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Brian Lehrer: It's The Brian Lehrer Show on WNYC. Good morning, everyone. Why did New York City Police Commissioner Keechant Sewell really resign? What's her actual legacy as police commissioner? Is it any different than Mayor Adams’ record so far on public safety and criminal justice? There's so much we don't know about her positions on his policies. If Mayor Adams really did render her powerless too, as some of the news reports have it, did that matter to safety and justice or only to the politics of City Hall and 1Police Plaza?

Oh, by the way, much less reported on by most of the press than this apparent clash of personalities is the report released last week by the federal monitor that oversees the NYPD, a report that found nearly a quarter of the stops of New Yorkers being made by the mayor's so-called neighborhood safety teams were unlawful. With us now on the report and the departure of the police commissioner are WNYC and Gothamist public safety reporter Samantha Max and Spectrum News New York1 Criminal Justice reporter, Dean Meminger. Hi, Samantha and Dean. Welcome back to WNYC.

Samantha Max: Good morning.

Dean Meminger: Good morning.

Brian Lehrer: Neither Adams nor Sewell has given a reason for her departure publicly but here's a clip of the mayor yesterday responding to the perception that he is a micromanager.

Mayor Eric Adams: Now, some people may call it a micromanager, I call it being the mayor of a city that you love and taxpayers elected me to give them the product they deserve.

Brian Lehrer: Samantha, can you put that clip into context? Was he asked about that specifically with respect to Commissioner Sewell leaving his administration?

Samantha Max: Yes. He was asked specifically if he had been micromanaging her. His response was essentially, “Call that a micromanager if you want, but I'm the one who is elected by the people of New York, not the people who run my agencies. So I want to be really aware of how they are managing their own departments.” He said that he doesn't just treat Commissioner Sewell this way or the NYPD, but that every single agency that he oversees, that he plays an active role in.

Brian Lehrer: Dean, what's your best reporting? Did Commissioner Sewell get fed up and quit because she felt she was being micromanaged?

Dean Meminger: From all of the conversations I have had, that appears to be the reason, but we have to realize this just did not happen this week, or this month, or even this year. I interviewed her maybe a half a year ago, maybe eight months ago and at that point, I did ask her if she was leaving because there were rumors last year that she was about to walk out the door. There's been this tension between the NYPD and City Hall for quite a while, if you want to call it tension, but as we just mentioned, she knew what she was getting in, I assume, although she's not from the NYPD, from nearby Long Island.

When you come into this department under a Mayor Eric Adams, you have to know he's going to be involved. He told us during his campaigning that he didn't need someone to tell him how to run the NYPD and make the city safe.

Brian Lehrer: Yes, and she was chief of detectives in Nassau County before this for people who don't know that background. Dean I'll stay with you. Can you give us any specifics of what she might have felt prevented from doing or decisions she felt prevented from making? Because we're only hearing about this in general terms for the most part and I'm guessing this might not have mattered too much if she always agreed with the mayor on the big policy decisions.

Dean Meminger: Some of the reporting over the weekend and the papers suggested that she wanted to make some moves within the department, even promotions. It may have been considered a low-level promotion or a move and she had to get the okay from the mayor. The mayor responded to that saying that in any of his agencies, when people are being elevated to high positions, he is involved. Another commissioner actually verified that to me earlier this morning saying, "No, the mayor's on these calls when we're trying to make these high level appointments."

The point of the article was that this wasn't a high-level appointment. It was perhaps maybe a detective moving up or moving on to another unit. It's not just that. We know there have been, and I know you may get to this a little later on, there's been run ins with NYPD chiefs who have been in the department for 20, 30, 40 years and they are close friends with Mayor Eric Adams. She is somewhat considered the outsider. Although they’re a year and a half, she's still an outsider. Having those clashes internally could be a big part of the problem as well.

