Tom Donlon, a former FBI official who was named the NYPD’s interim commissioner, has a difficult mandate to lead the nation’s largest police force amid a sprawling federal investigation into the city’s top officials.
Mayor Eric Adams appointed Donlon as New York City’s top cop an hour after Edward Caban resigned from the post.
Here are three major problems Dolan faces as he takes over the department.
Managing a department on fire
Adams may have appointed a federal official as NYPD commissioner in a deliberate move to put out the fire as federal agencies investigate his inner circle, according to former law enforcement officials. It sends the message that the new leader is an outsider amid allegations of cronyism and corruption related to Caban’s family.
“There’s probably a strategy there,” said Bob Martinez, former director of the NYPD Fleet Services Division.
The shuffle at 1 Police Plaza on Thursday came a week after federal authorities seized the cellphones of Caban, his twin brother, his chief of staff and three police officials. The IRS told Gothamist the seizures were connected to an investigation into Caban’s twin brother’s business as a nightlife consultant.
In the meantime, state watchdog group Common Cause New York called for the city’s Department of Investigation to take charge and probe potential misconduct by the NYPD’s leadership.
“The allegations against key members of the Adams administration and the NYPD are deeply troubling, and if true, represent a shocking betrayal of the public trust,” Common Cause New York’s Executive Director Susan Lerner said in a statement on Thursday.
“There is no doubt that the appearance of misconduct and repeated reports that misconduct is not addressed internally raises questions that the public deserves answers to about the integrity of taxpayer funded, civic institutions like the NYPD,” she wrote, adding that the group would reserve judgment pending the results of the investigation into Caban.
Navigating a group of outspoken and aggressive deputy officials
It remains to be seen whether Donlon will have a strong public presence, or remain behind the scenes, like Caban.
Caban left the spotlight to a small crew of outspoken police officials who recently dubbed themselves “the Gotham brothers”: NYPD Chief of Patrol John Chell, Deputy Commissioner of Operations Kaz Daughtry and Deputy Commissioner of Public Information Tarik Sheppard. Chell and Daughtry have been criticized for their aggressive presences on social media, where they have called a news reporter “deceitful” and launched an apparent “vote her out” campaign against a city councilmember.
When news of the IRS investigators seizing Caban’s cell phone broke last week, Sheppard ejected two news reporters from NYPD headquarters for contacting police unions for help with unrelated stories, a Gothamist reporter observed. The move came after the department’s 86-person public relations team moved news reporters from the decades-old press room inside NYPD headquarters called “the shack” into a trailer outside the building.
Former law enforcement officials say it’s unclear how Donlon will preside over the crew of officials beneath him, who have collectively been with the NYPD for more than 70 years.
“I don’t think he’s going to give orders immediately,” said Jill Snider, a former NYPD officer and current adjunct lecturer at the John Jay College of Criminal Justice.
“An interim could mean interim for a week, a month, a few months,” she added. “He doesn’t know any of the top brass, which is really good because he can be unbiased.”
Boosting morale within the nation’s largest police force
Morale among the 36,000 rank-and-file police officers is fragile after years of protests calling for police reform, a new scandal at NYPD headquarters and now an unexpected choice for interim police commissioner, according to several officers who spoke to Gothamist.
Mayors have rarely appointed police commissioners from outside the NYPD, and former law enforcement officials say Adams’ decision to do so is a blow to morale, alongside the sprawling investigation into his inner circle. When former Police Commissioner Keechant Sewell stepped down last year, Caban – her first deputy commissioner and an obvious choice for successor – took the reins.
“To come in and immediately shake things up is not going to fare well with the rank-and-file,” Snider said.
But commissioners who come from outside the department aren’t unprecedented. Lee Brown, who previously worked as a police officer in California, served as commissioner under former Mayor David Dinkins beginning in 1989. And Howard Safir, who died last year, served as police commissioner from 1996 to 2000 under former Mayor Rudy Giuliani after a stint as the city’s fire commissioner.
Martinez, the NYPD’s former director of fleet services, said it was disheartening to see the NYPD’s reputation “dragged through the mud.”
“Right now, anybody from the outside is probably a plus,” Martinez told Gothamist. “Hopefully [Donlon] is non-corruptible.”
“When a head’s not good, neither is the body of the tail,” he said.