Politics

NEW YORK (AP) ― The city's top cop chats with ease about his law enforcement forefather, Theodore Roosevelt. And, of course, about a murder rate in decline.

But when the subject turns to the persistent buzz over whether he'll run for mayor, Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly holsters his smile and cuts off the conversation with a polite response.

"It's flattering, absolutely," Kelly said in an interview with The Associated Press. "But I have no plans to run for political office."

Really?

"My ambition is to focus on this job," he insisted. "This is a full-time, total-immersion job -- truly 24 hours, seven days a week. You need total concentration and total focus."

Heading the 36,000-officer New York Police Department has been Kelly's focus for nearly six years -- an eternity given the hazards of a job under constant scrutiny by the public and City Hall.

By the end of the month, Kelly, 66, will have served longer than any other police commissioner since 1945, said Thomas Reppetto, a police historian and author. Only two of the 40 police commissioners -- a post created by Roosevelt as governor in 1900 -- will have served longer.

Kelly downplayed the milestone while sitting in his 14th floor office furnished with a desk he pointed out was once used by Roosevelt.

"It's a demanding job, but I think if you like what you're doing, it becomes much easier," he said. "And I like what I'm doing."

When Mayor Michael Bloomberg picked Kelly as commissioner in 2002, he arrived with a solid reputation and a unique qualification: He had already served in the position in the early 1990s under Mayor David Dinkins. The former Marine with two graduate degrees also could boast having held every rank at the NYPD.

Kelly overhauled the department in the post-Sept. 11 world. Emergency units were retrained and given more weaponry, and about 1,000 officers were assigned to counterterrorism duty, including some posted in Israel, London, Jordan and elsewhere.

At the same time, he has presided over a steady downturn in violent crime with a hands-on approach. "I get briefed on every homicide, every day," Kelly said.

Those briefings have become shorter: By year's end, if current trends hold, the city will have recorded fewer than 500 homicides -- the lowest total since 1963. The city had a record 2,245 homicides in 1990.

Despite his high marks in public opinion polls, Kelly is not without his detractors.

Critics have accused the NYPD of racial bias in an aggressive "stop-and-frisk" campaign that resulted in more than 500,000 stops of pedestrians last year alone. They allege the department further trampled civil rights by arresting more than 1,800 protesters at the 2004 Republican National Convention.

More bad publicity came with the police shooting late last year of an unarmed man in a hail of 50 bullets on his wedding day. The incident gave ammunition to critics who see the force as poorly trained and trigger-happy.

Kelly has responded by commissioning the RAND Corp. to analyze NYPD tactics. In one recently released report, the think tank concluded there was no evidence the department singles out young black men in street stops. Another report, on police shootings, is expected before the end of the year.

The commissioner also has made public relations a priority, scheduling appearances at synagogues, mosques and, recently, the headquarters of the Rev. Al Sharpton, who afterward called the visit "refreshing."

It's a track record that has fueled Kelly's popularity -- and speculation about his future.

"All I've ever told him is that he'd be a great mayor," said Rep. Peter King, a Republican and longtime friend. "That's a tough decision to ask a guy to make when he could go out in the private sector and make a fortune."

Maurice Carroll, director of the Quinnipiac University Polling Institute, said Kelly might be turned off by the messy reality of New York politics if he ran for mayor in 2009. Plus, department rules would require him to resign before declaring his candidacy.

"He's certainly viable, but nobody's going to hand it to him," Carroll said.

(© 2009 The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.)