What the abrupt departure of a commissioner says about the NYPD under Adams

If Commissioner Keechant Sewell, head of the country’s largest police force, wanted to promote a detective to first-class detective, she had to talk to City Hall, according to her former top uniformed officer.

According to several current and former officials, her choice was blocked by members of Mayor Eric Adams’ administration when she picked someone to head the New York Police Department’s intelligence division.

And when First Deputy Commissioner Edward Caban and department chief Jeffrey Maddrey took the department’s second- and third-highest jobs, they weren’t chosen by Ms. Sewell, but by Mr. Adams, those officials said.

After less than 18 months on the job, Ms. Sewell had apparently had enough. At the end of the month she will leave Police Plaza 1 for good.

Ms. Sewell, 51, walks away from a department of 36,000 uniformed officers who saw a drop in major crimes like murders and shootings during her tenure. Morale, at critical levels after the 2020 pandemic and racial justice protests, slowly improved, in part because of a contract she helped negotiate, including pay raises and more flexible schedules. She added about 30 detectives to a sex crimes unit that had been understaffed and overworked for years.

Now officers, department watchdogs and community leaders are trying to figure out what comes next.

Mr. Caban, who has been with the department since 1991, is the leading candidate to become interim commissioner, according to several officials aware of the decision.

Those in charge of the department will face a slew of challenges: officers whom union leaders say are being lured away by better hours and pay; residents of color who don’t trust the top leaders; and the challenge of keeping the city safe enough to foster a post-pandemic resurgence.

Perhaps the most daunting task will be serving a mayor—himself a former police chief—whose administration has meddled so much that Ms. Sewell felt she had to quit. While previous commissioners said they faced some level of micromanagement, they said they were typically allowed to pick their own teams and rarely had to get approval for discretionary promotions.

Patrick Hendry, the new president of the Police Benevolent Association, said officers saw Ms Sewell as “someone who really cared about her”.

“We didn’t think she was going anywhere,” he said, adding, “It doesn’t matter who the police commissioner is, whether it’s Commissioner Caban or anyone else, we have real issues that we need to address right away.”

Signs of a new chapter emerged soon after Ms Sewell’s announcement on Monday.

On Tuesday, Mr Adams canceled his appearance at a Pride event at headquarters, where he and Ms Sewell were both due to speak. Mrs. Sewell did not come on stage. Instead, she remained in the back while a row of senior command staff sat in the front row, including Mr. Caban. Thursday added Mr. Caban joins Mr. Adam’s bee a performance in connection with World Elder Abuse Awareness Day which Mrs. Sewell was to attend.

A spokesperson for Mr Adams declined to comment, citing a press conference where Mr. Adams defended his management, saying he was the only mayor in decades “to actually work in a city agency.”

“Every other mayor had to hand over those agencies and allow people to run them however they wanted,” Adams said. “That’s not how I function.”

Ms Sewell did not respond to a message asking for comment. On Thursday, the department’s Twitter account posted a video of her at Gracie Mansion for a Juneteenth celebration, thanking Mr. Adams for making her commissioner and called it “the honor of my life.”

But in December, Mrs. Sewell gave a fiery speech at a bursary ceremony hosted by the Policewomen’s Endowment Association that was released as a rhetorical letter to anyone who could become the department’s second female commissioner. Mrs. Sewell warned that person that she “would be second guessed, told what you should say, told what you should write by someone with half your experience.”

“You get free, unsolicited personal advice: ‘Your haircut is wrong, you look tired, you’ve worn out in less than a year, you should wear different clothes, you’re not qualified, you’re up to your ears’, she said, to applause and cheers, “None of this is true.”

William J. Bratton, the department’s former commissioner, called Ms. Sewell’s departure a “lesson for the mayor.”

Mr Adams should be thinking about “what the hell went wrong,” he said, adding, “How do you lose someone as talented and respected and capable as she is?”

Advocates for assault survivors said they hoped the next commissioner would continue the momentum they saw developing under Ms Sewell. She had appointed a new chief to run the Special Victims Division, told him to prioritize lawyers’ concerns, increased training for officers on how to deal with victims, and installed a legal counsel to help investigators understand laws and procedures. understand, they said.

“It was great that Mayor Adams appointed the first female commissioner, but it was so much more important that he chose a commissioner who took crimes against women seriously.” said Jane Manning, the director of the Women’s Equal Justice Project.

Mrs. Sewell also gained a reputation for loyalty to her subordinates, angering some watchdogs.

The Civilian Complaint Review Board, a watchdog agency that investigates police misconduct, said it rejected more than half of its disciplinary recommendations by 2022. Ms. Sewell defended her record, saying that in many of those cases, the board had not given the department enough time to review complaints. When that happened, she said, she agreed with the board’s recommendations more than 80 percent of the time.

Arva Rice, the chairman of the board, said the relationship improved after the department agreed to provide the data to investigate complaints of racial profiling. She said she hoped the new commissioner would be urged to cooperate more.

“The mayor said he’s in favor of accountability,” said Ms. Rice. “We want to make sure we agree with him on what that means and what that policy looks like in action.”

Donna Lieberman, the executive director of the New York Civil Liberties Union, said her organization suffered from what she sees as a sharp return under Adams to more aggressive tactics that disproportionately affect black and Latino residents. “It’s not hard to say he served as a police commissioner in many ways,” she said.

She noted that the number of times police stop and search people on the street, while still much lower than a decade ago, has increased in the past year.

According to the organization’s analysis, police issued more than twice as many subpoenas in the first quarter of 2023 compared to the same period in 2022 for minor offenses such as open container violations, disorderly conduct and public urination.

“It’s not going in the right direction,” Ms. Lieberman said.

Many young officers, shocked by images of police brutality they saw in the city and across the country, want a different approach, said Edwin Raymond, who retired last month as a lieutenant and has criticized the department for discriminating against black and Latino residents.

“There is a gulf between the ruling power and the rank and file,” he said. Mr Raymond said he believed Ms Sewell seemed ready to make more reforms but “she didn’t have enough time”.

Kenneth Corey, the former head of the department, who was briefed on how Ms. Sewell’s promotions were vetted by the Adams administration, said she connected with the rank and file faster than any other commissioner he had seen.

She moved officers to tears with her praise of Jason Rivera and Wilbert Mora, who were fatally shot less than three weeks into her tenure. On Christmas Eve, she visited nearly two dozen police stations and delivered Italian cookies for officers working the holiday shift. She visited the home of an officer whose teenage daughter had contracted a staph infection and had to have limbs amputated.

Mr. Corey recalled an event for fallen officers in which Mrs. Sewell abruptly stopped reading prepared remarks and looked out for the families ahead of her.

“Yeah, I don’t want to do this,” Mr. Corey recalled saying. “‘What I’m going to do is walk around and talk to you.'”

For the next two hours, she went from table to table asking about the officers who had died, Mr. Corey said.

At Tuesday’s Pride event, Ms. Sewell waited for the ceremony to end and then walked to the front of the auditorium to meet officers, who quickly lined up for photos and hugs. Someone who posed for a picture with her ran up to a group of friends and beamed when she showed it to them.

The officer said she wanted to have one last chance with the commissioner before she left.

Hurubie Meko, Emma G. Fitzsimmons And William K. Rashbaum reporting contributed.