During that time, she had won wide support from rank-and-file police officers but had her authority challenged by top administration officials, including the Deputy Mayor for Public Safety, Philip Banks III. He later added, “While we don’t talk about private conversations, the exchange you described involving the mayor never took place.”īut the source, who has firsthand knowledge of Sewell’s last days as police commissioner, provided a detailed picture of how she perceived the pressure on her as she made one of the most fateful decisions in an 18-month tenure. “She looked at the case and looked at the evidence and believed as the CCRB did - she believed that what did was wrong.”Īsked about communications by Adams and other administration officials with Sewell about the Maddrey case, mayoral spokesperson Fabien Levy initially said the administration doesn’t discuss private conversations. “City Hall was putting a lot of pressure on her to go with no disciplinary action, to reject the CCRB’S findings … which she did not do,” the source added. Members and sponsors make THE CITY possible. The source said that Adams’s message was underscored by top-level administration officials who contacted Sewell in subsequent days and was also bolstered by the mayor’s comments at two press conferences at which he praised Chief of Department Jeffrey Maddrey and his actions, while also stating that the decision about whether to discipline him was up to Sewell.ĭespite the intense campaign, Sewell decided that Maddrey should be docked the 10 days for an incident 18 months earlier where Maddrey showed up late at night at the 73rd Precinct station house in Brownsville, Brooklyn, and ordered the dropping of a gun charge against a retired cop. In the days after the Civilian Complaint Review Board (CCRB) recommended that the department’s highest-ranking uniformed officer be docked up to 10 vacation days for abusing his authority, Mayor Eric Adams reached out to Police Commissioner Keechant Sewell and, in a conversation, put pressure on her not to impose any discipline, according to a confidant of Sewell’s familiar with her thinking during her last weeks on the job.
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