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6 challenges new NYPD Commissioner Edward Caban is expected to face
By
Samantha Max
Published Jul 18, 2023
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By
Samantha Max
Published Jul 18, 2023
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As he takes over the top job in the country’s largest police department, Edward Caban will face the immense challenge of instituting policies that will make eight million New Yorkers feel safer while also winning over his rank-and-file officers and pleasing a mayor who was once a police captain.
Mayor Eric Adams appointed Caban Monday to oversee an agency with more than 50,000 sworn and civilian employees, after Commissioner Keechant Sewell abruptly announced her resignation last month. Caban will be the department’s first Latino commissioner. He takes over the department at a moment when most serious crimes are trending downward, but when some New Yorkers still say they are deeply concerned about crime.
Here are six challenges Caban is expected to face as he takes the helm:
Keeping crime rates down
The new commissioner will take over a department experiencing a drop in homicides and shootings. While NYPD data show most major crimes are down compared to this time last year and are far lower than their historic highs in the 1990s, many New Yorkers are still on edge from a pandemic-era surge in crime.
Former detective and John Jay College professor Michael Alcazar said Caban will have to work hard to prevent another uptick, especially during the summer months when crime tends to spike.
"He can’t take his foot off the pedal,” Alcazar said. “He's going to have to stick with what’s been working and maybe employ new kinds of strategies to even lower crime."
Making straphangers’ feel safer on the subway
The mayor and the police department are still struggling to make people feel safe on the city’s subways after a series of high-profile incidents, including a mass shooting on the N train and several shovings onto the tracks. The killing of Jordan Neely on an F train in May underscored a persistent mental health and homelessness crisis in the transit system, which has made some New Yorkers wary of riding the subway.
The department has flooded the system with officers to assuage people’s fears and has directed officers to take people to the hospital for an evaluation if officers don’t think they can take care of themselves. But some policing experts and mental health advocates have questioned whether police are equipped to deal with people in crisis.
Fostering trust with communities
Under the Adams administration, the NYPD has brought back more aggressive law enforcement strategies that fell out of favor in recent years amid calls for police reform. The department has revived its controversial anti-crime units, disbanded after the killing of George Floyd, which aim to get guns off the streets in neighborhoods with high levels of violent crime.
Pedestrian stops have also ticked up since Adams took office, from about 9,000 in 2021 to more than 15,000 last year, though a Gothamist data analysis found they rarely turn up weapons. Those proactive tactics tend to disproportionately affect people of color.
Advocates have urged Caban to reverse the proactive strategies Adams has championed and to discipline police who have harmed or killed New Yorkers, like Kawaski Trawick and Delrawn Small.
“Rather than giving us rhetoric about representation and diversity, Caban and Adams need to eliminate the NYPD’s abusive practices and immediately fire the officers who killed these New Yorkers and all officers who engage in misconduct," said Loyda Colon, executive director of the Justice Committee.
Holding officers accountable for misconduct
Caban will be thrust into an ongoing dispute over the department’s disciplinary matrix, which was recently created to standardize punishment for officers who break policy. Sewell promised to lessen the penalties for some violations. Advocates for police accountability, including the New York Civil Liberties Union, have urged the department to keep the disciplinary guidelines as is.
The debate over the disciplinary matrix comes as another high-ranking member of the NYPD, Chief of Department Jeffrey Maddrey, prepares to have an administrative trial instead of accepting discipline for allegedly ordering an officer to void the arrest of an NYPD retiree accused of chasing three boys in Brooklyn with a gun. Adams has said he doesn’t think Maddrey would “do something that’s inappropriate” and that he is “proud to have him.”
Last week, the department and the unions also reached an agreement with the city’s police oversight agency to allow officers accused of misconduct to watch third-party video footage of the incident before answering questions from investigators, Gothamist reported. Some watchdog employees and policing experts said the new policy could make it easier for officers to lie about what happened.
Boosting morale
A central role of the police commissioner is recruiting and retaining a vast workforce of tens of thousands of officers. The department currently has 33,582 sworn employees, according to NYPD data, which is about 1,400 officers short of the 35,001 budgeted positions.
A department spokesperson said the NYPD has hired more than 1,400 people this year and 2,000 last year, but retirements and resignations have outpaced those numbers.
Police Benevolent Association President Patrick Hendry expressed optimism that Caban, who has spent decades with the department, will understand the needs of the rank-and-file.
“We know he knows what New York City police officers are going through right now, and that strong leadership is needed to reverse the current staffing crisis,” Hendry said in a statement. “There is no time to waste.
Managing a micromanaging boss
Sewell didn’t say why she left her post after just 18 months, and Adams has told reporters she could have kept her job for the rest of his tenure if she had wanted. But former NYPD officers and department observers have said Adams and Deputy Mayor for Public Safety Philip Banks — both NYPD retirees — undermined her leadership. If they try to influence Caban, the new commissioner will have to balance pleasing them with making his own decisions. Adams has denied that he micromanaged Sewell, and Banks has declined to comment.
Tagged
public safety
police commissioner
caban
Samantha Max
Samantha reports on whether New Yorkers feel safe and whether the institutions that are supposed to protect them are working. Before coming to WNYC/Gothamist, she spent three years covering the criminal justice system in Tennessee for Nashville Public Radio. Her reporting on Nashville's police department received multiple awards, including the Daniel Schorr Journalism Prize. Samantha was also part of the inaugural class of Report for America, a service journalism program that sends up-and-coming reporters to local newsrooms across the country. She is a Northwestern University grad, a Baltimore native and fluent in Spanish. Got a tip? Email [email protected] or Signal: samanthamaxwnyc.93.
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