Michael Julian, the NYPD’s new deputy commissioner of training, was able to come back to the police force after retiring in 1994 because he took the advice of a terrorist lawyer who is about to serve 18 months for tax evasion.
Julian could have claimed a disability pension when he left the NYPD with a knee injury, but Stanley Cohen advised against it.
“I told him, ‘Don’t take it, because you never know. You might want to come back some day,’” Cohen told me.
Twenty years later, Julian, who was head of security at Madison Square Garden and Rockefeller Center, is back on the force working for his old boss, Commissioner Bill Bratton.
Cohen, who recently represented Osama bin Laden’s son in-law, Sulaiman Abu Ghaith, has also repped Hamas honcho Abu Marzook and the blind sheikh Omar Abdel-Rahman.
“Michael and I had this odd relationship,” Cohen said. “It would drive the people at Police Headquarters crazy because I’d come over and have lunch with him.”
The two met when Julian was the commander of the Ninth Precinct in the East Village dealing with the anarchists and anti-gentrifiers who occupied Tompkins Square Park chanting “Eat the rich. Feed the poor.”
“On his first day at Tompkins Square, he showed up at the park alone while people were attacking the Christodora House,” activist John Penley told me. “Some squatters who recognized him jumped him and kind of beat him up. The attack led to a permanent knee injury.”
Cops with a disability can retire with 75 percent of their annual salary, compared to the normal 50 percent pension.
The lawyer pleaded guilty to tax evasion in April and is expected to start serving 18 months in prison in January.
“I’m going to do my year of vacation and write the book I’ve been putting off,” Cohen said.