Career in New York City and State Government
Mayor John V. Lindsay designated Ward as Traffic Commissioner in 1973. Under his leadership, uniformed traffic controllers from his agency took on street duties, thereby freeing hundreds of police officers from traffic direction posts. The following year he headed up what is now known as the Criminal Justice Agency that performs a bail risk evaluations.
In 1975, Governor Hugh L. Carey named him New York State Department of Correctional Services Commissioner, heading one of the nation's largest prisons systems, with 20,000 inmates, 20,000 parolees and 12,000 employees. He was the first African American to hold that position.
Three years later, Mayor Edward I. Koch named him to the first of three posts in his administration: Chief of the New York City Housing Authority Police. It was the fifth largest police department in the state, providing protection to 600,000 in the HA's 254 developments.
On August 13, 1979, he was designated to run the New York City Correction Department, heading the largest municipal detention system in the world. He served as commissioner until December 31, 1983, when he accepted an appointment by Koch as New York City Police Commissioner.
Ward was sworn in by Mayor Koch as the city’s 34th Police Commissioner on January 5, 1984. He was the first African American to hold that position. Ward oversaw the nation's largest police department during the rise of the crack cocaine epidemic and a sharp increase in crime and murder. Ward's tenure also coincided with a period of gentrification culminating in the Tompkins Square Park Police Riot of 1988.
Ward was, unintentionally, responsible for the New York City Pistol Licensing Section having to license the then-controversial Glock handguns when it was revealed on September 29, 1988 that he had a Model 17 Glock on his own license… while he had been a Member of the Service, as Police Commissioner he was a civilian, and his having a licensed Glock was in conflict with the Pistol Licensing Section's policy.
It was also a period of racial unrest, marked by the shooting of four black men by white subway gunman Bernhard Goetz, the police shooting of an elderly black woman, the death of a black man chased by a white gang onto a highway, and the fatal shooting of a black youth by a white mob.
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