With backing of Eric Adams, NYPD brass escalates social media brawls
The city Department of Investigation said Wednesday it has launched a probe into the use of social media by NYPD officials, including Chief of Patrol John Chell, to target agency critics.
NEW YORK — NYPD leaders have ramped up their social media takedown of critics — and former cop turned New York Mayor Eric Adams has their back.
Adams is standing steadfastly with his former colleagues as dozens of elected officials call for him to discipline an NYPD chief who has unleashed a barrage of posts on X in recent months — last week saying a City Council member “hates our city.”
“I think we are the kindest and the gentlest and the most loving police department on the globe,” Adams, a retired captain, said cheekily when asked about police decorum during a wide-ranging news conference Tuesday.
But the city Department of Investigation said Wednesday it has launched a probe into NYPD “social media use and exchanges” and whether they violate city policies.
In a defiant response, an Adams spokesperson said the mayor’s office hopes the investigation will include some City Council members, too.
“It is clear that a small number of advocates and council members — who have gone unchallenged in using their social media to make disparaging comments against the hardworking public servants of our city — only support speech that is politically convenient for them,” the spokesperson said.
The Legal Aid Society welcomed the scrutiny, saying the posts have “served as a cudgel to spread misinformation, malign protesters, chill future protests.”
When pressed Tuesday on the posts from Chief of Patrol John Chell and Deputy Commissioner of Operations Kaz Daughtry, Adams said only that the police leaders “set the tone for the police department” and added it “is their responsibility to do it in a manner that’s respectful.” He went on to appear alongside Chell and Daughtry later in the day to condemn the defacing of a World War I statue by pro-Palestinian vandals.
Chell’s X posts are part of an unprecedented storm of social media barbs by police brass upbraiding journalists, protesters, legislators and even misidentifying a judge.
And they present the latest instance of questionable NYPD behavior that the mayor has justified.
In declining to critique some of the NYPD’s most combative defenders, Adams has conveyed to city law enforcement that he shares their frustrations with political critics — while also doubling down on his tough-on-crime message to voters ahead of his 2025 reelection.
Police officials and Adams defend the posts as fighting misinformation and unfair criticism, including challenges to the police use of force. And tensions have deepened over the NYPD’s recent response to college protests and encampments.
Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Comptroller Brad Lander and Council Speaker Adrienne Adams belong to the politically and racially diverse coalition that views the X posts as part of a pattern of bullying.
The speaker in particular had urged the DOI to probe the NYPD’s use of official social media accounts that she wrote “can plainly be construed as intimidating and dangerous.”
Nearly three dozen other elected officials sent their letter last Friday to the mayor saying an X post by Chell that lambasted City Council Member Tiffany Cabán and told his followers “you know what to do” in voting her out veers into political territory, thereby violating a conflicts of interest rule. They denounced Chell’s “completely unacceptable, undemocratic, illegal, dangerous, and false attack.”
Cabán, a Queens democratic socialist, had been critiquing the police raid of Columbia University’s pro-Palestinian protesters.
Beyond its social media platform, the NYPD has sought to tell its own story with sizzle reels, including a highly stylized video lionizing officers who cleared out protesters from a barricaded Columbia building, though one cop’s weapon had been accidentally discharged.
Chell in a PIX11 interview last Friday was unapologetic about his X post on Cabán, saying, “I would rather not do that, but when you come out with a statement a day after what these cops did in the city, the night before, for these campuses, I will take a stand.”
Cabán stressed that Chell is not just an average New Yorker but a high-ranking NYPD leader, one using an official platform for political speech.
“If that person can incite violence against a duly elected official, what makes it so that every other rank-and-file officer can’t do the same?” she said in an interview. “What does that say about the level of force and privilege and control that they think that they have over just regular, everyday citizens? That should be very scary to people.”
NYPD press representatives did not respond to POLITICO’s requests for comment or to make Chell or other police leaders available for an interview.
A 30-year veteran of the force, Chell wrote he won’t be silenced in a lengthy X missive on Monday. “We are going to tell our story, PROTECT OUR CITY, defend our cops, and push back against a disingenuous narrative from A SMALL NUMBER OF PEOPLE WHO never want the NYPD to succeed,” he posted.
On Tuesday, the Daily News reported that the chief of patrol had canceled a planned appearance at a political event for a Queens GOP club, a poster for which featured him in uniform.
Public defenders and watchdogs have said the NYPD’s social media posts amount to an abuse of authority.
“They’re trying to intimidate another separate, independent branch of government,” Jennvine Wong, supervising attorney with the Legal Aid Society’s Cop Accountability Project, said in an interview.
Christopher Dunn, legal director of the New York Civil Liberties Union, called the social media posts “petty, impulsive and retaliatory.” Dunn added, “It’s clear the mayor, not only is he not going to check them, he is encouraging them.”
In an illustration of Dunn’s point, Adams last week called Chell a “professional” when a reporter described how the chief labeled campus protesters “entitled, hateful students.”
The full-throated backing of the NYPD reinforces Adams’ evolution from police agitator to police defender.
A co-founder of 100 Blacks in Law Enforcement Who Care, Adams had been a constant thorn in NYPD leaders’ side when he was on the force. But as a 2021 candidate for mayor during the post-pandemic rise in certain types of crime, he emphasized keeping New Yorkers safe more than bringing the police force to heel.
Now, Adams is, undeniably, a cop’s mayor.
He has railed against bail reform measures and recidivism, vetoed legislation requiring police to document lower-level stops (a move the City Council overrode), backed a decision not to internally discipline the officers involved in Kawaski Trawick’s killing and commended cops in riot gear sent in to quell pro-Palestinian protesters on New York City campuses.
Last month, the mayor pushed out the interim chair of the Civilian Complaint Review Board charged with NYPD oversight, saying he wanted to make his own appointment rather than having a holdover in Arva Rice.
“I’m still an advocate, but I’m the mayor of the city. I have to maintain the right tone, not allow my emotions to get involved. I have to make sure that my police officers are able to do their job,” Adams told reporters recently. “I can’t just criticize. I have to improve.”
Adams has, relatedly, displayed a visceral dislike of those on his political left who keep pressure on the NYPD, including elected officials hailing from parts of the city that are whiter, more affluent and more progressive.
The Rev. Herbert Daughtry, a longtime mentor who introduced Adams as a troubled youth to the NYPD, said in an interview, “I know that he has compassion for and strives to understand and be fair to both the police and to the citizens. I think he’s tried to do the right thing.”
Close Adams confidant Frank Carone applauded the mayor’s near-unequivocal show of support for police.
“If I was still his chief of staff, I would say to him, ‘Good for you,’” Carone said in an interview. “Every one of these agencies, they are made up of human beings who bleed, who have children, who have emotions, and they’re allowed to defend themselves.”
The Democratic mayor’s vehemently pro-police posture hasn’t gone unnoticed by police unions and Republicans.
“I’m grateful that Mayor Adams has bucked the radical progressive base of his party,” said Rep. Anthony D’Esposito, a former NYPD detective and Long Island Republican who even urged Adams’ return to the GOP. “I encourage the mayor to change his party registration.”