Albert A. Seedman (August 9, 1918 – May 17, 2013) was an officer with the New York City Police Department (NYPD) for 30 years, known for solving several high-profile cases before resigning as chief of the Detective Bureau. He was the only Jewish officer to ever hold that position. After his retirement he was the chief of security for a New York area department store chain before retiring to South Florida.
Seedman established himself as a detective during the 1960s. He investigated many prominent crimes during that era, including the Borough Park Tobacco robbery and the Kitty Genovese murder. As the chief of detectives he reformed that branch by assigning detectives to specialize in certain crimes rather than just investigating whatever cases came their way when they were on shift. His tenure as chief of detectives of the city was short but memorable, marked by the Knapp Commission's corruption investigations which briefly cost him his job, several mob hits, and terror attacks carried out by the Black Liberation Army (BLA). When his superior officers hindered his investigation into the murder of an officer at a Harlem mosque out of fear of racial unrest, Seedman resigned his position and retired from the force, although he did not say that had been the reason for another 40 years.
Frequently and accurately described as "cigar-chomping" and "tough-talking", with a personal style likened by a colleague to a Jewish gangster, he was one of the city's most visible police personnel during the 1960s and early 1970s. Newspapers often included a quote from Chief Seedman; he was frequently on evening television news as well. He was always willing to speak to reporters even if he could not tell them much. After his retirement he wrote Chief!, a memoir of his time on the force and the high-profile cases he had been involved in, and appeared as a detective in the 1975 film Report to the Commissioner with Hector Elizondo and Tony King.
Early life
Seedman was born to a taxi driver and his wife, a sewing machine operator in the Garment District, on Fox Street, near St. Mary's Park in the South Bronx in 1918. He was given no middle name, just the initial "A". In school he served as a stairwell monitor, which he said later gave him the idea to become a police officer.
Seedman grew up in one of the toughest neighborhoods in the borough, with many Irish American street gangs. Seedman did not get involved with them, however. "It was a Jewish block", he recalled, "and Jewish kids didn't fight."
After finishing high school he attended the business school at City College of New York, now Baruch College. Upon graduating in 1941 with a degree in accounting, he joined the New York City Transit Police because civil service paid higher salaries than any private-sector jobs available at that time, and police agencies paid the most. After studying French for a year, he left the department to serve in Army intelligence and the military police in France and Belgium, including the Battle of the Bulge. When World War II ended he rejoined the transit police, and thereafter the NYPD.
Police career
In the late 1940s, there were few Jews in the NYPD and none above the rank of captain. Seedman recalled later in his life that there was some attendant bias. "I didn't get the choice assignments", he said. "I think it was because I was Jewish." He also earned graduate degrees in public administration during this time.
As a detective, Seedman was known for his unorthodox approaches to solving otherwise perplexing cases. "I try to imagine who was in a room the second before the murder," he recalled years later. In one case early in his career, a Bronx woman was found dead of a shotgun blast in the lobby of her apartment building. Seedman noticed an empty chair next to the building's stoop. Neighbors told him it was usually occupied by a man who sat there watching the traffic go by. Although the man normally was out shopping at the time, but Seedman insisted on entering his apartment through a window—where he found his body hanging from a pipe. The murder-suicide had occurred after the woman rejected him.
1962–1971: As detective
By 1962, Seedman had become a captain. That year brought him his first media exposure, to the brief detriment of his career. Two officers who had responded to a robbery in progress at the Borough Park Tobacco Company in Brooklyn, where Seedman worked at the time, were killed. It was the first time a pair of NYPD officers had been killed on duty in 30 years. When one of the suspects, Tony Dellernia, was extradited to New York after surrendering in Chicago, Seedman, as was customary, had him perp-walked in front of reporters outside the precinct house.