Joseph Esposito, Longtime N.Y.P.D. Chief, Is Dead at 73

Joseph J. Esposito, who served longer than anyone else as the highest-ranking uniformed officer of the New York Police Department, and who oversaw the city’s response to emergencies, including the 2001 terrorist attack on the World Trade Center and the devastation of Hurricane Sandy, died on Jan. 8 in Mineola, N.Y., on Long Island. He was 73.

The cause of his death, in a hospital, was brain cancer, his daughter Holly Esposito-Mercus said.

Mr. Esposito, whom the rank-and-file both venerated and regarded as an avuncular cop’s cop (his nickname was Espo), was named the chief of department by Commissioner Bernard Kerik in 2000. He left the job in 2013, one day before his mandatory retirement at the age of 63.

“I wish I could stay until I was tired of it, or until it wasn’t fun anymore or it wasn’t as fulfilling or as satisfying as it is,” he told The Daily News of New York shortly before he retired. “I have the best job in the world. They pay me for playing cops and robbers.”

Less than a year later he was back at work, this time as commissioner of the city’s Emergency Management agency. In that position, he encouraged collaboration and helped to quell the so-called battle of the badges that had hindered cooperation between the Police and Fire Departments.

He led the office when a bomb exploded in the Chelsea section of Manhattan in 2016 and when a steam pipe burst in the Flatiron district in 2018, spewing asbestos-laced muck and forcing the closure of nearby streets in the neighborhood and the evacuation of nearby buildings.