Ex-Chief of Patrol
Chapman Back As P.D. Training Head
W
ilbur Chapman, a veteran NYPD commander who has also served as city Transportation Commissioner and, most recently as Chief of Police in Bridgeport, Conn., was appointed Aug. 13 to be Deputy Police Commissioner for Training.

WILBUR CHAPMAN: Familiar territory.

Police Commissioner Raymond W. Kelly pointed to Mr. Chapman's breadth of experience, which has ranged from running police precincts and the entire patrol force to serving as head of the NYPD's Recruitment Section and Applicant Processing Division in explaining his selection.

Served Kelly in '90s

"Having previously succeeded in recruiting the most diverse pool of candidates for the Police Department in its history until that time, he returns to make certain we deliver the best education and training available to new recruits, as well as to personnel already on the job," Mr. Kelly said in a statement. He was referring to Mr. Chapman's work during his own prior stint as Police Commissioner during the latter half of the Dinkins administration in 1992 and 1993.

Mr. Chapman, who is 59, continued to hold ranking positions in the NYPD after Mr. Kelly and Mayor Dinkins left office, among them Commanding Officer of Patrol Borough Manhattan North under Mayor Rudy Giuliani and Police Commissioner William J. Bratton, and from January 1995 until his retirement from the NYPD in June 1998 as Chief of Patrol.

Mr. Chapman, who is succeeding the retiring Charles D. DeRienzo, became a Police Officer in 1969, with his first assignment in the 23rd Precinct in Manhattan.

Followed Dad Into Job

In a 1998 interview with this newspaper, Mr. Chapman noted that his father, who had been a Housing Police Officer, "wanted better for me" and had tried to steer him into a technical profession, and he had studied architecture and engineering at Pratt Institute. By the time he turned 21, however, he had decided to become a police officer.

Mr. Chapman later got a bachelor of arts degree in police science from Manhattan College and is a graduate of the Police Management Institute at Columbia University.

He left the NYPD nine years ago to become Mr. Giuliani's Transportation Commissioner, then took the Police Chief's job in Bridgeport early this decade.