Brian Lehrer: Samantha, maybe you can elaborate on one of the things that Dean was probably just referring to there. What was this issue I've seen reported about whether to discipline a top NYPD official, Jeffrey Maddrey, as the news organization, THECITY put it, the Civilian Complaint Review Board determined that Chief of Department Jeffrey Maddrey committed misconduct when he intervened in the 2021 arrest of a retired cop who had chased three boys in Brownsville. Can you describe that incident and how the mayor overruled Commissioner Sewell on how to handle it?

Samantha Max: Yes. THECITY has been doing really great reporting on this incident for some time now. Essentially, there were three boys in Brooklyn, who they say that they were being chased around the neighborhood by a man who had a gun. It turns out that he had worked at the NYPD for a long time. He was arrested and then basically, Maddrey, at this former NYPD employee’s request, came to the precinct and ordered the person who arrested Maddrey to void that arrest. After a CCRB or a Civilian Complaint Review Board investigation, they found that Maddrey, who is the chief of the department, one of the highest ranking positions in the department, that he had abused his authority when he made that decision.

There's been some reporting that perhaps Sewell had wanted to discipline Maddrey. Maddrey is fighting that discipline and actually taking it to a disciplinary trial where essentially the CCRB will make their arguments about what he did. He will try to defend himself and then after a judge makes a recommendation, the commissioner would have the final say. But Adams has really stood by Maddrey, said he's proud to have him in this leadership position and has not said anything about wanting to discipline Maddrey.

Brian Lehrer: Right. Am I seeing right, Samantha, that the commissioner's discipline for Maddrey in the first place was only to dock him a few vacation days, so it wasn't even a slap on the wrist. Maybe it was a tap on the wrist, but the mayor felt he had to overrule even that?

Samantha Max: That we have not confirmed at this point. The CCRB really can't say so much. This is still a pending case so we have not got an official confirmation on those details.

Brian Lehrer: Yes. Dean, do you have that?

Dean Meminger: Yes, but only a few days that they asked for the CCRB and the police commissioner went along with that. I can tell you City Hall and those close to the mayor were surprised that Sewell went along with the disciplining the chief of department, the highest ranking uniformed officer in the NYPD. Jeff Maddrey has some history with the department, but he is well liked, an ally of the mayor and others at City Hall. They were a bit surprised by this but once again, if the CCRB said they recommended this and the NYPD should be working with the CCRB and the community, community folks may say, "Well, this was the right move."

Internally, perhaps higher-ups didn't feel that way and in fact, Jeff Maddrey didn't go along with that discipline. He is actually fighting it and will go to an internal police department trial. If Sewell is not there anymore, hey, what happens to this case?

Brian Lehrer: What happens to the charge? Yes, so when we look down the line at this case, the mayor intervening to overturn the discipline against Maddrey, and what Maddrey did in the first place was to intervene in the arrest of a retired cop who had chased three boys in Brownsville. Dean, the uncharitable way of looking at that is the mayor covered up for a cop who covered up for a cop. Is that fair or unfair?

Dean Meminger: I don't know if it's fair, but it's a one way to analyze it. The bottom line is that we know Mayor Eric Adams sticks close to those who have been close to him for years, and he’s always going to do that. He's a team player in that regard. People who have stood by him for many years, he's going to stand by them. Many people know that Jeff Maddrey all along he was one of the favorites to lead the department, whether it's chief of department or to actually be the police commissioner. He's someone who is close to the mayor and the mayor's allies who work closely with him as public safety advisors who are former NYPD executives.

Brian Lehrer: Now, listeners, we can open up the phones and our text line and our Twitter feed your questions or comments- -on the departure of NYPD Commissioner Keechant Sewell, or the new federal monitor criticism of NYPD tactics on stopping people, which we'll get to in some detail as we go. 212-433-WNYC, and multiple points of view, welcome on this NYPD rank and file or maybe recently, or at any time retired rank and file whoever view of what's going on here or any sources of your own. One way or another, you are welcome to call in, invited to call in.

