Good morning. It's Wednesday. We'll look at the abrupt departure of the police commissioner. We'll also find out why a judge for the first time appeared open to a federal takeover of the Rikers Island jails. |
 | | Stephanie Keith for The New York Times |
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The email from Keechant Sewell, the commissioner of the New York Police Department, 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 had come to respect her in her 18 months as commissioner. She was the first woman to hold the $243,171-a-year job. |
I asked Dana Rubinstein, who covers New York City politics, about Sewell's resignation and about other recent high-level departures at City Hall. |
What happened that prompted her to leave? Is this a story of a power struggle between City Hall and 1 Police Plaza, where Sewell's office was? |
There is some mystery about her reasons. Sewell hasn't 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 is a public-facing job with its own group of reporters who cover the Police Department full time. |
That said, we have reported that she apparently felt some discomfort with the management structure she was forced to operate in. Not only did she have to report to the mayor, himself a former police captain with strong views on policing, but she had to deal with a deputy mayor for public safety who is a close ally of the mayor. So there was a sense that she felt she was not able to manage her department without interference. |
Were other top city officials undercutting her? Had she been sidelined? |
Our colleagues have reported that several current and former police officials 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 very hierarchical police department. |
Again, she herself has not spoken on the record about her reasons for leaving. I called Banks, and he refused to comment until she had commented. The contours of their relationship remain unclear. |
But she's not the only high-ranking official who's leaving Mayor Adams's administration. |
There have been a lot of departures. His original first deputy mayor and her chief of staff have already left. So have his own chief of staff, his buildings commissioner and his homeless services commissioner. His communications director and chief efficiency officer are leaving this summer. The mayor's chief housing officer, Jessica Katz, announced her resignation last month. His chief counsel is expected to leave by the end of August. The mayor is known to prize loyalty. Many of the people who remain around him are deep loyalists who have worked with him or for him for a long time. His chief adviser, Ingrid Lewis-Martin, was his chief of staff when he was a state senator and was deputy Brooklyn borough president when he was the borough president. And Banks remains in power as a 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 departures? |
He seemed irritated by the notion put forth by some reporters that there was turmoil in City Hall or that we're seeing anything more than the normal level of turnover. He said that the group of reporters who cover him live in a "bubble" and spin narratives that bear little relation to reality. |
The mayor has also said often that he appointed the first female police commissioner, but she was not someone who had known Adams for decades — when he hired her, she was the chief of detectives in the Nassau County Police Department, on Long Island. And there was a sense that she was not, thanks to the mayor, fully empowered. |
Some of this came to a head around the matter of Jeffrey Maddrey, the highest-ranking uniformed officer in the N.Y.P.D. — and another Adams ally. Sewell moved to penalize him by deducting up to 10 vacation days after accusations surfaced that he had interfered with the arrest of a retired officer. |
The upshot is that 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 might make it more difficult to recruit people. |
Prepare for wind gusts, showers and possible thunderstorms with temperatures near the high 70s. At night, showers and possible thunderstorms persist, with temps around the low 60s. |
In effect until Monday (Juneteenth). |
 | | Sean Sirota for The New York Times |
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'Profound questions' about the city's management of Rikers |
 | | Justin Lane/EPA, via Shutterstock |
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Judge Laura Swain said that recent reports of violence and negligence at Rikers had raised "profound questions" about New York City's ability to protect detainees and correction officers. But while saying she was not ready to hear arguments for a federal takeover, she noted that her confidence in the city's leadership had been rocked by reports from a monitor appointed to oversee the jails. |
The monitor, Steve J. Martin, described incidents that included a confrontation between correction officers and a detainee that left the detainee paralyzed from the neck down. Martin also accused the city's jail chief, Louis Molina, and Molina's staff at the Department of Correction, of hiding information and sidestepping responsibility. |
Martin's accusations represented an about-face: As recently as last October, he had praised Molina, declaring that the city would soon turn things around at Rikers Island because of his "courage to make unpopular changes" and his "creativity in his approach to solving decades-old problems." |
Last week, by contrast, Martin expressed a lack of trust in the correction department, writing that he did not necessarily believe the department when it said there had been only three deaths in custody this year. "Given recent concerns regarding the department's lack of transparency and the accuracy of data provided, it is possible this number could be higher," he wrote. |
Next month Martin will file an assessment of whether the city has reduced the risk that Rikers poses to those incarcerated there, and those who work there, with a hearing before Judge Swain scheduled for August. Whether the city should be allowed to retain control of its jails is likely to be explored at some length then. |
My sister and I used to walk everywhere in the city, traveling from Brooklyn Heights to the top of Central Park. |
On one of our trips, we became incredibly tired, so we found a bench to rest on. A very tall man was sitting next to us eating a hot dog. He had three of them 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. |
As we said goodbye, my body began to tingle. I realized that the very tall man was Dave DeBusschere of the New York Knicks, my favorite sports team. |
Walking back across the Brooklyn Bridge later, I thought about how cool it was that one of my idols could be an ordinary person like me, eating hot dogs on a New York bench. |
Glad we could get together here. See you tomorrow. — J.B. |
| Melissa Guerrero and Ed Shanahan contributed to New York Today. You can reach the team at nytoday@nytimes.com. |
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