The Good Girl Cop

Sgt. Maureen Murphy didn't start out her NYPD career looking to make history. She was a Bronx girl through and through, and when she joined the police in 1986 she figured she was just following in the footsteps of her detective father, Joe Firth. "Look at her," Det. Robert Mladinich said to me last week when he introduced me to Murphy at a Brooklyn courthouse. "In 1986 who would have ever thought this 20-year-old ingenue two years out of high school would make history? She's the first female to ever be elected to an executive board of an NYPD union." This past July Murphy was elected recording secretary for the Sergeants Benevolent Association. Mladinich continued, "In New York cops are represented by numerous unions. Everyone thinks that Pat Lynch and the PBA represents all cops. They don't?just patrolmen. You have the DEA for detectives, the SBA for sergeants, the LBA for lieutenants, and the captains and superior officers unions. Out of all of them, none had ever had a female on their executive board. Till now."

If you were ever arrested by Sgt. Murphy she would be about the best-looking cop ever to put cuffs on your wrists. She's tall and blonde, and was wearing a business outfit with a short skirt. She has that good-looking, no-nonsense Erin Brockovich thing going on.

Murphy was raised in the Bronx and has recently moved back there, after a hiatus for a few years in Long Beach. She's back in Woodlawn, in the house she grew up in, with her two children.

"The Bronx is a part of me," she says. "Woodlawn is a small neighborhood where you can walk everywhere and know everyone. It's still a place you can raise a family. There's a small-town feel to it."

Murphy went to Bronx High School of Science, which for an Irish-American girl from the hood is pretty impressive. "I've always done well on tests. That's how I became a sergeant. I took a test to get promoted. After high school I went to Lehman for two years and started with accounting, but it was boring. I hated school. I was smart but I didn't apply myself."

Murphy claims the smartest thing she did in her youth was getting up one morning when her father nudged her to go and take the test for the police. "That was my best move. My father was in the old Safe, Loft & Truck Squad. It no longer exists. He was considered the Ecuadorian specialist in the police department."

Because of his facility with Spanish?

"Spanish? You can't understand my father when he speaks English because of his brogue. No, he doesn't speak Spanish. He was considered an expert on Ecuadorians because he was always arresting them."

In 1986, at age 20, Murphy graduated the Police Academy and was assigned to the Neighborhood Stabilization Unit 7, which covered four Bronx precincts: 40, 42, 44 and the 48th. This was during the crack epidemic, and these were the highest-crime districts of the Bronx.

"So there I was, 20 years old, standing on Vyse Ave. on foot patrol. It was culture shock, but I wasn't scared. I wasn't a wimp. I think I wasn't scared because I didn't know how bad it was. The more I learned the scarier it got."

Mladinich laughed. "That was the ground zero of the crack epidemic, and this fresh-faced girl of 20 is walking it on foot."

Murphy waved her hand. "I always felt accepted by the guys on the job. I was always treated fairly, and I proved myself. I had no problem getting involved with struggles on the street."

During her first tour Murphy got any help she needed from her immediate supervisor. "He used to make me practice giving orders. He would look at me and laugh and say, 'How do you expect to show any authority?' He taught me how to say, 'Get off the fucking corner.'"

Murphy's first arrest was a domestic dispute in the Bronx. When the husband got physical with the cops, she and another threw him on the bed and cuffed him.

"What I remember more is seeing my first dead body. It was in Crotona Park. A dead man was shoved between two mattresses. That was the first time I saw a man shot dead. I lifted up the mattresses and there he was."

Murphy says what she remembers most is some of the neighborhood kids.

"I always felt bad when you saw how poor these kids were. It was so sad. You went to an apartment on a domestic-abuse call and you would see how the kids had nothing. We helped some of them. I once asked one kid what Santa was going to bring him for Christmas, and with the saddest voice he told me Santa doesn't come to his house. We gave him a tree and a bunch of presents." Murphy's now off the street and working at the SBA offices on Worth St. The 5000-member SBA keeps her hopping.

"I ran for the union office because I thought I could make a difference. Being a woman had nothing to do with it. It's a great feeling working there when a sergeant calls up and I can really help them."

As the interview wound down, Mladinich invited me to his upcoming retirement party. He has his 20 years in, and he's going to continue pursuing a career in writing. His first book, published last year, was about the Long Island serial killer Joel Rifkin.

sullivan@nypress.com