Anybody who's been stopped by one of the neighborhood safety teams as Mayor Adams calls them, and thinks that stop was justified or not. Anyone, welcome. 212-433-WNYC with a comment or a question, 212-433-9692. You can also text your thought or question to that number or tweet us @BrianLehrer.

Samantha, you also wrote on Gothamist that-- Well, you cited sources noting the possible gender issue here. Sewell was the first woman to be NYPD commissioner, but the people calling all the shots were men above her, Adams himself and notably, deputy mayor for public safety Philip Banks. Can you describe Banks' role at all? Because I don't think previous mayors have had a deputy mayor between themselves and the police commissioner.

Samantha Max: Yes. This is a really unique dynamic that I think perhaps many years ago, some mayors had used but no recent administration has had this deputy mayor of public safety. Philip Banks' role has really been just squishy and difficult to understand exactly what he's doing. Commissioner Sewell was not reporting to Banks. She was reporting directly to the mayor, but Banks was often the one kicking off NYPD public safety press conferences with the mayor. He's been doing these weekly forums with the media talking about public safety, not Sewell.

He is a close ally of Adams. They worked at the Department together for a long time. He has his own history of why he left the department and some question. Because of that baggage, it seems that the mayor did not tap him to be the commissioner, but he certainly has been playing a very large role from what I've heard from many people inside the department or recent retirees who have just told me that he has been an active voice in Adams' ear when it comes to their philosophy and their strategy around public safety.

Brian Lehrer: Are people saying somehow the man didn't trust the woman to make decisions?

Samantha Max: It's hard to say. Obviously, there are the facts that these are two men in the mayor and deputy mayor position, and a woman in her position, but there’s all sorts of politics involved. I do think that from folks who I've talked to, there is frustration that Mayor Adams, even on the campaign trail really made a point of saying he wanted to appoint a woman to lead the NYPD for the first time in the department's history. She followed through on that choice, but it's really unclear about whether she was empowered to do her job.

She actually made a speech last fall at the Police Women's Endowment Association, where she was essentially giving advice to whoever may be the second female commissioner of the department and preparing them for what she made it seem like would be just a very difficult job being a woman in that post.

Brian Lehrer: It's kind of an aside, and Dean, I don't know if this is on your beat, the Fire Department as well as the Police Department, but we have something going on that may be gender related in the FDNY, right? The first woman FDNY commissioner, also appointed by Mayor Adams seems to be getting a lot of revolt, I guess is the word from the men below her in the chain of command.

Dean Meminger: Yes. Fire Commissioner, Kavanagh. In fact, some of those FDNY chiefs are actually suing her over the moves of her demoting and moving people around. You do have to remember, Mayor Eric Adams has a bunch of women, powerful women in City Hall who are-- his deputy mayor is running a lot of things. He wanted to have a woman there. Now, some people have said perhaps the men didn't trust her, but she was there and she can walk out of the door and she's resigning, but she can walk out of the door saying that crime was headed in the right direction when I left the NYPD and that may help her if she decides to get another job. Whether it's on Long Island, they have a couple of high-ranking police positions open on Long Island, Westchester County. Some people said maybe she may go to DC to the Capitol Police. Those doors open.

On Monday when this happened, it really felt like she met with the mayor and she says, "I'm out of here." She was leaving. Later on that day, we found out she was going to stay until the end of the month. Some of my sources are telling me that no, she was really leaving. At some point, they agreed for her to stay until the end of the month. Right now, the job for the mayor, Brian, picking that next police commissioner, my sources say they are looking internally very heavily internally in the NYPD, looking at perhaps another woman. I know the Latino community already saying they want a Latino or a Hispanic commissioner in the NYPD.

Brian Lehrer: We have Dean Meminger, NY1 criminal justice reporter, and our Samantha Max who covers public safety for WNYC and Gothamist. Catherine in Manhattan, you're on WNYC. Hi, Catherine. Thank you for calling in.

