The city’s former top cop soon could be pushing a mop — in prison.
Ex-NYPD Commissioner Bernard Kerik yesterday surrendered to begin a four-year federal prison sentence for crimes that include lying to the Bush White House to try to shore up his nomination as US Homeland Security director.
Kerik, 54, arrived at 1:45 p.m. at the Cumberland Federal Correctional Institution in Cumberland, Md., where he has been assigned a bed in the minimum-security camp there, according to a US Bureau of Prisons spokesman.
The former cop — now known as Prisoner No. 84888-054 — was undergoing orientation yesterday at Cumberland, being advised of the camp’s schedule and rules and compiling his visitors list, said the spokesman, Ed Ross.
“He’ll be expected to work, get a job,” Ross said. “It could be landscaping, food service, a painting crew.”
“It’s open dormitory living.”
Kerik, who has shaved off his trademark mustache, started the 300-mile trip to his new digs at 6 a.m. from his Franklin Lakes, NJ, home. He refused to talk to a Post reporter as he hugged a male buddy and drove off in an SUV with his wife and a young girl, followed by a US Marshals SUV.
Kerik, a former NYPD detective who rose to become head of the city Correction Department under his patron, Mayor Rudy Giuliani, was later appointed the police commissioner by Giuliani.
He gained national prominence in the days after 9/11, when he was seen standing daily at Giuliani’s side.
In 2004, President George W. Bush picked Kerik to become director of Homeland Security. But his nomination fell apart over his failure to pay a nanny’s payroll tax and other questions about his finances. He pleaded guilty in 2006 to state ethics charges and was fined $221,000.
Federal prosecutors charged him with a slew of felonies in 2008, including tax evasion and making false statements in connection with the Homeland Security nomination. Kerik pleaded guilty last year.
In giving Kerik four years — 15 months more than the maximum suggested by sentencing guidelines — federal Judge Stephen Robinson said, “The guidelines don’t take fully into account the operatic proportions of this case.”
The judge said Kerik had made a “conscious decision to essentially lie to the president of the United States.”
In a blog posting Sunday, Kerik griped about the “gross injustice” of his sentence and wrote how he had prepared his daughters, Angelina, 7, and Celine, 10, for his incarceration by watching the movie “Rocky Balboa” with them.
Kerik quoted Sylvester Stallone’s Rocky: “It ain’t about how hard ya hit. It’s about how hard you can get hit and keep moving forward.”
His lawyer, Michael Bachner, yesterday said, “Bernard Kerik has gone through a lot of hard times as a young man growing up, and this is probably one of the most difficult things for him and his family.”