His 325-member IT department, which serves 51,000-member NYPD, is busy on a variety of projects -- some catch-up, some cutting-edge. Meanwhile, Onalfo is barnstorming the country drumming up moral and financial support for even more ambitious plans.

"IT is very strategic to the NYPD," Onalfo said Tuesday at the Computerworld Premier 100 IT Leaders conference in Palm Desert, Calif. "You can't even arrest someone today without the aid of IT."

Some projects in progress include doubling the number of PCs in precinct offices, creating a database of all weapons used in crimes in New York and adding wireless hot-spot capability to all precinct offices and police cars. Those are in addition to continuing to enhance the Crime Data Warehouse that supports the two-year old RTCC, which Onalfo describes as a "NASA-type control room" with multiple large screens to help police analysts map and analyze data quickly to help detectives during the crucial first 48 hours after a crime.

Onalfo also wants to put 15,000 handheld PCs into the hands of beat cops so they can quickly get data about possible criminals and criminal activity, and he wants license-plate readers mounted on police cars to aid in making arrests.

The 67-year-old Onalfo, a longtime private-sector CIO at companies such as Kraft Foods International Inc. and The Stanley Works, came out of retirement four years ago to lead the NYPD's technology transformation. Nowadays, he says, better safety for New Yorkers is "my ROI."