Catherine: Hi, Brian. Thank you for taking my call. I'm so disappointed that this incredible woman is leaving us. She's extremely articulate. She speaks Spanish almost with no accent. There was a warmth emanating from her even though she was holding a strong position. It's a great loss for the city. I'm just absolutely devastated. When you saw them standing next to one another, she spoke and then he spoke, honey, she was like head and shoulders above him. I think he was threatened, quite frankly. It was terrific.

Brian Lehrer: Catherine, thank you very much. Let's go to Mike in Brooklyn, you're on WNYC. Hi, Mike.

Mike: Hi, Brian. Thanks for taking my call. Yes, I'm very disappointed as well. We are rightly I think concerned as a nation with the former president flouting the rule of law, not law and order, two separate distinct things, rule of law that no one is above the law. Yet, here we have what seems like a similar situation, loyalty, lack of transparency, and someone getting away with something that they should not in the biggest city in the country. I think it's-- [crosstalk]

Brian Lehrer: Well, getting away-- I'm very reluctant to compare this to Trump. He's, of course, under indictment for multiple things. The mayor does have the legal right to hire and fire or micromanage his commissioners. What argument are you really trying to make here, Mike?

Mike: Well, that he's obviously going to be searching for someone much more loyal and much more ready to protect the people that he wants protected. If the reporting is accurate, and the former commissioner was looking to press charges or see the case through, and Adams wasn't okay with that, then what does that say about rule of law?

Brian Lehrer: I see, on the Jeffrey Maddrey case. Got it. Yes. Of course, again, it is legal what the mayor did in that case. We've covered this on the show as an issue. Samantha, I don't know if you want to weigh in on this in any way, but the limited power of the Civilian Complaint Review Board, they can hold hearings on alleged police misconduct, they can recommend discipline. But then ultimately, that decision is only made by the police commissioner, and the police commissioner at that, as we learned in this case can be overruled by the mayor.

I think we don't have an issue of the mayor breaking law here, I don't think, but what we do have is an issue of the limited power of the CCRB even after they find substantiated police misconduct, yes?

Samantha Max: Yes. It's a really complicated system. Essentially, there is the NYPD has its own unit that investigates complaints against officers or allegations of misconduct. Then there's also the Civilian Complaint Review Board, which is an independent city agency. It has its own staff of investigators. They also review complaints that pertain to just a certain sector of police activity, like complaints about excessive force or about discourtesy, things like that. They do their own investigation. They decide if they think that someone has violated policy and then they make a recommendation.

For the more serious cases, they will also bring that case to a disciplinary trial, like if someone has- -been perhaps shot by a police officer. In those cases, a judge will then make a recommendation. Again, yes, it goes to the police commissioner, but the police commissioner, as we know, is working, under the mayor, so the mayor really has the final say. It's very different than just a typical workplace disciplinary system.

Brian Lehrer: Betsy in Crown Heights, you're on WNYC. Hi Betsy. Thank you for calling in.

Betsy: Hi. Thank you for taking my call. I regularly go to Black Lives Matter protests in the city. Most regularly, I marched with a group that used to go over the Brooklyn Bridge on Thursday evenings. We would block traffic and would call attention to issues with the NYPD, and with Eric Adams, and police brutality in the city, that kind of thing. In the last few weeks, there's been a real increase in police presence and response to these marches and to other marches around similar topics.

We have not been allowed to march on the street. We haven't been allowed to use microphones, and the police have just been very aggressive. There have been a couple times that people have been arrested on sidewalks, or even at one time in a public park, in Bryant Park a couple weeks ago. As a big theme of our marches has been calling attention to corruption and dirty cops within the NYPD. I wonder if there's any connection here or if this might be another piece of context, both for civil resigning and also for what you were talking about with the CCRB and the lack of ability it seems for the for the NYPD to identify corruption and to maybe deal with people who are abusing their power.

