NYPD Commissioner Edward Caban announced his resignation in a letter to the department on Thursday, one week after federal authorities seized his phone in connection with a probe investigating his twin brother’s business as a nightlife consultant, Gothamist has learned.
Caban served in the role for just over a year. He’s the second commissioner to resign under Mayor Eric Adams, who announced Thursday afternoon that former FBI agent Thomas Donlon would assume the role on an interim basis.
The IRS and federal prosecutors in Manhattan are investigating the commissioner and his twin brother, James, who ran a business consulting for nightclubs and music venues. The investigation reportedly centers on whether bars and restaurants paid James Caban for favorable treatment from police.
In an email to the department on Thursday, Caban wrote that “news around recent developments has created a distraction for our department” and that he was unwilling to focus his attention on anything but the NYPD’s work.
“For the good of this city and this department – I have made the difficult decision to resign as police commissioner,” he wrote.
The news comes amid a sprawling federal investigation into Adams’ inner circle. The FBI raided Deputy Mayor for Public Safety Phil Banks’ home last week, as well as the home shared by his brother, Schools Chancellor David Banks and David Banks’ partner, First Deputy Mayor Sheena Wright. The IRS investigation into Caban is not linked to the FBI raids, according to an IRS official interviewed by Gothamist.
Caban was the first Latino commissioner in the 178-year history of the NYPD, which is the nation’s largest police department. He has been with the department since 1991, starting as a police officer in the South Bronx and ascending the ranks to become first deputy commissioner under his predecessor, Commissioner Keechant Sewell. His father was also a police department veteran who served as president of the Transit Police Hispanic Society.
Caban was tasked with making the subways safer, one of Adams’ key campaign promises. He oversaw the deployment of 1,000 additional police officers into the transit system each day, costing taxpayers an additional $151 million in police overtime, Gothamist previously reported. The influx of officers led to a huge increase in tickets and arrests for fare evasion, and a 2% drop in major crimes in the subway.
Civil rights advocates have criticized Caban for peeling back police accountability measures with Adams’ support.
One high-profile example involves a disciplinary case against the city’s highest-ranking uniformed officer: Chief of Department Jeffrey Maddrey. Maddrey ordered police to void the arrest of a former cop who chased a group of boys through Brooklyn with his gun. The city’s police oversight agency and the NYPD’s then-internal prosecutor, Amy Litwin, recommended docking 10 of Maddrey’s vacation days for abusing his authority. Sewell, who was police commissioner at the time, agreed to discipline Maddrey despite Adams’ personal pleas. Sewell resigned two weeks later, and Caban later fired Litwin, the New York Post reported.
Caban has personally intervened in more than 50 disciplinary cases against cops who choked, beat and used Tasers on New Yorkers, ordering that those cases not go to administrative trial, the news outlet ProPublica reported. By contrast, Sewell intervened in eight cases.
He also dropped disciplinary actions against two NYPD officers in the high-profile fatal police shooting of Kawaski Trawick.
At the same time, New Yorkers are making more complaints of police misconduct. They filed 5,600 reports last year, a 51% increase from the prior year and the highest level in over a decade.
In a statement, Patrick Hendry, the president of the city’s largest police union, thanked Caban for “always listening to our concerns and being willing to work with us on the issues affecting our members.” Hendry also added that “this remains a uniquely challenging period for police officers on the streets.”
“The NYPD is severely understaffed. Police officers are severely overworked and overburdened. We are constantly assaulted by violent criminals and constantly attacked by anti-police activists who want us punished and prosecuted for simply doing our job,” Hendry said. “All of this puts public safety at risk. We need the next police commissioner to continue working with us to face those challenges head-on from day one.”
Jumaane Williams, the city’s public advocate, called the resignation a “correct decision.”
“The next police commissioner will need to meet the same qualifications as any other should – to have the trust of both the department and the city, to be legitimately committed to transparency and accountability, and to understand the roles law enforcement should and should not play in producing public safety,” Williams said in a statement. “Too many actions under the current administration have undercut those aims.”
It’s not the first time that an NYPD commissioner has left after just a brief stint under Adams. Sewell resigned last year after 18 months on the job. She was the first Black woman to run the NYPD.
The mayor publicly praised Sewell’s emotional intelligence and her record in curbing crime during more than two decades with the Nassau County Police Department. But in private, Sewell felt undermined by Adams and Phil Banks, the deputy mayor for public safety, experts and former officers previously told Gothamist. At a November 2022 event for women in law enforcement, she delivered a fierce speech directed at the hypothetical next female police commissioner.
“Understand that you will be second-guessed, told what you should say, told what you should write, by someone with half your experience,” Sewell told the audience, which applauded in agreement. “They don’t know any better.”
This story was updated to include comments from the city’s public advocate and the president of the city’s largest police union as well as new information from the mayor’s office.