[5] The sequel was to focus on Andy Sipowicz's son with Sylvia, Theo, who has joined the police department and earns promotion to detective while trying to solve the murder of his father.

He is from Brooklyn, where his father, a World War II veteran of Polish-American ancestry who worked as a meter reader for ConEd, originally raised the family in temporary Quonset housing.

Andy worked in a local candy store as a boy, later returning under sad conditions when a son of the shop owners organized a robbery that led to his mother's death.

Before becoming a policeman, Sipowicz served in the United States Army for two and a half years, including at least 18 months on active duty in Vietnam beginning in 1968 which he did not talk much about, although it is an underlying theme in the show.

Like many television characters on New York-set police shows, Sipowicz takes advantage of an NYPD regulation allowing officers who were on the force prior to 1993 to carry a .38 caliber Smith & Wesson Model 36 five-shot revolver as his main sidearm.

In the first season of NYPD Blue, Sipowicz's partner is John Kelly, who leaves the force in 1994 after withholding evidence in a murder investigation of his lover Janice Licalsi.

In 1994, Andy begins to date Assistant District Attorney Sylvia Costas, with whom he previously clashed due to professional differences (Sipowicz calls her a "pissy little bitch" in the pilot episode).

Fancy states outright that he was prepared to have Sipowicz removed from the force on the day of his shooting and only gives him another chance, starting with restricted desk duty, because of the incident.

However, a series of devastating personal tragedies over the next few years arise: in May 1996, Andy Jr., who is about to start work as a policeman in Hackensack, New Jersey, is shot and killed while trying to stop a robbery.

In November 1998, Bobby Simone dies of an infection caused by heart transplant complications, and less than a year later in May 1999, Sylvia is accidentally killed by the distraught father of PAA Dolores Mayo (whose killer she had been prosecuting) outside the courtroom.

He also has to deal with the fact that he had been instrumental in putting an innocent black man in prison for 18 years for the murder of a teenager, remembering that he had no experience as a detective and deferred to a lazy veteran cop.

Later that year, Sipowicz overcomes a personality clash with new Lt. Thomas Bale, is promoted to sergeant and persuades a reluctant chief of detectives to name him the new squad commander.