Brian Lehrer: Interesting, and a good news tip. If our police reporters in the room, [chuckles] didn't already know, Dean, that if what Betsy reports is true, the police are cracking down on what the Black Lives Matter protestors can do.

Dean Meminger: Yes. We've seen some stuff on social media just in general where people are saying the cops are more aggressive nowadays when it comes to making arrests, whether it's-- or just on the street, or only as a confrontation. In fact, people are publishing these videos once again that they didn't have in the past with the cops really moving in and arresting people or telling them to get out of the way.

That could also go along with, now we're seeing shootings going down, the gun arrest going up. NYPD executives will tell you the cops have to be out there to get these guns off the street, but the challenge for Mayor Adams continues to be, even when he came into office, make the community safe, but also do not violate people. That's something he's going to have to continue to work on because yes, people want murders down, shootings down, but you don't want people once again complaining that, "You know what, they stopped me for no reason,” or, “My interaction with them was very nasty. They weren't professional to me and I'm just a working person coming from New York 1 or WNYC Radio or The Housing Authority." That's something he has to continue to work on.

Brian Lehrer: That, I think brings us to the report from the Federal Monitor last week about NYPD unlawful stops. We're going to get into that and take more of your calls and texts and tweets with Samantha Max and Dean Meminger right after this.

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Brian Lehrer on WNYC as we try to get to the bottom of why New York City Police Commissioner Keechant Sewell resigned this week. We're also talking about the critical, very critical, even described as scathing report by the Federal Monitor over the NYPD about some police behavior with our public safety reporter, Samantha Max, and criminal justice reporter for New York 1, Dean Meminger. 212-433 WNYC for your calls or texts, or tweet @BrianLehrer.

Samantha, let me ask you about the report from the Federal Monitor on Mayor Adams' so-called neighborhood safety teams. He says these are different from the plainclothes units of the past that were disbanded because they were found to be committing so much misconduct toward the public, but the Federal Monitor found nearly a quarter of the stops they made during a monitoring period last year were unlawful. Can you explain in some detail what the Monitor found?

Samantha Max: Yes. These teams, they are deployed to neighborhoods with high rates of violence and essentially the federal monitors who they have been in place for about a decade now, just tracking NYPD activity in response to a lawsuit that had been filed accusing the NYPD of making unlawful stops in the past. They looked at a random sampling of stops that these teams have been making since they started taking the streets a little over a year ago.

They were looking at body camera footage, they were looking at the reports that police officers fill out after they make a stop, and they found that about a quarter of those stops did not have legal justification. There was also a significant percentage of frisks that were unlawful, and they also found that about 97% of the people that officers were encountering during these stops were either Black or Latino.

This is also coming at a time that stop and frisks are up. They have been climbing since Adams and Sewell took the helm. This is something that watchdogs and that advocates for police reform are really keeping an eye on.

Brian Lehrer: I'm going to read from a New York Post report on this, notable because it's the very pro-NYPD New York Post and it says, "The Monitor sounded the alarm about poor oversight of the mayor's highly touted plainclothes unit, saying that none of the stops had raised eyebrows among supervisors. Dean, does that signal that precinct commanders or the higher-up citywide brass, maybe including the mayor and commissioner themselves, didn't really take the constitutional standards in the previous stop-and-frisk court ruling seriously?

Dean Meminger: That stop-and-frisk case from the federal courts many, many years ago when stop-and-frisk was at its height, 600,000 to 700,000 people, the mayor should be paying close attention to this because when he was a NYPD captain himself and an advocate for the Black community and Black officers, he often spoke out against unlawful stop and frisk. But he did say when he ran for mayor, that stop-and-frisk was needed and that they had to get the guns off of the street.

When they mentioned the rebranding of the Street Crime Unit, now called The Neighborhood Teams that they have, they mentioned that they would be looking at these teams themselves, that the commanders and quality control officers would be monitoring them. You may be writing questioning, were they actually monitoring them? But, I do know from the very beginning when they mentioned Brian, that they were going to bring these teams back, advocates in Harlem told me that during the first weeks that there were already problems because they're always concerned about perhaps cops jumping out.

