Tom O’Neill Sr. was the kind of cop any other cop would want standing nearby in a tough situation.
He’d tell those he mentored at the Denver Police Department to think of him in a pinch – and they did, said friend Tina Rowe, a former U.S. marshal and former Denver police officer.
O’Neill was 84 when he died April 12 in an Arapahoe County hospice.
“Dad loved being a cop,” said his son, Mike O’Neill of Littleton, also a retired Denver police officer. “It was a labor of love.”
But the pay wasn’t good – $200 a month and four days off each month – so Tom O’Neill took a lot of off-duty jobs. Even that was only $1.50 an hour.
“He worked night and day,” often doing security at Loretto Heights College, said Mike O’Neill.
Rowe said Tom O’Neill was a “friend, confidant, counselor, mentor, brother and father” to a lot of other police officers.
She told him one day that she was dreading a confrontation she expected the following day.
“Just think of me standing right next to you and giving you all the support you need,” O’Neill said. “And let me know when you want me to step in and kick some (expletive). I’ll do it in a heartbeat.”
O’Neill was an officer in the internal-affairs division when the story broke about Denver’s “crooked cops” in the early 1960s, said son Tom O’Neill Jr. of Littleton. “Dad was mortified about it because he was so honest and straight and impeccable about everything.”
Tom O’Neill Sr. retired as a division chief in 1972 after 25 years of service.
His career was the reason his sons went into the same line of work, Tom O’Neill Jr. said: “We’d sit in his police car when he was home and listen to the police radio.”
Tom O’Neill Sr. had some dangerous assignments and “was shot at a few times,” said Mike O’Neill, but he was never wounded and never killed anyone.
Thomas L. O’Neill was born Aug. 5, 1921, in Denver, the son of Thomas and Genevieve O’Neill, who owned the O’Neill Hotel at 14th and Stout streets in downtown Denver.
As a child, O’Neill was fascinated watching police action downtown. The police building was nearby, and O’Neill told his family of the “riot cars” Denver police had in the 1920s and ’30s. The cars, outfitted with machine guns, were used to hunt down bootleggers.
Tom O’Neill graduated from Regis High School and then served in the Navy.
On Aug. 28, 1942, he married Alice Mishork. She died in 1973.
In addition to his sons, two grandsons are on the Denver police force: Bryan O’Neill and Mike O’Neill Jr. Granddaughter Melissa O’Neill is a dispatcher for the Castle Rock Police Department.
Tom O’Neill Sr. also is survived by four grandchildren.
Staff writer Virginia Culver can be reached at vculver@denverpost.com or 303-820-1223.
