Security exec appointed FDNY commissioner

Robert S. Tucker, an attorney by training who heads a city-based security and investigative services company, was appointed FDNY commissioner by Mayor Eric Adams Monday. 

Tucker, 54, succeeds Laura Kavanagh, whose rocky 29-month tenure at the helm of the nation’s largest and busiest fire department concluded Aug. 7. 

Like his predecessor, Tucker, the chairman and CEO of T&M Protection Resources, has never been a firefighter. But he nonetheless has close ties to the FDNY, his first dating to 1985 when, as a teenager, he was hired to work in the FDNY’s communications offices, which were then located in Central Park. 

He is secretary of the FDNY Foundation and has been an honorary FDNY commissioner since 2014. Tucker also spent a period as a special assistant to the Queens County District Attorney Richard Brown, forging investigative and working bonds with numerous law-enforcement agencies.  

While he noted that public safety has been his “life's work,” he called his appointment as fire commissioner “the biggest honor of my life.” Without a doubt, Tucker added at the announcement, held with pomp at the FDNY’s training academy on Randall’s Island, “I can think of no higher calling than serving as the fire commissioner for the City of New York. This is truly a dream come true.”

As head of the 17,000-person department, the nation’s largest and busiest, he will be expected to steady an agency roiled by internal conflict since soon after Kavanagh was appointed acting commissioner in February 2022. 

After noting the technical obstacles faced by firefighters — lithium-ion batteries, fentanyl and changed environmental conditions, among others — Tucker said the department “must meet the moment and deliver real solutions for this city and the heroes who serve it.” 

He pledged to do that and to advocate for those who perform work that is “not just a job.”

“While New York City's Bravest fight fires inside burning buildings, my job will be to fight fires for them and the city from the outside,” he said. 

The bonds fashioned inside firehouses, Tucker continued, “are formed by intensity, tested by pressure, and cemented by sacrifice. 

“And as anyone in a firehouse will tell you, what affects one person affects everyone. Firehouse culture has come under scrutiny. It is important to remember that a house needs to be just that, a home for everyone who signs up for this line of work,” he continued. “I will work to ensure our houses deliver the cultures and experience everyone deserves.”

Robert Tucker being sworn in by Mayor Eric Adams. Tucker's father held the Bible on which Tucker swore the department’s oath. FDNY

Kavanagh faced a united front from some of the department’s older guard, with several opposed to her appointment, which they insisted was political even though she had spent nearly eight years in several roles within the FDNY. 

The tumult continued following her permanent appointment to the post in October 2022, peaking when she demoted chiefs under her command and several others then tried to resign in protest. The demoted chiefs then filed an age-discrimination suit against Kavanagh, which others later joined. 

Fire and EMS unions welcomed her resignation. At least one was also lukewarm about Tucker’s appointment.

“Someone needs to inform him that he represents the largest ems system in the nation,” Oren Barzilay, the president of FDNY EMS Local 2507, which represents 4,100 FDNY EMTs, paramedics, and fire inspectors, said in an emailed statement.

Barzilay was expressing his annoyance that Tucker did not reference those titles during his Randall’s Island remarks this morning.

“He also needs to be reminded that he represents fire prevention inspectors. He should have given the same praise to them,” Barzilay continued, adding that Tucker gave more props to the NYPD than he did to the inspectors. “Once again, it goes to show that things will never change in the fdny. Ems and FPIs will always be second-class, stepchildren.” 

But the president of the Uniformed Fire Officers Association, Jim Brosi, said Tucker’s appointment bode well for the department, and said the union looks forward to working with him.

“His long-standing relationship with public services, specifically his work on the board of the Fire foundation gives him an insight to the complexity and culture of the FDNY,” Brosi said in an emailed statement. “His leadership and executive experience in the private sector should enable him to effectively confront the challenges of the FDNY.”

Sought Vulcans’ OK

In introducing Tucker, Adams alluded to the FDNY’s internal challenges, notably the department’s inability to overcome persistent racial and gender-based discrimination and harassment claims within its ranks and firehouses. 

But he said Tucker as the person who could address those issues, which once again surfaced during Kavanagh’s tenure. Tucker, the mayor said, understood the challenge.  

“He was inheriting more than just a department that had to put out flames of burning buildings. We had to put out the flames that are actually burning inside the agency. And it's going to take a level of honesty and ability to communicate to accomplish that task,” Adams said. 

The mayor said he dispatched his deputy mayor for public safety, Philip Banks III, to speak with Regina Wilson, the president of the Vulcan Society, the fraternal organization of Black firefighters, and a firefighter, to sanction the appointment. 

“She must believe she can work with them and mend some of the fences that have been broken for decades and how we can unite together, because that is what we're going to need as we move forward and see the new challenges that this department is facing,” Adams said.  

Wilson appeared to do so, even if her endorsement was not the clearest or strongest. 

“We look forward to working with Mister Tucker as we improve the conditions of the fire department, dealing with a lot of issues … and for him to add on to some of the great work our organization has done to make this job more fair and equitable. So we look forward to this adventure,” she said at Monday’s announcement. 

Adams also saluted Kavanagh for her tenure as commissioner. “It's a challenging task to be the first woman to be a commissioner in the fire department of the city of New York,” he said. 

“And she stood up to that challenge. And she leaned into some of the challenges, everything from the battery fires that challenges the lives of innocent people to bringing on more women into the department and showing, no matter how difficult it is, being the bravest is more than running into a burning building. It's running into challenging circumstances.”

— Staff writer Duncan Freeman contributed

richardk@thechiefleader.com