The NYPD’s highest-ranking uniformed officer has been hit with an abuse of authority charge for intervening on the arrest of a retired cop who threatened a group of teens with a gun, the city’s top police watchdog group said Saturday.
The Civilian Complaint Review Board substantiated the charge against NYPD Chief of Department Jeffrey Maddrey for showing up at the 73rd Precinct station house on Nov. 24, 2021 following a clash between the cops and three teens in Brownsville.
Shortly after Maddrey’s visit, the retired cop was sent home, even though the teens alleged that he had chased them with a gun, officials said.
Working off the NYPD’s own disciplinary matrix, which outlines penalties for accused abuses, the CCRB recommended Maddrey receive a command discipline which comes with a maximum loss of 10 vacation days, CCRB officials said.
NYPD Police Commissioner Keechant Sewell will determine the exact penalty Maddrey is facing. The chief of department could refuse to accept the penalty, which could trigger a disciplinary hearing, officials said.
“After carefully reviewing the evidence, the full board deliberated this case and substantiated misconduct against Chief Maddrey,” Arva Rice, interim chair of the CCRB said in a statement Saturday. “We used the NYPD’s disciplinary matrix to determine the recommended discipline and it is now up to the police commissioner to hold Chief Maddrey accountable.”
M.K. Kaishian, the attorney representing the three teens said Maddrey “leveraged his power to spring a former colleague who had terrorized children with a gun, but he allowed those same children to be vilified and discredited in the media by his allies in the aftermath of his misconduct” and called for Maddrey’s resignation.
“It is essential that other concrete steps are taken to address Chief Maddrey’s conduct, which has been defended by police and other influential actors in NYC precisely because selective enforcement is a feature of a system that serves the powerful at the expense of all others,” the attorney said.
The abuse of authority charges were first reported by The City.
Cops from the 73rd Precinct took retired NYPD Officer Krythoff Forrester into custody after the teens told police he had chased them with a gun after they struck the security camera in front of his store with a basketball.
Forrester used to work with Maddrey and began dropping his name to arresting officers, The City reported. A short time later, Maddrey, who was chief of the NYPD’s Community Affairs Division at the time, and Brooklyn North Deputy Chief Scott Henderson showed up at the station house.
Within a few hours, Forrester was let go without charges.
An NYPD spokesman said at the time that Maddrey ordered a full investigation, but Forrester was let go after the teens’ allegations couldn’t be confirmed. The department’s Internal Affairs Bureau also investigated allegations that Maddrey ordered Forrester cut loose, but found no wrongdoing.
When asked in March, Mayor Adams backed Maddrey’s intervention, claiming Maddrey had “handled it appropriately.”
This isn’t the first time the CCRB had substantiated misconduct charges against Maddrey. In 2017 he was docked 45 vacation days for failing to report an incident in a Queens park where he waved off responding officers who saw an alleged lover point a gun at him.
Emails to both Maddrey and NYPD for comment were not immediately returned.
Since being made police commissioner last year, Sewell has reduced, set aside or flat-out ignored hundreds of penalties against cops accused of misconduct recommended by the Civilian Complaint Review Board, according to criminal justice advocates and a study conducted by the Legal Aid Society.
In a message to police officers in December, Sewell admitted she has rejected CCRB discipline recommendations more often than other recent police commissioners, claiming that some of the police watchdog group’s rulings were “manifestly unfair” to officers.