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Mary Agnes Shanley was born into an Irish-American family in 1896, after immigrating to America with her family, she made her choice to join the NYPD (New York Police Department). She joined the NYPD in 1931 and by 1939 was the fourth woman to achieve the rank of first-grade detective in the NYPD. She is credited with over a thousand arrests during her career. She was perhaps the first policewoman in New York City to use her gun in the arrest of a suspect.
Shanley was on the pickpocket detective squad in the NYPD. She became a minor local celebrity, making appearances in crime blotters and tabloids every time she collared a suspect, eventually earning her the sobriquet “Deadshot Mary.” Of her, The New York Times wrote in 1938:
In more than seven years on the police force Miss Shanley has had considerable experience with man-catching. Sometimes she has had to use her .32-caliber revolver. Once she used her leather pocketbook to knock down her quarry. ... Mayor La Guardia once praised her for demonstrating "not only keen intelligence and fine police work but also courage at a moment when courage was needed."
In 1941, Shanley shot her gun while she was off-duty and intoxicated at a bar in Jackson Heights, Queens. She was demoted from first-grade detective to policewoman and placed under suspension, but returned to duty after only a month. She was promoted to detective again later. She retired in 1957. She never married or had children, and died in 1989. Her great-nephew Patrick Mullins produced a documentary about her, “Sleuthing Mary Shanley” in 2006. In 2016, actress Rachel McPhee put on a one-woman show devoted to her, “Dead Shot Mary”, at the Bridge Theater in New York City.
It's exciting. I'd die if I had to go back to working in an office. -MARY SHANLEY, 1937
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