Security firm CEO Robert Tucker will be named the next commissioner of the FDNY on Monday, sources told The Post Sunday night.
Tucker, who leads security giant T&M as CEO and chairman, is expected to get the nod from Mayor Eric Adams to replace Laura Kavanagh after she stepped down earlier this month amid multiple controversies and tension with the department over her leadership.
Tucker, who was widely seen as a top contender for the job, also sits on the board of the FDNY Foundation and has long circled the FDNY during his career dating back decades, though he has never served as a firefighter.
He once described himself as a “fire buff” dating back to his childhood.
“When I was a young boy growing up in Manhattan, I was a fire buff,” Tucker said, according to a FDNY Foundation spotlight. “I used to chase fire engines 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 for the department for some of the 1980s.
As a teenager, he worked in the FDNY’s Manhattan Communications Office, which he called the “best job offer I would ever receive.”
A graduate of George Washington University and Pace University School of Law, Tucker worked as a special assistant to the Queens District Attorney’s Office for years before he joined T&M in 1999, according to the member spotlight.
The security firm has been in business since 1981 and focuses on providing integrated security, cyber, intelligence and investigative solutions, according to its website.
City Hall spokesperson Fabien Levy declined to confirm or deny the planned appointment Sunday night.
“As we always say, no appointment is made until it is announced,” he said in a text message.
Adams had previously considered appointing Tucker, a member of the mayor’s Public Safety and Justice transition committee, to replace then-Commissioner Daniel Nigro.
But the mayor ultimately passed over Tucker in favor of Kavanagh, who was the first woman to ever lead the department.
Kavanagh, 42, faced a long line of problems during her tenure, including numerous clashes with other department bigwigs. The department was slapped with an age discrimination lawsuit brought by department honchos she demoted.
She also faced heat after she sought to discipline members that booed New York Attorney General Letitia James during a department promotion ceremony earlier this year.
Tucker, who is the board secretary of the FDNY Foundation, was named an honorary fire commissioner in 2014. He got involved with the official non-profit of the department following 9/11.
“I figured the best way to do that was to become a part of the Foundation’s Board of Directors,” he said in the spotlight article.
“As a security company owner, having protected high-rise buildings all over this city, I know first hand: we have to have apparatus, we have to have fire fighters that are trained in high-rise safety, we have to have communication equipment that works in high-rise buildings. All of that can happen because of money we raise as trustees of the Foundation.”
He is also sits on the board of trustees and served as secretary/treasurer for the New York City Police Foundation and other non-profits, according to his T&M bio.
