Sep 07, 2024
It’s not normal to have a veritable rogue’s gallery running New York City’s Police Department, and it’s not good. I’ve kept warning about the crew of documented neck- and butt-grabbing cops who ascended to power along with Eric Adams. Judging from the week’s FBI raids, the feds are on the case. Early Wednesday morning, G-men hit the house of Phil Banks, the deputy mayor for public safety overseeing the NYPD.  Adams created that position specifically for his long-time confidant who’d been itching to get back in the game since abruptly resigning in 2014 as the NYPD chief of department widely seen as its commissioner in waiting. Reports came out later that Banks — who’s denied any wrongdoing — had been named as an unindicted co-conspirator for allegedly getting treated to trips around the world and the services of prostitutes from two guys who went to federal prison for bribing the previous mayor.  The feds on Wednesday also hit the house shared by power couple David Banks — the schools chancellor and Phil’s brother — and First Deputy Mayor Sheena Wright. (The third Banks brother, Terence, is a consultant who was also slapped with his own subpoena). And agents seized the phones of Tim Pearson, the ex-cop now running a shadowy oversight agency who previously made headlines for his “unusual arrangement” collecting paychecks from both the Resorts World casino and the city and separately for grabbing a shelter guard by her neck before having that woman and a man who tried to defend her arrested.  Pearson is being sued now by former subordinates for allegedly trying to coerce a female cop who worked for him into sex, then ruining her career and those of the supervisors who tried to protect women from his predations.  Taxpayers are covering Pearson’s legal bills at the behest of his old friend Adams — who pushed out the city’s former top lawyer, Judge Sylvia Hinds-Radix, after she objected to that. Back to the feds, they also seized the phones of Eddie Caban, the NYPD’s mostly milk-carton commissioner installed there after his predecessor resigned as Adams pressured her to drop abuse of authority charges against the NYPD chief who’d secretly voided the arrest of an ex-cop who’d allegedly chased three kids while waving a gun.  That’s Chief of Department Jeff Maddrey, put into Phil Banks’ old role as the department’s top uniformed official by the Adams team despite a previous punishment for abusing his authority by covering up an internal investigation after waving off cops who’d responded to a 911 call about him roughing up a woman in his car, who turned out to be a former cop who’d worked under him and says they’d been lovers.  Maddrey, a married man who told the Daily News at the time that “the girl railroaded me,” wasn’t reported as a subject of the FBI enforcement this week and no one who was hit on Wednesday has been charged with a crime yet.  Still, it takes a scorecard just to track the sundry, sleazy allegations involving Adams and his cronies. The Southern District raids, where agents additionally took phones from cops who worked on the police commissioner’s detail and from his ex-cop twin brother, look to be at least in part about nightlife enforcement and separate from publicly seizing the mayor’s phones last year as part of an investigation into campaign cash tied to the Turkish government There’s also a separate Eastern District look into Adams’ trips and ties to China.  That’s three different federal probes of the mayor and his inner circle, all approved by Joe Biden’s Justice Department.  Add to those the corruption trial of a former Department of Buildings commissioner who reportedly told investigators Mayor Adams tipped him off to “watch your back and watch your phones,” guilty pleas from people including a Chinese billionaire and a retired NYPD inspector for giving money to Adams’ campaign through straw donors, a civil suit by an activist claiming top cops including Maddrey used her confidential rape report to smear her, and the latest fraud conviction of Adams’ erstwhile protégé, the Rev. Lamor Whitehead.   There’s an awful lot of smoke around a mayor who denies any wrongdoing and insists he holds himself and his administration to the highest standards.  Political players on both the left and the right have started calling on Adams to force Caban to resign. But Adams says he stands by his man, and the problem isn’t the commissioner but the mayor who picked him and the rest of these dubious characters in the first place.  The fish stinks from the head.  Siegel ([email protected]) is an editor at The City, a host of the FAQ NYC podcast and a columnist for the Daily News.
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