They're supposed to be in uniform or a jacket that says NYPD, but if you jump out of a Toyota Camry on people on 135th Street, people may be stopped. They don't know who you are.

Brian Lehrer: Yes, and to put this in numerical context, and I guess to be fair to the mayor and the department, you just mentioned, Dean, that the original court ruling of a decade or so ago came toward the end of the Bloomberg era when they were up to, I think the number was 700,000 stops in one year, if I'm reading this right. At least in the New York Post report, this sample that found a 24% unlawful stop rate was of barely not even 150 stops.

In other words, in this whole three-month period of 2022, that is about 45% of the stops. I'm sorry, 45 of the stops did not have a reasonable cause according to the monitor, that's 45 being 24%. That means all the stops in that whole quarter of the year were only 180 stops, something like that. Is that accurate?

Dean Meminger: I don't know if the numbers are accurate, but I'm quite sure it's definitely fewer people nowadays than just a few years ago or 10 to 15 years ago. I do want to point out that the mayor all along said, stop-and-frisk was necessary. We just have to keep an eye on it because one executive used to tell me it's not only stop-and-frisk, it's stop-and-diss. Cops stop you and they talk to you aggressively. They curse at you. They're disrespectful.

If you have to stop me and talk to me about something, that's one thing, but to be disrespectful and I'm in the front of my building or my family, that is problematic. I just want to say one quick thing, Brian, I did speak to a top source that is out of City Hall, and they said to remember when it comes to- -Keechant Sewell, even though she is leaving, all of the other top executives are still there, the Chief of Department, Chief of Patrol, the first Deputy Police Commissioner. All of those plans they had for crime fighting in the summer, those plans will move forward.

Brian Lehrer: Yes. I just want to say I'm not confident in those numbers that I gave. It's possible that very small number of total stops implied by that article could have just been a sample that they took.

Samantha Max: It is. Actually, I have --

Brian Lehrer: You have that sample. Go ahead.

Samantha Max: Yes. I have the most updated numbers. Last year there were more than 15,000 pedestrian stops by the NYPD. Obviously significantly lower than the record from the Bloomberg era, which was about 685,000 in a year, but it is an uptick from recent years. The New York Civil Liberties Union has shared with me data for the first quarter of this year, and they found that there have been more than 4,000 stops so far in the first quarter, and that was they're telling me the highest quarterly number since 2015. It's still smaller than in the past, but it is moving upward.

A data analysis that I had done of pedestrian stops from last year found that just 1 in 6 pedestrian stops were finding a weapon, and only 1 in 13 were finding a firearm. The main reason for these stops is to try to get guns and other weapons off the streets, and they rarely end up accomplishing that.

Brian Lehrer: Samantha Max with the data at her fingertips.

Samantha Max: [laughs]

Brian Lehrer: We have on the phone, perhaps an example of what Dean just called a stop-and-diss, Supreme in Queens, you're on WNYC. Thank you for calling in. Hello?

Supreme: Yes. Good morning. I'm so surprised that everybody thinks that just because we have a new commissioner and a new mayor, that this white supremacy edict in the police department would change, but it doesn't. In the Black community, they stop brothers all day, every day and don't even make reports, and nothing has changed. Actually, it's gotten worse. A Black cop is just as bad as a white cop, and don't think for one second that he has any sympathy because they're attacking his own community. That's not true at all. The CCRB unfortunately has no power whatsoever. Even when Pantaleo was caught on video of killing Eric Garner, de Blasio kept him around for six more years.

Brian Lehrer: Right. Though de Blasio did later say he regretted that, but he did keep him around for six more years. Supreme, thank you very much. Dean, any thoughts on the racial dynamic there? I think maybe the caller is painting with a broad brush saying all cops don't respect Black people. We are at a moment, which has been widely discussed in New York where so much of the leadership is Black, the mayor, and the police commissioner and the state attorney general and the Manhattan DA, and you can go down the list. Has anything changed?

