The NYPD’s experiment with figurehead management got here to an abrupt, if solely foreseeable, finish Monday with the resignation of Police Commissioner Keechant Sewell.
Effectively, make that Ostensible Commissioner Sewell.
She could have been sitting behind former top-cop Teddy Roosevelt’s well-known mahogany desk at One Police Plaza – however calling the essential photographs for the previous 17 months has been a fellow recognized all through the NYPD as Unindicted Co-Conspirator Quantity One.
That might be Deputy Mayor for Public Security, and former cop, Phil Banks, a long-time Eric Adams accomplice who was caught up in an intensive federal investigation of police corruption a decade in the past.
Named as a co-conspirator, he resigned from the division in 2014 – however by no means was charged. Now he runs One Police Plaza, no questions requested.
Probably it’ll take time for all the small print to leak out – however there clearly was no house for a self-respecting police skilled between Mayor Adams and his crony of the second.
So exit Keechant Sewell – along with her dignity, at the least, intact.
Why she took the job within the first place is a thriller. Individuals leap at alternatives, for positive, however no person ever did greater than faux she would have something approaching autonomy – and Phil Banks’ gamy fame was no secret, both.
Sewell got here from the Nassau County PD, a largely suburban company with simply 2,500 officers, to command a division roughly the scale of two infantry divisions – daunting beneath any circumstances.
Definitely the NYPD’s cultural challenges have by no means been variety to outsiders, irrespective of who lives in Gracie Mansion.
Plus the calls for of city policing in a post-George Floyd atmosphere may have defeated any good cop – irrespective of who.
Nevertheless it’s the “irrespective of who” that counts most now.
Who was liable for what appears to be stabilizing crime charges – notably homicides?
The NYPD is doing a little fascinating issues – there’s even proof of a de facto return to the so-called “damaged home windows” policing that pulled town again from the abyss the final time.
Was Sewell behind that? Banks? Is Adams’ making good, in the end, on marketing campaign guarantees to make town safer?
Most significantly, is that progress sustainable in an ominously anti-policing atmosphere? It typically appears that the one of us who care about secure streets are those that should use them – and positively not these elected to guard them.
It ain’t straightforward being blue lately. The Metropolis Council, with its over-reaching restrictions on the usage of affordable drive, has made the job objectively extra harmful. The state Legislature and New York’s progressive prosecutors have put cops squarely in the midst of a public crying out for security and a criminal-justice institution that refuses to supply it.
Morale? Neglect about it, and no shock there.
Radical activists are harassing cops within the streets; officers are hamstrung by politicized constraints; the NYPD is shedding cops in report numbers to resignation and retirement; recruiting is approach down and conventional coaching requirements for individuals who do be part of are evaporating.
The NYPD, in different phrases, is a world-class – however profoundly troubled — group.
So recruiting a world-class police commissioner, with Phil Banks hovering within the background, goes to be no straightforward activity. Certainly, given Keechant Sewell’s expertise, anyone who desires the job most likely gained’t be match for it.
E mail: bob@bobmcmanus.nyc
