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What a Commissioner’s Abrupt Exit

Says About the N.Y.P.D. Under Adams
The next N.Y.P.D. commissioner will have to contend with the
mayor, a wary police force eager for clear leadership and a city
worried about both crime and the use of force.

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Keechant Sewell’s successor will also confront her primary challenge: dealing with a
mayor deeply enmeshed in the department’s workings. Anna Watts for The New York
Times

By Maria Cramer and Chelsia Rose Marcius

June 17, 2023, 3:00 a.m. ET

If Commissioner Keechant Sewell, head of the nation’s largest

police force, wanted to promote an investigator to first-grade
detective, she had to clear it with City Hall, according to her former
top uniformed officer.
When she was selecting someone to run the New York Police
Department’s Intelligence Division, her choice was blocked by
members of Mayor Eric Adams’s administration, according to
several current and former officials.
And when First Deputy Commissioner Edward Caban and Chief of
Department Jeffrey Maddrey took the department’s second- and
third-highest jobs, they had been handpicked not by Ms. Sewell but
by Mr. Adams, those officials said.
After less than 18 months on the job, Ms. Sewell had apparently
had enough. She will leave 1 Police Plaza for good at the end of the
month.
Ms. Sewell, 51, is walking away from a department of 36,000
uniformed officers that saw the rate of major crimes like murders
and shootings fall during her tenure. Morale, at critical levels
following the pandemic and racial-justice protests in 2020, was
slowly improving, partly because of a contract she helped negotiate
that included raises and more flexible schedules. She added about
30 detectives to a sex-crimes unit that for years had been
understaffed and overworked.
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Now, officers, department watchdogs and community leaders are
trying to figure out what comes next. How a Toilet
Plunger Improved
Mr. Caban, who has been with the department since 1991, is the CPR
leading candidate to become interim commissioner, according to
Meet the First
several officials with knowledge of the decision. Woman to Sail the
‘Voyage for
Whoever heads the department will face a slew of challenges: Madmen’
officers who union leaders say are being lured away by better After an Epic
hours and pay ; residents of color who do not trust the top leaders; Meltdown, Ample
Hills Creamery
and the challenge of keeping the city safe enough to foster a post- Aims to Rise Again
revival.
Perhaps the most daunting task will be serving a mayor — himself
a former police captain — whose administration is believed to have
meddled so much that Ms. Sewell felt she had to quit. While
previous commissioners said they had to deal with 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 incoming president of the Police Benevolent
Association union, said officers saw Ms. Sewell as “someone who
truly cared.”

Keechant Sewell’s public image was businesslike and controlled, but officers found her warm and
empathetic. Dave Sanders for The New York Times

“We didn’t think she was going anywhere,” he said, adding, “No
matter who the police commissioner is going forward, whether it is
Commissioner Caban or someone else, we have real issues that we
have to address right away.”

A Police Department at a Critical Moment

The New York Police Department is facing challenges on several fronts.

N.Y.P.D. Commissioner: Keechant Sewell, who was appointed by Mayor

Eric Adams in 2022, said that she would resign from her role as
commissioner giving no reason for her abrupt departure.
,

Stop-and-Frisk Tactics : The mayor revived the N.Y.P.D.’s anti-crime units,

promising they would be well trained and supervised. A new report found
they are still stopping and searching too many people unlawfully .

Punishment for a Top Chief: Sewell decided that Jeffrey Maddrey, the
highest-ranking uniformed officer, should be punished after accusations
that he interfered with the arrest of a retired officer who chased three boys
while armed.
A High-Tech Force: Adams unveiled an array of devices including robotic ,

dogs, that he said the Police Department would use to ensure New
Yorkers’ safety.

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 had both been scheduled
to speak. Ms. Sewell did not take the stage. Instead, she remained
seated in the back as a line of high-ranking command staff sat in
the front row, including Mr. Caban. On Thursday, Mr. Caban joined
Mr. Adams at an appearance related to World Elder Abuse
Awareness Day that Ms. Sewell had been scheduled to attend.
A spokesman for Mr. Adams declined to comment, referring to a
news conference where Mr. Adams defended his management and
said he was the only mayor in decades “who actually worked in a
city agency.”
“Every other mayor had to turn over those agencies and allow
people to run them the way they desire,” Mr. Adams said. “That’s
not how I function.”
Ms. Sewell did not respond to a message seeking comment. On
Thursday, the department’s Twitter account posted a video of her
at Gracie Mansion for a Juneteenth celebration, where she thanked
Mr. Adams for making her the commissioner and called it “the
honor of my lifetime.”
But in December, Ms. Sewell gave a fiery speech at a scholarship
ceremony hosted by the Policewomen’s Endowment Association
that was cast as a rhetorical letter to whomever might become the
department’s second female commissioner. Ms. Sewell warned that
person that she would be “second-guessed, told what you should
say, told what you should write by some with half your experience.”
“You will get free unsolicited personal advice: ‘Your hairstyle is
wrong, you look tired, already worn out in less than a year, you
should wear different clothes, you’re not qualified, you are in over
your head,” 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 reflect on “what the hell went wrong,” he said,
adding, “How do you lose somebody as talented and respected and
capable as her?”