Dean Meminger: Someone just pointed out to me, and we know this, that it's very different from sitting in City Hall, and then sitting on the 13th or 14th floor of police headquarters as opposed to patrolling Flatbush or the South Bronx. What's happening on the street, they may not know that day today. Now, of course, I'm not going to say all police officers are bad. That's just not true. There are so many great officers out there, but there are many officers who break the law, unfortunately, and we see it every day from the number of police officers and former police officers charged by the local district attorneys, and even the feds coming into my email every week.

We have tons of officers accused of corruption and stealing. There are bad officers out there. Once again, I just think that the communities and the advocacy groups and the watchdog groups, they have to keep the pressure on the mayor because the mayor ran on keeping the community safe, but also respecting the community. I think he understands that issue, but once again, people have to understand the NYPD is a force of 50,000 to 55,000 people, 36,000 of them are police officers. It is a very big, big force, but I think if homicides and murders and shootings are down, that's something that people want. Because at the beginning of the administration, everybody was up in arms about how violent the city was and the number of shootings and murders we had.

Those numbers are going down, thankfully. That's community and NYPD, so I don't want to give all of the credit to the NYPD community group do a lot on that as well.

Brian Lehrer: Carrie-Anne in the Bronx, you’re on WNYC. Hi, Carrie-Anne.

Carrie-Anne: Hi. Good morning. Thank you so much for taking my call. I just want to let you know, first I'm a lifelong Bronx resident. I love my city, but in recent years, I'd say the last handful of years, I find the city is completely out of control. Crime is up across the board. Quality of life issues are at-- infractions or at an all-time high, and I, as a family of law enforcement, have witnessed so many attacks on police officers. Assaults on police officers are also at a record high.

I feel we're in an utter state of chaos at the moment. I really don't know the solution, but there was also a video very close to my home that went viral on Sunday morning of police officers breaking up a rowdy barbecue where they received so many 311 complaints. There were many officers hospitalized, our neighbor for two days, with lacerations and appliances thrown at his back.

I feel we're at a very pivotal time in our city right now because people are leaving because crime is so out of control. A lot of cops that have never had any infractions in their whole career are leaving the job because they feel threatened, they feel ineffective, it's a very, very sad time I feel in our city. I really pray things to pick up.

Brian Lehrer: Certainly, crime is not, I think you used the phrase record high, certainly not close compared to decades ago. As Dean was just pointing out, going down from its recent high recently. Carrie-Anne, for you, as someone who's got at least one law enforcement member in your family, if I heard you correctly, how would you say the reviews are at least from the people you know, or from the rank and file more generally, if you're hearing reports of that, about Police Commissioner Sewell's job, how she did?

Carrie-Anne: I had the privilege of meeting her on several occasions. I thought she was absolutely incredible. I thought she was very partial, very proactive, I thought she checked all the boxes. I personally think, and many of my loved ones think that she's a tremendous loss to the city and the NYPD. I think things were going in the right direction, but I just heard the statistics on your show this morning, so I really feel that statistics are not in favor of anybody at this point in time.

I just really don't know what the solution is, but I personally have had members of my family assaulted and injured throughout the riots, hit in the head with bricks, another hit by a car and hospitalized for weeks, so it's a very sensitive time for both sides of the fence in New York City at the moment.

Brian Lehrer: Carrie, thank you very much, and keep calling us. Dean, I have seen a report, I don't know if either of you, we know Samantha Max has some data at her fingertips.

Samantha Max. Thank you.

Brian Lehrer: I don't know if either of you have this on the number of assaults on police officers as the caller refers to going up in the last year or the last few years.

