Security firm CEO Robert Tucker will be named the next FDNY commissioner on Monday, sources told The Post Sunday evening.
Tucker, who leads security giant T&M as CEO and chairman, is expected to win Mayor Eric Adams’ approval to replace Laura Kavanagh after she resigned earlier this month amid numerous controversies and tensions with the department over her leadership.
Tucker, who was widely considered a leading candidate for the position, also sits on the board of the FDNY Foundation and has made many connections with the FDNY over the course of his decades-long career, despite never having served as a firefighter.
Even as a child, he once described himself as a “fire fan.”
“When I was a young boy growing up in Manhattan, I was a fire department fanatic,” Tucker said, according to a report from the FDNY Foundation. “I would ride behind fire trucks on my bicycle. I had the opportunity to meet Commissioner (Joseph) Spinnato, and I told him about my interest in the department.”
Spinnato served as commissioner of the department during part of the 1980s.
As a teenager, he worked in the FDNY’s Manhattan Communications Office, which he called “the best job offer I ever received.”
Tucker, a graduate of George Washington University and Pace University School of Law, worked for years as a special assistant to the Queens District Attorney’s Office before joining T&M in 1999, according to Member Spotlight.
The security company has been in business since 1981 and, according to its website, focuses on providing integrated security, cyber, intelligence and investigative solutions.
City hall spokesman Fabien Levy would neither confirm nor deny the planned appointment on Sunday evening.
“As we always say, an appointment is not made until it is announced,” he said in a text message.
Adams had previously considered appointing Tucker, a member of the mayor’s transition committee on public safety and justice, to replace then-Commissioner Daniel Nigro.
But the mayor ultimately passed over Tucker in favor of Kavanagh, the first woman to head the department.
Kavanagh, 42, faced numerous problems during her tenure, including numerous clashes with other senior officials in the department. The department faced an age discrimination lawsuit from the department heads she demoted.
She also came under criticism after attempting to discipline members who booed New York Attorney General Letitia James during a promotion ceremony at the department earlier this year.
Tucker, board secretary of the FDNY Foundation, was named honorary fire commissioner in 2014. After 9/11, he became involved with the agency’s official nonprofit organization.
“I thought the best way to do this would be to join the board of the foundation,” he said in the Spotlight article.
“As the owner of a security company who has guarded high-rise buildings across the city, I know firsthand: we need equipment, we need firefighters trained in high-rise security, we need communications equipment that works in high-rise buildings. All of this is possible thanks to the money we raise as trustees of the foundation.”
He also serves on the Board of Trustees and has served as Secretary/Treasurer of the New York City Police Foundation and other nonprofit organizations, according to his T&M biography.
