After federal agents last week seized the cell phones of NYPD Commissioner Edward Caban, his chief of staff, three other police officials and his brother, attention has turned to a police department that former law enforcement officials say has become increasingly combative and erratic.
The shift happened under Mayor Eric Adams, a former NYPD captain who ran for mayor promising to fight crime without infringing on civil rights. Since he took office, the department has been criticized for aggressive policing, arresting tens of thousands of people for low-level crimes and pushing back on the city’s police oversight agency.
Now, as a federal investigation zeroes in on Adams’ inner circle and the police department, some lawmakers, activists and former police officials say Adams has promoted a culture where top brass gets special treatment, lash out against critics and shield themselves from discipline.
“The police department has never been good on transparency and accountability,” said Chris Dunn, legal director of the New York Civil Liberties Union. “But this department has taken it to a new low.”
The NYPD did not respond to questions about claims that its leaders are dodging accountability. The city’s police unions declined to comment for this story.
City Hall did not respond to questions about leadership and accountability but instead pointed to a drop in crime during Adams’ tenure over the NYPD.
Less accountability
The police commissioner disciplined officers in 55% of misconduct cases last year, down from 71% in 2021.
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.
City officials are loosening discipline on top brass, too. When Kruythoff Forrester, a retired cop, chased a group of boys through Brooklyn with his gun in 2021, NYPD Chief of Department Jeffrey Maddrey ordered police to void his arrest and drop criminal charges against him, according to NYPD documents.
The city’s police oversight agency at the time recommended that Maddrey forfeit 10 vacation days for abusing his authority. But Adams, who appoints the NYPD commissioner, personally asked then-Commissioner Keechant Sewell not to discipline Maddrey, the nonprofit newsroom The City reported. She did anyway. Sewell resigned two weeks later.
The investigative news outlet ProPublica reported that NYPD Commissioner Edward Caban has personally intervened in more than 50 disciplinary cases against cops who choked, beat and tased New Yorkers, ordering that those cases not go to administrative trial. In contrast, Sewell only intervened in eight cases, according to their reporting.
David Sarni, a retired NYPD detective and professor at John Jay College of Criminal Justice, said the lack of accountability for high-ranking cops hurts morale for the whole department.
“So another boss gets away with something that if I was a detective and I did that, I would have been fired for,” he said.
In rare cases where police officials worked against the grain, they have faced their own backlash. One example is when NYPD Chief of Risk Management Matthew Pontillo spoke out against a skyrocketing number of sometimes fatal police car chases under Adams. After flagging 20 officers for additional training or supervision, Caban asked him to resign, the nonprofit newsroom The City reported.
Increase in stops
The NYPD has stopped tens of thousands of New Yorkers under Adams, most of them for vague reasons, such as “fitting a relevant description,” according to a report from the NYCLU. Just 5% of pedestrians who were stopped were white, revealing racial disparities even starker than at the height of former Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s “stop and frisk” era, according to data in the report.
A judge ruled the practice illegal, and it was drastically reduced under Mayor Bill de Blasio. Adams, in contrast, called stop and frisk a useful policing tool if applied properly. The NYPD has also made more than 1 million traffic stops, ticketed people for public drinking and made more than twice as many arrests for fare jumping since Adams took office.
Mayoral meddling
City Councilmember Gale Brewer, who’s worked with mayors dating back to David Dinkins in the early 1990s, said it’s not uncommon for mayors to meddle with the police department. But she said Adams brought it to a new level, assigning city hall officials like a Deputy Mayor for Public Safety to watch over the department.
“He does play a big role in managing the police department,” she said. “That’s unprecedented.”
Cops too have noticed the extra layer of leadership.
“You feel it more from City Hall now than in the past,” Sarni said. He called Adams’ intervention in Maddrey’s discipline a “turning point with the leadership.” Sarni said previous mayors allowed police commissioners to run the department with more autonomy.
“Such as [William] Bratton and Ray Kelly, they ran a tight ship,” he said. “Mayor [Ed] Koch said it best ‘I’m not the police commissioner. I don’t do police. I hire people to be the police commissioner.’”
Aggressive PR campaigns
As news broke of several investigations last week, NYPD Deputy Commissioner of Public Information kicked two reporters out of the NYPD headquarters for contacting police unions for help interviewing NYPD employees, a Gothamist reporter observed.
The NYPD’s 86-person public relations team under Adams made their mark last year by moving news reporters from the decades-old press room inside NYPD headquarters, affectionately called “the shack,” into a trailer outside the building.
Top NYPD officials have taken to social media to name-call journalists and target a city councilwoman with a “vote her out” campaign.
“There’s a culture of impunity that has always existed within the police department, but it has been boldly embraced by the leadership of the NYPD during Mayor Eric Adams’ tenure,” City Councilmember Lincoln Restler said.
“Chief [of Patrol John] Chell and others mercilessly attack journalists, council members and others … And the mayor has applauded it.”