Mayor Eric Adams said that unlike other mayors, he had experience in working for a city agency and was
unashamed to use it. Natalie Keyssar for The New York Times

Advocates for survivors of sexual assault said they hoped that the
next commissioner would continue the momentum they saw
building under Ms. Sewell. She had put in a new chief to run the
Special Victims Division, told him to prioritize the concerns of
advocates, provided more training for officers on how to interact
with victims and installed a legal adviser to help investigators
understand laws and procedure, they said.
“It was great that Mayor Adams appointed the first woman
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.
Ms. Sewell also earned a reputation for loyalty to her subordinates
that angered some watchdogs.
The Civilian Complaint Review Board, a watchdog agency that
examines police misconduct, said that in 2022 she rejected more
than half of its disciplinary recommendations 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 it
did, she said, she agreed with the board’s recommendations more
than 80 percent of the time.
Arva Rice, the chairwoman of the board, said that 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 pushed to cooperate more.
“The mayor said he’s in support of accountability,” Ms. Rice said.
“We want to make sure we’re in line with him on what that means,
and what those polices look like in action.”
Donna Lieberman, the executive director of the New York Civil
Liberties Union, said her organization was troubled by what she
sees as a sharp return under Mr. Adams to more aggressive tactics
that disproportionately affect Black and Latino residents. “It’s no
stretch to say he’s been serving as police commissioner in many
ways,” she said.
She noted that the number of times police stopped and frisked
people on the street, while still far lower than a decade ago,
increased in the past year.
Police issued more than twice as many summonses in the first
quarter of 2023 compared with the same period in 2022 for low-
evel offenses like open container violations, disorderly conduct
and public urination, according to the organization’s analysis.
“Things are not going in the right direction,” Ms. Lieberman said.
Many young officers, who were horrified by images of police
brutality they saw in the city and across the country, want a
different approach, said Edwin Raymond, who retired as a
lieutenant last month and has criticized the department for
discriminating against Black and Latino residents.
“There is a disconnect between the powers that be and the rank
and file,” he said. Mr. Raymond said he believed Ms. Sewell
appeared ready to enact more reforms, but “she didn’t have
enough time.”
Kenneth Corey, the former chief of the department, who was
briefed on how Ms. Sewell’s promotions were vetted by the Adams
administration, said that she had connected more quickly with the
rank and file than any other commissioner he had seen.
She moved officers to tears with her eulogies for Jason Rivera and
Wilbert Mora, who were fatally shot less than three weeks into her
tenure. On Christmas Eve, she visited nearly two dozen precincts
and dropped off 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, where Ms. Sewell
abruptly stopped reading from prepared remarks and looked out at
the families in front of her.
“‘Yeah, I don’t want to do this,’” Mr. Corey recalled her saying.
“‘What I’m going to do is walk around and talk to you.’”
She spent the next two hours going from table to table, asking
about the officers who had died, Mr. Corey said.

At a Pride event, Keechant Sewell kept a low profile until it was time to meet the rank and file. Andres
Kudacki for The New York Times

At the Pride event on Tuesday, Ms. Sewell waited until the

ceremony was over, then strode to the front of the auditorium to
meet with officers, who quickly lined up for pictures and hugs. One
who took a photo with her ran to a group of friends and beamed as
she showed it to them.
The officer said she had wanted to get one last shot with the
commissioner before she left.
Hurubie Meko Emma , G. Fitzsimmons and William K. Rashbaum contributed reporting.

Maria Cramer is a reporter on the Metro desk. Please send her tips, questions and
complaints about the New York police and crime at maria.cramer@nytimes.com .

@ NYTimesCramer
Chelsia Rose Marcius covers breaking news and criminal justice for the Metro desk, with
a focus on the New York City Police Department.

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