeded – in going on with his life as best he could.
During a recent hospital stay, Maple told one visitor, “I had a pretty good run.”
Knowing the end was approaching, he threw a dinner some months ago at Elaine’s restaurant that was attended by his closest friends, both inside and outside the department.
When it was time for him to speak, he began by joking that one of the first things that Anemone and former First Deputy Commissioner John Timoney had done when he joined the department was to try to get him fired.
“This is true,” a laughing Anemone said, interrupting Maple’s remarks.
Maple also recently married his long-time sweetheart, former police Lt. Bridget O’Connor.
Besides her, he leaves a son, Brendan, and a daughter, Jacqueline.

© 2002  Newsday, Inc. Reprinted with permission. http://www.newsday.com

"Crimefighter from Richmond Hill"

Born in 1952 
Died on August 4, 2001

The following articles are from the Daily News, and Newsday newspapers.

By ALICE McQUILLAN
and BILL HUTCHINSON
DAILY NEWS STAFF WRITERS

John (Jack) Maple, the bowtied, larger-than-life crimefighter who helped engineer the city's historic murder drop, has died.
The former deputy police commissioner died Saturday afternoon at his Manhattan home after battling colon cancer.

AP PHOTO 1999- Jack Maple walks along the median in Times Square, NYC, where he had worked as an undercover transit cop.

"Jack was certainly one of those people who believed New York City could be a better place, and he helped make it that way," said former Police Commissioner William Bratton. "He was a true hero of the city."
Mayor Giuliani hailed Maple as "one of the truly great innovators in law enforcement, who helped make New York City the safest large city in America."
Maple, who was recently released from Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center, managed to attend his daughter Jacqueline's wedding July 29.
His last days were spent cowriting and co-producing episodes of the CBS cops-and-robbers TV drama "The District," whose tough-as-nails protagonist was modeled after Maple. He also was the inspiration for the hero of Daily News columnist Michael Daly's 1995 novel "Under Ground."
Friends said Maple's wife, NYPD Sgt. Brigid O'Connor, was at his side when he died. The couple married in March.

The early days
Raised in Richmond Hill, Queens, Maple earned a night school diploma from Brooklyn Technical High School. His crimebuster education started as a city transit cop. 
Maple came up with the idea of tracking crimes on 55 feet of maps taped to a wall. He called them the "charts of the future" and used them to discern underground crime patterns, and dispatched cops accordingly.
It worked so well transit cops were able to reduce gang robberies in the subway from 1,200 a year to just 12.
"Treat every case as if your mother was the victim," Maple would often tell cops under him.
When Bratton took over as transit police commissioner in 1990, Maple caught his attention. They worked together to spark an unprecedented drop in overall subway crime.
Off duty, Maple had a reputation as a dandy, who wore bow ties, homburg hats and two-tone shoes. He hobnobbed at The Plaza hotel's Oak Bar and at Elaine’s, the Upper East Side celebrity watering hole.
In 1992, Bratton became the police commissioner in Boston and took Maple with him.
They were hitting their stride in Boston when Giuliani chose Bratton as New York's top cop in 1994. Bratton made Maple his deputy commissioner for crime control strategies.
Although he often said he outlined his points of strategy on a napkin one night at Elaine's, he was anything but casual when it came to deploying it.

At war with crime
Maple helped establish the now-famed Compost, a computerized version of his "charts of the future." During weekly, Compstat strategy meetings, he would often terrorize police commanders about crime in their precincts.
"Jack was a smasher of old ways, he would use humor, ridicule and self-effacement to get a point across and get somebody to believe in something," said Philadelphia Police Commissioner John Timoney, who worked with Maple in the NYPD.
Both Maple and Timoney left the NYPD after Bratton was forced out in 1996. During the Bratton team's tenure, murder plummeted 50% and overall crime dropped 39%.
Television journalist John Miller, the former NYPD spokesman under Bratton, said Maple “changed the way we live.”
“He changed how we walk down the street and whether we decide to stay out late; whether or not we ride the subway or… go to a certain neighborhood.”
After leaving the NYPD, Maple became a crimefighting consultant to police departments from Newark to New Orleans. He also wrote the 1999 book “The Crime Fighter: Putting the Bad Guys Out of Business," with journalist Chris Mitchell.
Maple is survived by his wife; his daughters, Jacqueline and Breen, and a son, Brendan. He also is survived by three brothers and three sisters.

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