Lennie Briscoe - Character Highlights

Character Highlights

Briscoe is one of many characters on the show to have served in the military; he was at one point a corporal in the United States Army. On several occasions he has referred to his service in the Vietnam War. After leaving the Army, Briscoe joined the NYPD in the 29th Precinct in Manhattan and walked a beat there with stops at the 31st and 33rd Precincts, also in Manhattan, and the 110th and 116th Precincts in Queens, at some point reaching the rank of detective. It is also revealed in the 1999 episode "Marathon", that he spent three years in the Anti-Crime Unit. Briscoe's detective shield number is 8220.

Briscoe typically has a wise-crack or joke about the victim or circumstances of death at the close of the opening scene, with the joke usually exhibiting a very deadpan delivery while at the same time being highly "on target." He likes music, but mostly music that was popular in his youth. In Season 9, Curtis chides his musical taste for stopping with Bobby Darin. Briscoe used to read Langston Hughes back when he was a beatnik "for about five minutes" and "it used to work pretty good on Jewish girls."

Many of Briscoe's former partners and colleagues outside the series (offscreen before Briscoe joined the 27th Precinct) have been or ended up becoming corrupt. In the 1993 episode "Jurisdiction", Lieutenant Brian Torelli (Dan Hedaya) forced a confession from a mentally challenged man; at the end of the episode Briscoe is present when Internal Affairs arrests Torelli for suborning perjury and obstruction of justice.

In the 1994 episode "Kids", the son of police detective Ted Parker, a former colleague of Briscoe, is arrested for shooting another teenager. Parker and Briscoe have a private conversation where Parker uses hypothetics to virtually confess to Briscoe that his son only shot in self-defense. At the end of the episode, Parker tacitly acknowledges to Briscoe that he used his contacts in his old precinct to engineer the shooting death of a key prosecution witness in his son's case (resulting in a mistrial).

Another of Briscoe's former partners, Det. John Flynn (Kevin Conway), falsely implicates him in the 1996 episode "Corruption" for taking seized drugs from the 116th Precinct evidence room (given to him by Flynn) during their stint there several years before. Flynn makes this allegation partly to throw off the Hellman Commission, which had been convened to investigate police corruption, including the questionable shooting death of a suspect by Flynn himself at the start of the episode, and partly as revenge against Curtis, who refused to falsely defend Flynn. Briscoe, however, has an alibi—he was having an affair with Officer Betty Abrams, a married woman. Against Briscoe's wishes, Abrams testifies before the commission to exonerate him. Because of the affair, however, the commissioners question her credibility. Although Briscoe is ultimately cleared, defense attorneys exploit the allegations for the rest of his career.

There are moments in Briscoe's career where his decisions are controversial. In the episode "Stalker", a stalker accused of murdering a woman could have gone free because the police concluded that the victim had earlier lied to the police about previously being attacked by the stalker, thereby undermining the victim's credibility. However, after the victim is found murdered, Briscoe goes to EADA Jack McCoy (Sam Waterston) and tells him that he now believes that the victim did not lie to the police of the stalker's earlier attacks and that he is willing to take the stand and state that the original police report was incorrect. Curtis would be called by the defense to testify that he thought the original police report was correct. At the end of the episode, the stalker is found guilty; outside the courtroom, Curtis and Briscoe reconcile.

Shortly after Green is assigned as his partner, he and Briscoe nearly come to blows during a particularly difficult investigation of a robbery-homicide. Their primary suspect confesses as he is being arrested, but because Briscoe is the only officer within earshot, Green, Van Buren, and McCoy are placed in a difficult position with regard to the confession. Again, Briscoe is eventually vindicated, and he and Green work to rebuild their professional rapport and what eventually ends up as a close friendship.

Briscoe retires from the NYPD in 2004. His successor in the 27th Precinct Detective Squad is Det. Joe Fontana (Dennis Farina), whose stint in the 27th Precinct would be far shorter than Briscoe's.

Briscoe died at some point between 2004 and 2005 (Orbach himself died on December 28, 2004). Although not addressed directly in the main series until 2008, his death was implied in 2005 and confirmed in 2007 in Criminal Intent (see "Death" section below).