Policing done right is hard, honorable work. And maintaining confidence in the police as a fair-minded, apolitical institution that enforces the law in an impartial way is all about staying calm when emotions are high.
That was the bottom line of last week’s 41-page report by New York City’s admirably independent Department of Investigation, which last year tore into an unprecedented torrent of antagonistic tweets by top NYPD brass targeting elected officials, judges, and even the occasional journalist. The report found the barrage “irresponsible,” “unprofessional” and “intimidating.” The DOI even questioned whether some posts violated the federal Hatch Act barring political activity by public officials.
The NYPD leaders who spent the first few months of 2024 publicly attacking their perceived enemies online piped down as the department weathered raid after raid after raid by the FBI. The department churned through three commissioners while Mayor Eric Adams, an ex-cop now facing a criminal trial on corruption charges, cheered on his police officials as they lashed out.
There’s a big problem if police with shields, cuffs, guns and the authority to use them and their bosses are as free to mouth off as the people armed only with pens and keyboards.
Chief John Chell, who’s since been promoted to become the department’s top uniformed official, challenged a woman who’d asked tough questions to Mayor Adams to come find him at the funeral of a murdered police officer. He attacked a judge for the release of a violent criminal on bail but named the wrong judge. And repeatedly called on voters to cast out a socialist city council member as the two exchanged crude insults.
I was the subject of some of the attacks, labeled in a tweet on the official @nypdnews account as “Harry ‘Deceitful’ Siegel,” and smeared by various bosses there for “hating cops” as they vowed to no longer “allow disingenuous and outright false reporting to be spewed unabated.”
“We are the police, and you are a gadfly,” sneered a deputy commissioner on his official account.
I welcome criticism and often learn from it. I always take pains to get the facts right and correct them when I don’t. As for remarks like these, I defer to DOI Commissioner Jocelyn Strauber, who dryly stated, “No aspect of the social media exchanges that DOI reviewed in this investigation served the public.”
Adams thought differently.
“I don’t think they attacked anyone,” he said last April. “If a columnist has a right to an opinion,” he added, “a police officer has the right to an opinion,” as if the chiefs and commissioners talking trash from their official city accounts were ordinary officers doing so while walking a beat.
There’s a big problem if police with shields, cuffs, guns and the authority to use them and their bosses are as free to mouth off as the people armed only with pens and keyboards.
There are just three institutions remaining in America that most people have confidence in, according to Gallup: The military, small businesses and the police, which just barely clear 50%. (Newspapers are at just 18% — another reason why Adams may not want to equate his police chiefs with ink-stained wretches.)
Each time a top cop replaces just-the-facts-ma’am “courtesy, professionalism and respect” with smack talk, it eats away at what remains of that hard-earned public confidence. It would be nice to think that the mayor once knew better. The NYPD “is good at laying traps, executing traps. And even if the trap doesn’t capture the prey, they would shoot the prey anyway,” Adams said years ago, laughing, while reminiscing about his own two decades wearing the uniform. “The police department doesn’t have rules. They are the rules,” the mayor said. New NYPD Commissioner Jessica Tisch, who Adams brought on in November to clean up the mess that he’d made of the department he once served, has been moving with force and speed to restore the NYPD’s chain of command — and public confidence in its works. But the two leading X trolls who the city’s own Department of Investigation just called to account are still there, just keeping quiet for now. To spell out the embarrassingly obvious, what’s at stake in America’s biggest city is the very idea of a fair-minded police department that’s above politics, maintaining the trust needed to protect and serve the public. It’s a sign of how much cleaning up remains to be done by Tisch, and how much resistance Adams may pose to that work, that this has to be stated.
Harry Siegel
Harry Siegel is a senior editor at the newsroom The City, a columnist for the New York Daily News and the producer and a co-host of the "FAQ NYC" podcast. 
