With the resignation of New York City Police Department (NYPD) Commissioner Edward Caban amid a federal probe of Mayor Eric Adams’s administration, city officials are facing a public trust crisis.
Add to that an incident last weekend in which officers in a Brooklyn subway station opened fire on an alleged turnstile jumper armed with a knife and accidentally shot a fellow officer and a bystander.
The police force and mayoral administration are both scrambling to regain credibility, according to Michael Alcazar, an adjunct professor at John Jay College of Criminal Justice in Manhattan and a retired NYPD detective.
When Caban stepped down, the mayor moved swiftly to appoint Tom Donlon, a law enforcement professional with a long record of involvement in criminal and terrorist cases, as Caban’s successor.
Given Adams’s stance as a tough-on-crime, pro-law enforcement official, the mayor’s political fortunes depend heavily on the NYPD’s ability to right its course in the aftermath of the Caban corruption scandal.
“The NYPD’s image has undoubtedly been affected by the Caban scandal,“ Alcazar told The Epoch Times in an email on Sept. 16. ”Mayor Adams and Donlon will both face the challenge of communicating their new strategies to the New York communities they serve and working to rebuild trust and confidence.”
Since Caban stepped down, the mayor canceled an appearance at a Sept. 16 fundraiser, just two days after his chief legal adviser, Lisa Zornberg, resigned without notice. Zornberg’s very brief resignation letter said she could no longer effectively serve in her role.
Tiffany Cabán, a New York City Council member from Queens, has called for the mayor to resign, as has Emily Gallagher, a state assemblywoman from Brooklyn, and state Sen. Julia Salazar, also of Brooklyn.
In a Sept. 13 post on social media platform X, Salazar wrote: “We’ve seen enough. I am tired of a lack of accountability from executives at every level of government. Several FBI investigations and too much harm done to the best city in the world. Time to step aside and allow for new leadership.”
Alcazar told The Epoch Times that he believes that Adams has taken steps to assure the public that he is still firmly in control.
But amid the turbulence over Caban’s resignation, the arrests of high-ranking officials in the New York City Fire Department, and continuing scrutiny of the mayor’s actions, the police department and the Adams administration have both suffered reputational damage, Alcazar said.
“The appointment of Tom Donlon as interim commissioner, given his background in federal investigations, indicates that Mayor Adams aims to emphasize integrity and law enforcement credibility during this transitional phase,” he stated.
Alcazar said he sees this as a stopgap measure amid the political turbulence, allowing Donlon to review and, if necessary, reorganize NYPD ranks.
It is a prelude to the selection of a subordinate close to the mayor, he said, adding that Donlon and Adams face the daunting task of trying to persuade the public that the corruption and abuse that precipitated the current scandal will not reoccur.
A Police Reformer’s View
The department’s and the mayor’s reputations may be beyond repair, according to Robert Gangi, director of the Police Reform Organizing Project, a New York-based advocacy group that seeks to curb what it views as widespread abuse and discrimination on the part of the NYPD.
A community organizer and activist who has followed the relationship between the police and the mayor’s office through several administrations, Gangi said that although the NYPD is supposed to be free from political influence and putting public safety and neutral law enforcement above other concerns, the NYPD is really under the control of one person—the mayor.
The current situation is similar to that under Mayor Rudy Giuliani in the 1990s, Gangi told The Epoch Times by phone on Sept. 16.
“[Giuliani] pushed Bill Bratton out of the role within two years, and he essentially was setting the main policies for the department,“ he said. ”We see similar circumstances with Adams as mayor, so we don’t see any prospect of significant changes under the new commissioner.”
Any proposed changes to NYPD practices will require a green light from the mayor, who wields effective control, Gangi said.
As an example of what he sees as a needed policy change, he noted that when someone on the street has a psychiatric crisis, a call to a 911 operator triggers a police response. That isn’t appropriate in a situation in which mental health professionals are more suited to deal with the person in crisis, Gangi said.
Any proposed city measure requiring such a policy change is unlikely to pass even though some members of the City Council agree with it in principle, he said.
Another reform would be to end the dispatching of police to handle traffic violations—even ones as trivial as broken taillights, he said, noting, “Those changes are fundamental.”
The NYPD and the mayor’s office did not respond to requests for comment by publication time.
