Patrick Vincent Murphy (May 15, 1920 – December 16, 2011) served as the top law enforcement executive in New York City, Detroit, Washington, DC, and Syracuse, NY. He created the Police Executive Research Forum, an organization of police executives from the nation's largest city, county, and state law enforcement agencies, and led the Police Foundation in a period when it published pivotal reports on issues ranging from the police use of deadly force to the efficient use of patrol resources. Murphy's "long-range impact on American policing nationally probably will be judged by students of police history as significant as that of August Vollmer (a notable police reformer in the first half of the 20th century) or J. Edgar Hoover," the FBI's Law Enforcement Bulletin commented in a 1986 cover story on the Police Foundation.