Abrupt departure of a police commissioner

Good morning. It is Wednesday. We watch the abrupt departure of the police commissioner. We’ll also find out why a judge was first open to a federal takeover of the Rikers Island prisons.

The email from New York Police Commissioner Keechant Sewell to her fellow officers was dramatic because it was unexpected: “I have made the decision to step down from my position,” she wrote.

Her departure, announced after a brief meeting with Mayor Eric Adams at City Hall, surprised the rank and file officers who worked for her and who had come to respect her in her 18 months as commissioner. She was the first woman to A $243,171 a year job.

I asked Dana Rubinstein, who covers politics in New York City, about Sewell’s resignation and about other recent high-level departures at City Hall.

What happened that made her leave? Is this a story about a power struggle between City Hall and 1 Police Plaza, where Sewell’s office was?

There is a mystery about her reasons. Sewell has not given an exit interview to anyone and is known to be press-shy. That was one aspect of her job that she was known to be uncomfortable with, dealing with reporters. Obviously it’s a public job with its own group of reporters covering the police full time.

That said, we reported that she apparently felt some discomfort with the management structure she was forced to work in. She had to report not only to the mayor, himself a former police chief with strong views on policing, but to a deputy mayor for public safety who is a close ally of the mayor. So there was a sense that she felt she couldn’t run her department without interference.

Did other city officials undermine her? Was she pushed aside?

Our colleagues have reported that several current and former police officers believed Mayor Adams; Philip Banks III, the deputy mayor for public safety; and the mayor’s senior adviser, Timothy Pearson, had acted to undermine her and the chain of command within the highly hierarchical precinct.

Again, she herself has not spoken officially about her reasons for leaving. I called Banks and he declined to comment until she commented. The contours of their relationship remain unclear.

But she’s not the only high-ranking official to leave Mayor Adams’ administration.

There have been many departures. His original first deputy mayor and her chief of staff have already left. For example, his own chief of staff, his commissioner have buildings and his commissioner have homeless people. His communications director and chief efficiency officer will leave this summer. Jessica Katz, the mayor’s housing chief, announced her resignation last month. His lead attorney is expected to leave at the end of August. It is known that the mayor considers loyalty to be of paramount importance. Many of the people who stay around him are deep loyalists who have worked with or for him for a long time. His chief adviser, Ingrid Lewis-Martin, was his chief of staff when he was a senator and deputy borough president of Brooklyn when he was borough president. And Banks remains in power as deputy mayor, as does his brother, David Banks, the city’s schools chancellor, who is engaged to Sheena Wright, whom the mayor named first deputy mayor last December.

What does Adams say about all the rooms?

He seemed annoyed by some reporters’ idea that there was unrest in City Hall or that we’re seeing a little more than the normal level of sales. He said the group of reporters who cover him live in a “bubble” and tell stories that have little connection to reality.

The mayor has also often said he appointed the first female police commissioner, but she wasn’t someone Adams had known for decades — when he hired her, she was the chief of detectives for the Nassau County Police Department, on Long Island. And there was a feeling that, thanks to the mayor, she was not fully empowered.

Some of this came to a head around the issue of Jeffrey Maddrey, the NYPD’s highest-ranking uniformed officer — and another Adams ally. Sewell wanted to punish him by deducting up to 10 vacation days after allegations surfaced that he interfered in the arrest of a retired officer.

As a result, Adams has a significant number of high-level jobs to fill.

Yes. What he would describe as the unfair narratives that have emerged around his management practices could make recruiting more difficult.

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The observer, Steve J. Martin, described incidents including a confrontation between corrections officers and an inmate that left the inmate paralyzed from the neck down. Martin also accused the city’s prison chief, Louis Molina, and Molina’s Department of Correction staff of withholding information and evading accountability.

Martin’s accusations sparked a U-turn: As recently as October last year, he had praised Molina and stated that the city would soon turn things around on Rikers Island for his “courage in making unpopular changes” and his “creativity in his approach to solving of problems”. decades-old problems.”

In contrast, last week Martin expressed a lack of confidence in the corrections department, writing that he didn’t necessarily believe the department when it said there had been only three deaths in custody this year. “Given recent concerns about the department’s lack of transparency and the accuracy of the data provided, it is possible that this number could be higher,” he wrote.

Next month, Martin will assess whether the city has reduced the risk Rikers poses to those trapped there and those who work there, with a hearing for Judge Swain scheduled for August. Whether the city will be allowed to retain control of its prisons will then likely be subject to extensive scrutiny.

METROPOLITAN Diary

Very tall man

Dear Diary:

My sister and I used to walk all over the city, from Brooklyn Heights to the top of Central Park.

On one of our trips we got really tired, so we found a bench to rest on. Next to us was a very tall man eating a hot dog. He had three and offered us the other two.

We politely declined. It was 1973. I was 15 and my sister was 10.

The very tall man asked us about our lives and we told him about ourselves.

When we said goodbye, my body started to tingle. I realized that very tall man Dave DeBusschere was of the New York Knicks, my favorite sports team.