J. Patrick Gallagher, ex-prisons chief, dies at 70

J. PATRICK Gallagher, the controversial former Philadelphia prisons commissioner whose alleged sexual exploits while in office cost the city more than $3.6 million in out-of-court settlements, died Dec. 19.

His death escaped local notice despite the headlines he generated during his tenure as prisons commissioner here from 1989 to 1994.

The Buffalo News published an extensive obituary on Gallagher, since he had been superintendent of the Erie County Correctional Facility, in New York State, and was the son of a Buffalo police officer.

He was 70 and died after a long illness, the newspaper reported.

Female prison guards in Philadelphia complained that Gallagher had groped them, forced them to have sex with him and made lewd comments. Numerous lawsuits were filed against him, which were settled out of court for hundreds of thousands of dollars each.

Typical of the complaints was that of a female prison employee who said that she had been summoned to Gallagher's office. As he locked the door she noticed a gun on his desk and pornographic material in his hand.

She said he grabbed her breasts and made a lewd suggestion. When she reported the incident to a deputy commissioner, she said she was told to forget about it.

Despite the accumulation of accusations against him and the proliferation of lawsuits, Gallagher said he was leaving his post in 1994 for "health reasons."

Gallagher always denied the accusations, and city attorneys stressed that out-of-court settlements were not an admission of guilt on Gallagher's part.

But a former reporter for the Daily News who covered many of the cases against Gallagher called him "the city's champion sexual predator."

When Gallagher resigned, then-Mayor Ed Rendell said that his tenure as prisons chief "has been marked by a significant number of accomplishments, including the implementation of numerous initiatives that have increased the efficiency and reduced the cost of operating the prisons, while at the same time working hard to increase minority hiring and promotions among prisons staff."

Gallagher was born in Buffalo, where he served for a time as a special police officer before joining the New York City police in 1962. He became a plainclothes officer and said he partnered with Frank Serpico, working on vice, gambling and narcotics enforcement.

It was Serpico who famously exposed widespread corruption in the department in the '70s.

Gallagher attended the City University of New York's John Jay College of Criminal Justice, taking bachelor's and master's degrees in criminal justice.

In 1969, he set up the political-science and correctional-administration program at the new Genesee Community College, in Batavia, N.Y. He was head of security at Brockport State College, and, in 1971, became assistant executive director of the Buffalo Youth Bureau and head of the bureau two years later.

He lectured at the University of Buffalo, Daemen College and Medaille College, both in Buffalo, before becoming deputy superintendent of the Erie County Correctional Facility. He became superintendent in 1984. After a time as a consultant on correctional design and management, he came to Philadelphia.

After leaving here, he was associated with several small colleges in New Jersey, and in 2000 moved to New Mexico, where he was chairman of the legal-services and public-safety department at Santa Fe Community College. He retired in 2006.

He is survived by his wife, the former Paulette Coles; two sons, Joseph Patrick Jr. and Sean Williams; a daughter, Dorothy Gallagher-Cohen; a stepson, Brian Robinson; a stepdaughter, Shari Robinson; six brothers, and three sisters.