Why Michael Dowd is on this page

Michael F. Dowd (born 10 January 1961) is a former New York City Police Department officer whose arrest in 1992 for running a drug-distribution operation out of Brooklyn’s 75th Precinct became the central case of the Mollen Commission inquiry into NYPD corruption. He is the subject of the 2014 documentary film The Seven Five, directed by Tiller Russell, and the related television documentary Precinct Seven Five (2015).

Dowd was born in Brooklyn, the third of seven children in an Irish-Catholic family on his father’s side; his mother was Jewish. He grew up in Brentwood, Long Island, on a block largely populated by the families of police officers and firefighters, and graduated from the New York City Police Academy in 1982. After a year and a half in Queens he was reassigned to the 75th Precinct in East New York.

Over the course of his career Dowd conspired with drug traffickers to distribute cocaine, warned dealers of upcoming raids, and accepted regular cash payments from members of the Dominican-American Diaz organisation. He was arrested by the Suffolk County Police in 1992; following a joint investigation with the DEA and NYPD Internal Affairs he was convicted of racketeering and conspiracy to distribute narcotics, and sentenced to sixteen years’ imprisonment. He served twelve years and five months and cooperated with the Mollen Commission, whose findings re-shaped subsequent NYPD oversight. Since his release Dowd has appeared widely on podcasts and broadcast media; a narrative feature adaptation of The Seven Five is in development at Sony Pictures.

Sources

• Wikipedia — Michael Dowd (police officer).
• Wikidata Q21173982.

Heritage notes

Family root: irish-diaspora-named.

The directory threads Michael Dowd back to the O'Dubhda clan story via the surname-variants reality — the same family carried these spellings as it scattered. See the septs and the diaspora for the wider pattern, or the Clan DNA Project for the genetic connections being mapped now.