Shortly after the results came in Thursday, Joe Gamaldi stepped up to a podium at a New Orleans convention center to thank the sea of cops who tapped him as the Fraternal Order of Police’s next vice president.

He thanked his wife, mentors and opponent, a retired Los Angeles Police Department sergeant. Then after dispensing with pleasantries, he voiced a promise: “We will push back on the things attacking us for the last five years,” he said. “And we will be a new bold voice for law enforcement in this country.”

The vote to help lead the nation’s largest law enforcement group representing rank-and-file officers marked the latest step in Gamaldi’s swift and sometimes controversial ascent as a union boss. The 36-year-old native New Yorker moved to Houston in 2008 and was elected vice president of the Houston Police Officer’s Union in 2013. Officers voted him union president in late 2017.

His goal is to speak up for officers who feel they don’t have a voice.

“They feel attacked by the main stream media, they feel as if no one is speaking up for them,” Gamaldi said Friday, as he was returning from the FOP’s annual convention in New Orleans. “They want someone to step up, remind everyone they’re out there putting their lives on the line every single day, and they don’t deserve to be treated this way.”

His election to the board was surprising, observers said, because older or retired law enforcement officers traditionally run the organization, which represents about 350,000 officers across the country.

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“This is the first youngblood they’ve had up at the top in decades,” said Ron DeLord, former longtime president of the Combined Law Enforcement Associations of Texas, one of the largest labor groups in Texas for police and sheriff’s deputies.

Ray Hunt, Gamaldi’s predecessor at HPOU, said officers responded to Gamaldi’s energy and passion for “officers’ rights.”

“He wants us to get in front of issues that can sometimes take hold and the wrong narrative gets out there,” he said. “ ’Hands up, don’t shoot’ in Ferguson would never have taken place in Houston, Texas.”

Gamaldi’s rise mirrors that of his boss, Houston Police Chief Art Acevedo, who in January assumed control of the Major Cities Chiefs Association, which represents police executives in the largest cities in the United States and Canada. Acevedo moved to Houston in 2016 after stints in Austin and California.

“Both he and Art came from outside of Houston, and came and made their mark here,” DeLord said. “That’s the history of Texas… people come here and make their mark, it’s a place where you can do that.”

They have both courted controversy as they have grown more prominent and more political: Acevedo has grown increasingly vocal in his criticisms of President Donald Trump and calling for measures to reduce gun violence — feuding with the NRA after mass shootings in Santa Fe and Sutherland Springs — while Gamaldi made national waves after a deadly drug raid in south Houston earlier this year erupted into a shootout, killing two homeowners and injuring five officers.

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In the immediate aftermath, Gamaldi lashed out on national TV, saying law enforcement was “sick and tired” of being targeted by “dirtbags” trying to kill police.

Acevedo later revealed the officer at the center of the raid was under investigation for allegedly lying about an informant and the drug buy he used to justify the raid.

Gamaldi’s sharp rhetoric infuriated community activists, who said he jumped to unfair conclusions without all the facts. At the HPOU, Gamaldi also raised eyebrows for his public battle with the Houston Professional Fire Fighters Association over the firefighters’ efforts to win the same pay as police officers, and for his frequent critiques of local judges and prosecutors for dispensing low bonds to suspects later accused of committing violent crimes.

His election now puts him at the top of one of the nation’s most conservative law enforcement organizations, which in 2017 called on Trump to reverse a past federal ban on racial profiling, repeal the Affordable Care Act, deport immigrants in the U.S. illegally and end the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, which allowed some children brought in illegally by their parents to receive work permits.

On Friday, news of Gamaldi’s election surprised some local civil rights advocates.

“The louder you are, the more attention you get,” said Hai Bui, of We the People Organize, a group that protested HPD’s bungled raid in Pecan Park and has called for justice for Rhogena Nicholas and Dennis Tuttle, who died in the raid.

In the months since that shooting, Gamaldi has continued to loudly criticize shootings of law enforcement officer, including after six Philadelphia officers were wounded Wednesday serving a narcotics warrant

Whether Gamaldi will soften his approach in his new post remains to be seen.

“Folks who have watched what we have done — the HPOU, what I have done as an individual — in the community, truly understand we do care about the community and they know who I really am, and what I really feel about the people who support law enforcement and the people who are reasonable out there,” he said.

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st.john.smith@chron.com