He chased crooks for 37 years, but now it's off to Fla.

THE GRUFF, old-school career cop stood on a gritty South Philadelphia street corner to challenge war-weary neighbors to speak out and name the shooter.

Two days earlier, one of their own had fired a gun at a rival and one of the bullets struck and injured 4-year-old Nashay Little during an early evening shootout on Sigel Street near 22nd.

Then, on that hot June afternoon in 2006, Chief Inspector Joe Fox had come out to criticize the neighborhood's self-imposed silence.

"People who live in these neighborhoods and see crimes but don't come forward have to make a choice about how they want to live the rest of the lives," Fox told the crowd.

It didn't sit well.

"You think that at 75 I would put my life on the line?" resident Frances Adams shouted. "I feel like I don't have a choice."

Even the tenacious grandmother couldn't quiet the roar. Fox continued, barely taking a breath. Few have been able to quell Fox during his 37 years with the Police Department. He understands the fear of fingering suspects. But his mission for three decades has been to fight for the defenseless. Period.

For years, the gray-haired, stocky, barrel-chested Fox has been the street-corner mouthpiece for police brass.

In the last year alone, he has blasted city judges for the number of repeat offenders on the streets; bickered with Police Commissioner Sylvester Johnson over Johnson's allegations of racism within the department; and harangued communities for embracing the stop-snitchin' culture.

At 55, Fox has seen countless bodies on gurneys, talked to grieving parents in living rooms and convinced reluctant witnesses to speak the truth. He's loved the fight.

But today the lion will retire and move to Florida within a week and the city will lose a legend - a seasoned cop known for his fast talk and smooth one-liners with good-looking women.

"There are bad people in this world and they shouldn't be out walking the streets," Fox said during a retirement lunch this week when asked to describe his philosophy on life. "You see people who are never accountable for what they do."

When asked how he coped with seeing young lives lost to murder, his film noir persona melted away. Suddenly, his eyes and face softened. His Teflon guard came down and revealed a man few know. A man who prefers apple martinis over shots of whiskey. A man who comes home to pet his two long-haired cats - Bonnie and Clyde - to ease the stress of police work.

His job, he says, "boils down to people who can't protect themselves."

"I always tell cops during police meetings that they can't give up. There are three types of people out there who we have to protect: children, old people, and each other," he said.

Surprisingly, Fox wasn't always passionate about having a badge. He only signed on, at the age of 19, after he befriended a pair of cops at a gas station near his childhood Bustleton home.

"I needed a job," he said. "I wasn't a kid who grew up wanting to be a cop."

In June 1971, Fox took his first assignment in Nicetown's 39th District. He was hooked by year's end.

He raced through the ranks and investigated hundreds of shootings and scores of murders along the way.

In 1989, Fox became captain of the crime-ridden 12th District in Southwest Philadelphia. This post is the source of his most memorable stories.

In 1990, he remembers a confrontation with the late iconic City Councilman Lucien Blackwell.

The son of a Korean shopowner shot an armed robber, who was black, during a botched robbery inside the Wild Wild West hoagie shop 52nd Street and Kingsessing Avenue.

Blackwell wanted to keep the shop permanently closed. Fox refused. Blackwell predicted that the "streets would run with blood" if Fox allowed the store to remain open despite daily protests from black residents who were upset that the owner's son was never jailed for the shooting, Fox recalled.

"I said, 'We are opening the store up and we are keeping it open. I have more faith in your people than you do,' " Fox mouthed off to Blackwell.

"Here I am this white schmuck of a captain who had more faith in the community than he did. That was the day that I became convinced that people are people," Fox said.

The same could be said for his personal life. While his career was smooth sailing, his personal life was bumpy. By the early 1990s, Fox had been married twice, fathering his two sons - Sean, now 36, and Patrick, 34 - with his first wife. He raised the boys with his second wife, Patricia Giorgio-Fox, a longtime police official. The two are now divorced and Giorgio-Fox outranks Fox as deputy commissioner - No. 2 in the department.

She's also responsible for assigning him to chief of detectives in 2004.

"It was necessary for me to separate myself - my personal life from my professional life," said Giorgio-Fox, with her stepson, Sean, at her side, at the chief's retirement party. "He was a round peg for a round hole."

Fox has done a lot with his cash-strapped, short-staffed police department since he took helm of the detective bureau.

The Special Victims Unit now investigates death of children ages 10 and under whose deaths are unexplained. The Criminal Intelligence Division is now under one roof with its own investigators on the streets. Prior to Fox's changes, narcotics officers and city detectives worked their own tips and seldom shared information.

And every Tuesday, Fox runs the department's shooting meeting and requires his underlings to present the details of past gun crimes. He also requests the backgrounds of the suspects, details on the victims, as well as the names of friends and foes of each side so cops can prevent any retaliatory violence.

"Without him, the homicide count would be much higher, without a doubt," said Lt. Richard Brown, of Central Detectives, who heads their special investigations team. "He made us accountable for every shooting. He made us leave our desks and go out into the streets."

Of about a dozen detectives, brass and street officers asked to share their thoughts on Joe Fox, no one had a bad thing to say, which is rare for police who tend to gossip like a bunch of high-school girls.

On Monday, highway patrolmen will escort Fox, along with his third wife, a pretty blond, newly retired cop, Susan Clark, up I-95 to the state line. Then it is off to Ormond Beach, Fla. (outside Daytona Beach), in the couple's Toyota RAV4.

Chief Inspector Keith Sadler - who now heads police forensics - is expected to take over Fox's job next week.

Fox has few plans except to play golf and hang on the beach.

But even on the ninth hole in the Floridian haze, Fox says he may still ponder a dream:

"If they asked me back to take the commissioner's job," he said with a grin, "I wouldn't say no." *