By 1962, Murphy was a deputy inspector when the department gave him an 18-month leave of absence to become the reform police chief in Syracuse "which found itself in a nasty corruption scandal.
But to permit the local police force, operating in the shadow of the White House, to remain in such a circumstance was … risk taking at its worst," Murphy wrote in his memoirs.
[3] To begin to improve those relations, Murphy was appointed the District of Columbia's first director of public safety, in charge of both the police and fire departments, in 1967.
Murphy quickly began "changing his department irrevocably … (he) put in place systems to hold supervisors and administrators strictly accountable for the integrity and civility of their personnel… He rewarded cops who turned in corrupt or brutal colleagues and punished those who, although personally honest, looked the other way when they learned of misconduct," according to criminal justice scholars Jerome H. Skolnick and James J. Fyfe.
They write that "Murphy used his three and a half years in office to create an environment that loudly and clearly condemned abusive police conduct, those who engage in it and – equally important – those who tolerate it.
"[9] In August 1972, after overseeing the most corrupt police department in NYC history, per the Knapp Commission, Murphy introduced a new policy restricting "the use of deadly force to situations involving the defense of life, replacing the traditional 'fleeing felon' rule.
The policy also prohibited discharging firearms as warning shots, as calls for assistance, or at or from moving vehicles," writes Samuel Walker, a criminal justice professor at the University of Nebraska.
[11] These results "suggested that it is not sufficient to merely assign uniformed officers to random patrol and that more sophisticated means of deploying personnel may be necessary," according to Police Administration.
Murphy envisioned an organization the forum has become – in its words on its web site, "a national membership organization of progressive police executives from the largest city, county, and state law enforcement agencies … dedicated to improving policing and advancing professionalism through research and involvement in public policy debate.
[14] At the 1980 conference of the International Association of Chiefs of Police, delegates rejected by a 4-1 margin a resolution introduced by Murphy calling for departmental restrictions on the use of deadly force.
Murphy continued to speak out on the matter and in 1982 the IACP leadership censured him "for his ongoing criticism of traditional police practices," Epp writes.
He taught at John Jay College of Criminal Justice from 1985–87 and was director of the police policy board of the United States Conference of Mayors from 1985-98.
The Patrick V. Murphy Papers are housed in the Special Collections of the Lloyd Sealy Library, John Jay College of Criminal Justice.