Jack Maple; Pioneer in Fighting Crime With Computers

Jack Maple, 48, a former New York deputy police commissioner who helped plot a successful crime-fighting strategy for the administration of Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani, died Aug. 4 of colon cancer in Manhattan.

Maple rose from transit officer to top aide to William J. Bratton, the police commissioner who overhauled the nation’s largest police department and instituted new crime-control methods before being forced out by Giuliani in 1996.

Maple, appointed deputy commissioner in 1994, became the architect of the department’s Compstat program, which revolutionized police operations using computerized statistics and maps to pinpoint crime trends. He left the department during the same shake-up that forced Bratton’s departure in 1996 and became a police consultant for major cities, including New Orleans and Baltimore.

A flamboyant figure in his homburg, two-tone shoes and bow tie, Maple wrote a memoir, “The Crime Fighter: Putting the Bad Guys Out of Business,” published by Doubleday in 1999. He also was the model for the police chief played by Craig Nelson in the CBS drama “The District.”