Last week, the title of commanding officer for the NYPD's Patrol Borough Brooklyn North was passed onto a Black woman for the first time in the bureau's history, reports Patch.
Assistant Chief Judith R. Harrison was officially sworn in as borough commander in Brooklyn North last week. She is the 24th person to be named commander of the patrol bureau and the fourth Black woman in department history to rise to the rank of assistant chief.
Harrison steps into the role at a time when Brooklyn is facing a more than 600 percent surge in shootings and, like the rest of the NYPD, protests calling for major police policy reform.
"There's a fractured relationship right now between police and the community — we know that and we acknowledge it," Harrison said during a press conference Thursday. "The way we're going to heal that is to communicate with each other."
Harrison, who has been with the NYPD since 1997, served most recently as the commanding officer of the department's Special Victims Division. She replaces Jeffrey B. Maddrey, who is being promoted to chief of the NYPD's Community Affairs Bureau.
"There is just a small number of people in Brooklyn North that are responsible for the bulk of the violence, and we are laser-focused at turning our attention to those individuals and making sure that we build strong cases against them," she said.
