ONE POLICE PLAZA — NYPD Commissioner Bill Bratton has tapped the department's top-ranked female officer to lead the Community Affairs Bureau, in the latest shakeup of top brass.
Joanne Jaffe, a three-star chief and the highest-ranking female in the city's force of 34,500, joined the NYPD in 1979 and spent years pounding a beat in East New York, Brooklyn. She steadily rose through the ranks, and has been head of the NYPD’s Housing Police Bureau since 2003.
Jaffe will replace Community Affairs Bureau Chief Thomas Chan, who Bratton moved to head the Transportation Bureau overseeing the "Vision Zero" plan to reduce pedestrian and motorist fatalities.
Replacing Jaffe will be Carlos Gomez, who will be promoted from his current post as the boss of the Bronx patrol force, which he has held for the past three years. Gomez, who is a 30 year veteran, earned high marks continuing to reduce overall crime in The Bronx.
Bratton has begun to put his stamp on the NYPD in recent weeks, forcing the retirement of two of the NYPD’s five so-called "Super Chiefs": Philip Pulaski, the Chief of Detectives, and Charles Campisi, the head of Internal Affairs.
John Bilich, the NYPD deputy commissioner who oversees the vaunted Compstat meetings, also recently left on his own to take a job as the head of Brooklyn District Attorney investigators. His successor has yet to be named.