Top New York uniformed cop Jeffrey Maddrey — currently facing charges he abused his office by intervening in the investigation of a friend — could have lost his career in 2017 over charges he lied about an incident in which a retired officer waved a gun at him during an altercation in a Queens park.
Documents seen by the Us.Mistertruth show that Maddrey kept his job even though NYPD internal affairs investigators believed he “wrongfully impeded an official Department investigation by providing inaccurate or otherwise misleading statements.”
The documents provide new insight into how strongly NYPD investigators believed that Maddrey lied to them and raise more questions about what cops and department observers call “white shirt immunity” — the ability of high-ranking officers to evade scrutiny and punishment for their misbehavior.
Internal affairs probers wrote in reports that the charges Maddrey lied were “substantiated.” But that part of their case was dropped when Maddrey agreed to plead guilty to lesser departmental charges of engaging in an off-duty physical altercation.
Because of the plea agreement, no final determination was made of whether Maddrey lied or not.
Maddrey’s lawyer said the lying charges were disposed of because NYPD officials became convinced they weren’t true. “We proved that he wasn’t untruthful and was in fact truthful, so the charges were withdrawn,” said the lawyer, Lambros Lambrou.
But others experienced in the NYPD’s disciplinary system are convinced Maddrey’s high rank saved his career despite committing an offense the Police Department’s Patrol Guide says will bring cops automatic dismissal “absent exceptional circumstances.”
“The ‘exceptional circumstances’ are, he’s a chief. There’s no other way to look at this,” said Rae Downes Koshetz, a lawyer and former NYPD Deputy Commissioner for Trials, a job in which she oversaw the department’s handling of police misconduct cases.
“Certainly, it was a sticky wicket,” Koshetz said of Maddrey’s situation in 2017. “But they just massaged it as much as they could to keep him on the job.”
Following his plea, Maddrey was docked 45 vacation days. His career continued. In 2022, Maddrey became the NYPD’s top uniformed officer, two ranks below Police Commissioner Keechant Sewell. He is a longtime police commander with close ties to Mayor Adams, himself a former cop.
At the time of the career-endangering 2017 proceedings, Maddrey was the highly-regarded chief of Brooklyn North, a command that oversees 10 precincts and thousands of cops.
His troubles began during a rendezvous at 11:30 p.m. on Dec. 7, 2015 with retired Officer Tabatha Foster at Tudor Park in Ozone Park, Queens, case records show. Maddrey and Foster conducted a tumultuous years-long affair, according to court records.
The pair squabbled and then physically struggled, and Foster pulled her gun on Maddrey during the confrontation, which was reported by a witness in the park who called 911, NYPD investigation records say.
Foster said she pulled the gun because Maddrey was assaulting her, and that the struggle left her arm bleeding and her fingernails hurt. She made those statements in depositions in her lawsuit accusing the NYPD of creating a hostile work environment.
In his own deposition in Foster’s civil suit, Maddrey said he never saw Foster aim a gun at him — but that he became afraid when she reached into a handbag where he knew she kept it. “I started yelling to Tabatha, ‘Please don’t you have no gun out pointed at me, don’t you point no gun at me,’” Maddrey testified.
Two 106th Precinct cops arrived at the scene. “Everything is good,” Maddrey told them, the records show.
About six months after the altercation — in May 2016 — Internal Affairs Bureau investigators began looking into the matter, prodded by an anonymous letter.
Police investigators checked 911 records, and found that the caller in Tudor Park “reported that a female Black pulled a gun and pointed it at a male black,” NYPD records show. The internal affairs probers determined that after Foster pulled her gun, Maddrey took it from her and disassembled it.
But an NYPD document said Maddrey “insisted that the interaction in the park was ‘just having fun’ and not confrontational.”
The internal affairs investigators established that Maddrey’s affair with Foster began in 2009, an NYPD summary of the case shows.
The documents say Maddrey in separate interviews gave the investigators conflicting information about when the relationship ended.
In an investigative interview on May 5, 2016, Maddrey said his relationship with Foster ended in 2013, NYPD documents say. But when he was interviewed again on Feb. 1, 2017, Maddrey admitted his relationship with Foster continued beyond 2013 to 2016, the documents state.
