Boston's top cop to be Garda Chief Inspector
Kathleen O’Toole, the first woman police commissioner in Boston, resigned today to accept a new position as chief inspector of the Gardaí.
O’Toole, 52, was the only candidate for the new position with the Garda Siochana.
At a news conference, O’Toole said she received an offer this morning. Her nomination is to be presented formally to Prime Minister Bertie Ahern at the Cabinet meeting next week, and O’Toole said she expected to begin in Dublin on July 1.
O’Toole came to Irish attention when she served as a commissioner on an international panel that drew up a reform programme for the police force in the North, a critical plank of the 1998 peace accord.
She spent two years leading the police department in Boston, which is in the midst of a surge in violence that has seen seven people murdered in seven days.
In accepting the Dublin offer, O’Toole will be taking a slight pay cut from her current $160,000 (€125,000) salary to the Irish position’s advertised $146,000 (€114,000).
