Bios
Lieutenant Kevin Sweeney
|Character Bio
Lieutenant Kevin Sweeney was a legendary detective before he rose to command. He's spent 31 years in the department, the last seven as squad commander of Manhattan East Homicide. A job like Sweeney's is as much about managing the personalities of the detectives under his command as it is about the daily grind of solving cases. But it's also political - and as such a detective like Jane Timoney can make life very difficult with her naked ambition and dislike for going with the flow. However, Sweeney recognizes a born detective when he sees one, because he was one. So he's willing to humor Jane more than her colleagues, because he knows what a gift the squad's been given in having her there, despite her lack of social graces. And he also knows that at the end of the day, Jane's abilities make him look good to the bosses upstairs.
Sweeney is a married man with older children. He's also an educated and literary man with a philosophical bent and a deep connection to the Irish Catholicism with which he was brought up. Given the business he's chosen, the concepts of good and evil, guilt, redemption and forgiveness are never far from his mind. He considers the Detective Bureau his purpose in life - and protecting the detectives in his squad his calling.