NYPD top brass on hot seat over their social media posts and costs for covering protests

NEW YORK (PIX11) -- Top NYPD brass were in the hot seat at a city council hearing on Thursday.

It was officially called to discuss budget and public safety issues, but the fact that those two topics together meant a lot of testimony about the costs of having officers deployed at Gaza War protests and on college campuses meant that the hearing was sure to be intense.

It was so, at various times, particularly the first hour or so. About 15 minutes into the hearing, protesters got so loud, and their outbursts so frequent, that Finance Committee Chair Justin Brannan had to ask the sergeant-at-arms to clear the council chamber of all people who were not scheduled to testify. 

On the roster of people set to speak before the city council panel were the two people at the very top of the NYPD masthead. 

Commissioner Edward Caban made clear that his department has handled a lot of protests since the Hamas attack last fall began the war in Gaza. 

"Since October 7," Caban testified, "the NYPD has responded to over 2,400 protests, and each is unique in its own nature."

The chief of department, Jeffrey Maddrey, drove the point home. "It's been a challenge," he said, "averaging 12 protests a day."

Their top budget managers were on hand at the hearing. They said that overtime costs for officers to cover protests went from about $7 million last year to $53 million this year, so far. 

They said that it was not clear at this point if colleges where many of the protests took place would reimburse the city for the cost of police coverage. 

Also, since it was a public safety hearing as well as one about the budget, Council Speaker Adrienne Adams asked about social media messages from top brass related to campus protests, including one from the Chief of Patrol, John Chell, that singled out City Councilmember Tiffany Caban. 

In the post, on X, which has now been deleted, Chell said among other things, "you know what to do..." The speaker said that phrases like that could be interpreted as a call to do harm. 

She then asked the NYPD leadership present at the hearing, "Do you think that post was appropriate?" When police officials didn't give her a yes or no answer, she resumed questioning.

"Should it have been deleted?" she asked Commissioner Caban. 

"It's inappropriate for me to comment while this process is ongoing," the commissioner replied.  

For her part, Tiffany Caban, the Councilmember mentioned by Chief Chell in his social media post, was at the hearing. She said that NYPD leaders' lack of answers to councilmembers' questions about the post was shameful. She also said that their comments about NYPD social media policy restrictions were no excuse. 

"It wasn't about the tweet," she said about Chell's post on X, "you could, you should have answered, and you chose not to. So my request is that that policy be sent to this council."   

The ongoing process to which the NYPD commissioner referred is a probe begun on Wednesday by the city's Department of Investigation, or DOI. It's now looking into possible dangers and illegality of protest-related social media posts by three top police officials: Chief Chell, and Deputy Commissioner for Operations Kaz Daughtry, and Deputy Commissioner for Public Information Tarik Sheppard. 

"It was quite telling that the three executives whose accounts or usages of the accounts [that] were at issue were actually not present at this public hearing," said Jennvine Wong. She's the supervising attorney at the Cop Accountability Project at the Legal Aid Society. 

NYPD sources told PIX11 News that it was an executive decision on who would attend the hearing, but, as one city council member, Lincoln Restler, pointed out during the hearing, it's highly unusual for the chief of patrol to not be in attendance. 

Wong, the Legal Aid attorney, said that now that the DOI is investigating, the probe may promote public safety, in both the near and long term. 

"It depends on whether or not we continue to see the NYPD abuse official social media accounts or other official NYPD accounts," Wong said. 

The DOI probe is expected to take months.