NYPD reassigns dozens of chiefs in large-scale departmental shakeup

Dozens of NYPD chiefs and inspectors have been reassigned to new positions this week during a major shakeup of the department’s upper ranks, police sources said.

An internal department memo shared with the Daily News announced the reassignment of 53 high-ranking officers, including three assistant chiefs and 19 deputy chiefs.

The new assignments are expected to go into effect Thursday, according to the memo.

Positions being swapped include commanding officer spots at the counter terrorism division, the intelligence division, and the Bronx, Brooklyn North, Manhattan South, Queens North and Queens South detective squads, the memo indicates.

The massive shuffling of the deck comes three months after Mayor Adams appointed Edward Caban as NYPD commissioner upon the departure of Commissioner Keechant Sewell.

Caban became acting commissioner July 1 and was formally named commissioner on July 17.

Sewell battled a persistent belief at police headquarters and in City Hall that Mayor Adams, a former NYPD captain, and Deputy Mayor for Public Safety Philip Banks, a former chief of department, called most of the shots.

The personnel moves are part of a long-standing NYPD practice in which each new commissioner shapes the department’s leadership team to their liking. In the interim, department heads hold their breath, waiting to see if they’ll be transferred.

“We are all put on ice just waiting for the mid-level supervisory changes,” a high-ranking police source told The News. “All this constant change is difficult because once you get in a groove, new bosses come in and change everything.”

These pivotal changes come with even more transfers as the commanders bring their own people to their new assignment, the source added.

“So a lot of people are waiting — not working on their jobs — until they got launched into a new assignment,” the source said. “Too much change too quickly is just impossible to handle.”

An email to the NYPD for comment about the transfers was not immediately returned.

The most notable reassignment on the list was of Assistant Chief Judith Harrison, who has headed the department’s counter-terrorism division since March. Harrison was reassigned to head the Criminal Justice Bureau, where she will be in charge of officers who assist court officers in borough criminal courts.

Harrison made history in 2020 when she was appointed to run the NYPD’s Brooklyn North command — the first woman to ever hold the lofty position. She was also at one time put in charge of the NYPD Special Victim’s Division, where she oversaw major investigations into rape and sexual assault cases.

One NYPD source said Harrison’s new assignment isn’t a demotion in rank but certainly one in prestige.

As NYPD divisions go, the Criminal Justice Bureau doesn’t affect the general public. Many officers in the bureau are cops who have been stripped of their gun and shield and transferred from their commands after being accused of some kind of misconduct, the source said, adding that these officers are kept at the courthouse jails to keep them off the streets.

“It’s definitely a smack in the face,” the source said of Harrison’s transfer.

Another move involves Deputy Chief Scott Shanley, who was transferred from the NYPD’s Critical Response Command to the Communications Division.

The move comes about three weeks after Shanley caused a minor panic by sending out a memo to his officers informing them that the department wanted to cut the Critical Response Command — the “first lines of defense against a terror-related attack” he wrote — by 75%.

The department said at the time that there were no immediate plans to gut the CRC but added that the department “regularly reviews personnel allocations and considers bolstering resources in various areas whenever it is deemed advantageous to our public safety mission.”

At least one of the reassigned members will be returning to the police-side of the department after spending nearly 20 years working with an FBI joint task force. Deputy Inspector George Pietropinto, a 33-year veteran, will be moved to the NYPD’s Special Investigation Division.

After Caban was made NYPD commissioner he asked several high-ranking chiefs to put in their resignations, including former Chief of Detectives James Essig, Assistant Chief Christopher McCormack of the Criminal Enterprise Division, and Chief of Transportation Kim Royster.