While Lawrence Byrne’s tenure as the New York City Police Department’s top attorney lasted four years, his connections with the country’s largest police department, and crime fighting in general, run deep.

Byrne is officially stepping down as the NYPD’s deputy commissioner of legal matters on Tuesday, capping off an era that, while the safest in the city’s history as far as the statistics are concerned, presented significant challenges for the corps of 250 lawyers, civilians and uniformed cops who make up the NYPD Legal Bureau.