Internal Affairs investigators settled on five substantiated charges against Maddrey: Engaging in an off-duty physical altercation, failing to call a supervisor to the scene of that altercation, and “wrongfully impeding” a department investigation — plus two substantiated charges of making false statements in official interviews.
One of the false statement charges was about the inconsistencies in the Maddrey’s story about when his relationship with Foster ended.
The other false statement charge said Maddrey falsely claimed that during their December 2015 confrontation in Tudor Park that he and Foster didn’t physically struggle, and that he “falsely stated that … Foster did not point a gun at him.”
On April 27, 2017, two memos outlining the five charges were sent to then First Deputy Commissioner Benjamin Tucker, the second highest official in the NYPD. One memo to Tucker was from Assistant Chief Brian O’Neill, the executive officer of Internal Affairs. The second was from Captain Bienvenido Martinez, the commanding officer of IAB’s Special Investigations Unit.
Both men recommended to Tucker that Maddrey face all five charges.
But the two false statement charges vanished from the case, and Maddrey pleaded guilty officially to the three lesser charges. Tucker and then-Police Commissioner James O’Neill signed off on the 45-vacation day penalty on May 31, 2017, records show.
What happened to make the false statement allegations disappear is unclear, but sources said there were high-level discussions between top brass, Kevin Richardson, then the head of the Department Advocate’s Office, and Maddrey’s lawyer, Lambros Lambrou.
Lambrou said the false statement charges were removed because Maddrey did not lie about the year his relationship with Foster ended — even though the IAB probers found Maddrey himself gave contradictory statements about the situation.
Lambrou said there are also doubts about whether the altercation in the Queens park was physical and Foster wielded a gun.
“There were two interviews at issue. Internal Affairs believed what certain people said, and we quickly pointed out who was not telling the truth,” Lambrou said.
“They agreed to remove the charges that, though they were deemed substantiated, would not hold up in the trial room.”
A story in The News in March 14, 2018 reported based on anonymous sources that Richardson had a key role in eliminating the false statement charges. Efforts to reach Richardson for this story were not successful.
Police officers are warned in the department’s Patrol Guide that making a false statement is a serious issue.
“Intentionally making a false official statement regarding a material matter will result in dismissal from the department, absent exceptional circumstances,” says Patrol Guide rule 203-08. “Exceptional circumstances will be determined by the police commissioner on a case by case basis.”
Koshetz, the former trials deputy commissioner, said “exceptional circumstances” should be applied very rarely. “If someone has had a remarkable career and is dying of cancer, that would be an exceptional circumstance,” she said.
Foster’s suit against the city and Maddrey over her treatment while she was on the police force is still pending. Her first case in federal court was dismissed. She refiled the case in state court in 2019 with a new lawyer. Maddrey filed a counterclaim that is being handled as part of Foster’s lawsuit.
Foster’s current lawyer, Matthew Blit, did not reply to requests for comment.
Sewell, the police commissioner, faces a decision on Maddrey’s current case, in which the Civilian Complaint Review Board has substantiated a charge that in November 2021 he intervened in the arrest of a friend and former cop who chased three teens with a gun in Brooklyn. Under CCRB guidelines, “substantiated” means there is “sufficient credible evidence” that Maddrey “committed the alleged act without legal justification.”
A Legal Aid Society study found Sewell reduced, set aside or ignored hundreds of police misconduct penalties recommended by the CCRB. Of 15 captains and above whose CCRB cases were decided, Sewell departed to lesser charges in 11 of them, a source familiar with the disciplinary cases said.
The NYPD also holds departmental trials in disciplinary cases without CCRB involvement. In such cases, Sewell has adopted the recommendations of the trial judge in the all five officers ranked as captains and above who have faced departmental trials since she became commissioner in January 2022.
Lawyer Eric Sanders, who previously represented Foster, said “white-shirt immunity” — the protection of captains and above from disciplinary charges — is alive and well in the NYPD.
“I don’t have anything personal against him (Maddrey), but I’ve said from the beginning that your executive staff has to be professional and refrain from getting involved with their subordinates,” Sanders said.
“He and other people in the department have either engaged or continue to engage in this conduct and there is no redress for the people who are taken advantage of.”
“It still goes on with other executives and other managers in the department and it’s going on all the time.”