Eugene Kelley, former Suffolk police commissioner who feuded with DA, dies at 96

Eugene "Gene" Kelley of Head of the Harbor, the Suffolk County police commissioner during the mid-1970s whose feud with the district attorney led Gov. Hugh Carey to appoint a special prosecutor, has died. Kelley was 96.

The death, on Sept. 8 at the Kanas Center for Hospice Care in Quioque, was due to complications from a fall in late August, said his son, Eugene "Buddy" Kelley Jr., of East Hampton. 

"His story was the story of the American dream — through hard work everyone can find success," his son said.

A Marine during World War II and Korea who grew up in, and ran away from, a Brooklyn orphanage to labor on a farm upstate, Kelley would go on to work as a traffic cop in Washington, D.C., a police officer in New York City and Suffolk as well as a prosecutor, and later a criminal defense attorney, in that county.

He also worked in district attorney’s offices in Queens and Kings, where he helped found an elder-abuse unit, and was a justice in Head of the Harbor and Village of the Branch, the son said.

It was in 1973, when Kelley, a Republican, was appointed police commissioner. By 1975, a feud with then-District Attorney Henry O’Brien, the first Democrat elected to hold the office in Suffolk, spilled out publicly, ostensibly in an ugly battle over how to handle informants.

O’Brien said Kelley had gone public over the issue to cover up for "misconduct in office" and "other more serious crimes," according to Newsday archives.

Then Kelley charged O'Brien with sexual activity, without consent, with a 21-year-old drug male defendant who had been a client of O'Brien's before he was elected district attorney, a charge that O'Brien was ultimately cleared of.

At one point, police investigators, under Kelley, looked into the sexual preferences of O’Brien, a lifelong bachelor. Kelley also went public with an allegation of corruption in O’Brien’s office — but no charges were ever brought.

O’Brien died in 2021.

For his part, Kelley said O’Brien and his staff were "trying to get me for something ... just because I happen to be a ... Republican." 

As police commissioner, Kelley’s tenure included disputes with the rank-and-file labor union, cops allegedly scrambling police radios in protest, lagging minority recruitment, budget woes over Long Island Expressway patrols and school crossing guards, and a controversy over the policy of restraining all arrestees, regardless of the type of crime. A furor erupted after a Patchogue woman was handcuffed over a $1 outstanding parking ticket, as was another, who failed to pay a $15 speeding ticket.

Kelley left the commissioner post in 1977, after losing a court battle to stay longer, arguing his term was legally six, not four, years.

The special prosecutor appointed by Carey looked into charges raised during the feud, which dragged on past Kelley’s time as commissioner. Both men were eventually cleared of any criminal charges. The probe was conducted by a succession of two special prosecutors over 21 months and at a cost of millions in today’s dollars.

Grand jurors said, among other findings, that Kelley "improperly" gathered evidence and filed "an unwarranted and unjustified criminal charge." O’Brien’s office was accused of errors in judgment but was cleared of the corruption charge.

Never did the investigation — two grand juries, 161 witnesses, 81 sessions, 12 reports — actually get to the bottom of what triggered the bitter animosity between Kelley and O’Brien.

Suffolk County has long been a place where politics, particularly on law enforcement matters, is "really wild and out control," said former Newsday reporter Gus Garcia-Roberts, who wrote "Jimmy the King: Murder, Vice, and the Reign of a Dirty Cop," a book about the county and its now-former district attorney, Tom Spota, and police chief, James Burke, who were both imprisoned in a recent scandal involving improper wiretaps, threats, rivalries and Burke's beating of a handcuffed prisoner.

"Governance is basically a blood sport, and everything is personal and fair game, and there's no end to the feuds there," Garcia-Roberts said Sunday. "I think it's like a jurisdiction really unlike any other in the country in terms of these top officials constantly feuding with each other in law enforcement, with no holds barred."

Spota, who worked as a young assistant district attorney under O'Brien, would go on to feud openly with a prior police commissioner, Richard Dormer. 

Eugene Raymond Kelley was born in upper Manhattan Oct. 30, 1927, to Joseph and Rhoda Kelley. She had worked in a watch factory and later became a full-time mom; he was a cabdriver. When Eugene Kelley, who was the middle of three boys, was 4, his mother died from complications of a miscarriage, and their father placed the brothers in a Catholic orphanage in Brooklyn. A city police officer, volunteering his time, would drop by occasionally to take the boys to Coney Island, an experience that endeared Kelley to the police.

Kelley later spent time in a foster home but was removed after his foster mother disciplined him with a hot iron for stealing a powdered doughnut, said his son, who provided details of his father's life.

At 15, Gene Kelley ran away from the orphanage to work on the farm with his best friend, the brother of a girl named Eileen O’Neill, whom he would court and later marry in 1949.

Late in World War II, Kelley enlisted in the U.S. Marine Corps, served as a military police officer. He was discharged but decided to join the reserves, his son said.

Eileen and Eugene’s home in Springfield Gardens, Queens, was taken by eminent domain to make way for a junior high school and firehouse, and the couple moved to Levittown in the early 1960s. They raised their children in Nesconset and St. James. His wife died in 2013, and Kelley is the last surviving sibling.

In addition to his son, he is survived by his daughters, Adrienne Batey, of Orlando, Florida; and Allison Hoak, of Manassas, Virginia; seven grandchildren and three great-grandchildren. The funeral and wake were held last week in St. James, with burial and military honors at Calverton National Cemetery, next to his wife.

Four decades after the end of the special prosecutor’s office that probed the feud that riveted Suffolk County politics, both Kelley and O’Brien lamented letting things spiral out of control.

Looking back, Kelley, then 88, told Newsday in 2016 the battle wasted a lot of money, and the quarrel ought to have been resolved without controversy.

O'Brien, then 80, concurred that both sides "went a bit overboard."

By Matthew Chayes

matthew.chayes@newsday.comchayesmatthew

Matthew Chayes, a Newsday reporter since 2007, covers New York City.