James Fyfe, 63, NYPD Deputy Training Commissioner
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James Fyfe, a top training official at the New York Police Department who was an expert in the use of force and developed methods for armed plainclothes officers to identify themselves, died Saturday. He was 63.
Fyfe was NYPD deputy commissioner for training. His expertise in the use of force and related police issues was recognized nationally, Police Commissioner Ray Kelly said in a statement yesterday.
“His extraordinary contributions in the field left its mark for the better on the NYPD and the many police departments which sought to emulate it,” Commissioner Kelly said.
In 1993, Fyfe and Jerome Skolnick published “Above the Law: Police and the use of excessive force.” The book concluded that police violence, while still a problem, had decreased in recent decades due to increased professionalism and minority representation on police forces. He was also one of several authors of “Police Administration,” a basic textbook in the policing field.
Fyfe was often called upon as an expert witness and testified in trials in 33 states. A professor of criminal justice at Temple University, he testified 40 times against Philadelphia police.
He was also the final witness in the Amadou Diallo killing, in which an unarmed Guinean man was hit by 19 of 41 bullets fired by white policemen in the Bronx.
Fyfe’s 1978 doctoral dissertation led to rules forbidding the firing of warning shots and firing at moving vehicles. When NYPD recruits spot unknown people with guns, they are trained to shout, “Police. Don’t move.” Upon hearing that challenge, Fyfe said, plainclothes and off-duty officers know to halt and identify themselves by shouting, “I’m on the job.”
Earlier this week, Fyfe’s videotaped testimony was shown to a Rhode Island jury in a federal civil rights trial. The case was brought by the mother of an off-duty sergeant who was shot dead by colleagues while he was in plainclothes and was breaking up a fight.
Fyfe, who was undergoing chemotherapy and couldn’t attend the trial, testified that Providence, R.I., police bosses failed to train their officers on how to prevent friendly fire accidents such as the encounter that killed Sgt. Cornel Young Jr. five years ago.
“Mistakes are most likely to happen when officers are not well trained, and these officers were not well trained,” Fyfe testified.