Dean Meminger: I don't have the numbers at my fingertip, but I did interview the chief of patrol, Chell, not too long ago on New York 1 and he had mentioned that the assaults on officers were way up. When you look at assaults on people, he's saying the reason that's going up is because they're looking at assaults on police officers. Scratch your head that that many officers are being assaulted that it helps to spike the number of assaults overall.

He did mention to me that there were a record number of assaults on police officers, but I'm quite sure that includes anything from an officer being seriously injured to maybe a very minor injury as we mentioned, a scratch or something like that. They may be declaring that an assault on a police officer.

Brian Lehrer: Although certainly to a lot of people, physically tangling with a police officer is not okay under almost any circumstances unless they're really unlawfully assaulting you. Samantha, to this point, I saw that you also wrote on Gothamist that morale at the NYPD is challenged in part by the lack of clarity they feel between the competing policy directions these days that the caller is getting at of- -a return to broken-windows policing on the one hand, arrests and summonses for minor infractions, at the same time as a push for progressive reform, which would de-emphasize those things. What did you hear along those lines?

Samantha Max: This has been the push and pull of the Adams administration and just also the unique time that we're in. We're three years out from George Floyd. We have a lot of lasting policies from that time and from also just before the pandemic to move New York in a more progressive direction in terms of policing and law enforcement. Then on the flip side, we have a mayor who has both advocated for reform but has also advocated for bringing back these anti-crime teams, using what people call broken-windows policing, which is focusing on enforcement of low-level crimes in order to tackle the bigger issues, and then also, obviously, there's been a huge focus on gun violence.

Since Adams and Sewell took over, there have been more than 10,000 guns taken off the streets. Shootings are significantly down. Homicides are significantly down and they were last year as well. Those are important things to note. But yes, I think people in the department are just getting mixed messages about what is wanted of them. It also comes at a time when morale in police departments across the country is pretty low because there is more scrutiny of officers these days, understandably so.

Officers are trying to do their jobs. They're also wearing body cameras now. More people have cell phones. There's just a lot more eyes watching police officers and those who want to do their jobs well and follow the law, there's just a lot of pressure on them.

Brian Lehrer: To bring it full circle as we wrap up to the departure of Police Commissioner Sewell, I'll note to the listener, Samantha, that your Gothamist article says it's unclear how Commissioner Sewell felt about those neighborhood safety teams. Also about Adams’ policy of flooding the subways with officers, the subways in particular, to assuage fears about transit crime. Dean, I'll give you the last word here.

She's playing it very by-the-book right now in expressing her undying support for the work of the NYPD and saying nothing critical of Adams or even any reason she might have been unhappy there, unhappy enough to leave. This has to give way at some point to some substance from her, doesn't it?

Dean Meminger: Yes and a little bit of self-promotion. I'll be talking about this on my social media @DeanMeminger on Twitter and Instagram, because you point out a very good point, Brian. This is a political job. You're not just public safety as a police commissioner, it's politics. One of the things that I know for sure she ran into, she wasn't a fan favorite of talking to the media and the press. She didn't want to be in front of the cameras all the time. It was almost like pulling teeth to tell her, to get her to do these news conferences. She did many of them, but some people said she should have been doing a lot more as police commissioner. The next person who steps in probably has to realize that.

For her moving forward, I would say that crime is down, that goes in her favor, and that she's staying on to allow them to perhaps find another police commissioner. Someone pointed out to me that if she walked out of the door on Monday the way that everybody thought it was going to happen, it probably would've looked bad for her and the mayor would've maybe trashed her. Now that she's staying on until the end of the month, it helps her out, helps her legacy out, and she's still saying that was what she put in her memo, that, "I will continue to be an advocate for the NYPD."

Brian Lehrer: Spectrum News, New York 1 and Criminal Justice reporter, Dean Meminger, WNYC and Gothamist public safety reporter, Samantha Max, thank you both so much for spending a lot of time with us this morning and clarifying many things.

Samantha Max: Thanks, Brian.

Dean Meminger: All right. Brian and Sam, thank you.

 

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