Police commissioner Ray Kelly has a secret 23-page spreadsheet containing the names of 2,300 NYPD officers who are forbidden from transferring to different precincts without his approval, reports Graham Rayman of The Village Voice.
Commissioner Kelly has also rejected 96 officers from receiving transfers, and put the kibosh on 59 others who had pending transfers, Rayman writes.
In addition, Kelly has sent 228 officers to VIPER – which Rayman says is similar to the NYPD’s version of the city Department of Education’s now-defunct “rubber rooms” – where officers spend their days monitoring security camera footage in public housing.
And if a cop’s name makes it to Mr. Kelly’s hit list, he shouldn’t expect a quick reprieve from the commish.
Once a name goes on the list, it doesn’t come off, even after years have passed and an officer has been brought back into the fold—a circumstance that someone likened to being forced to wear a scarlet letter for the duration of his or her career. In its stark, clipped language, the secret spreadsheet offers a rare insight into how the department is run by Kelly, who will soon become the city’s longest-serving police commissioner. It also might give an indication of how he would run the city if he runs for and is elected mayor.
A former Kelly staffer tells Rayman that in the Department’s olden days, a commissioner seldom had any say in the transfers. “The borough commanders would call each other and say, ‘I need to move a guy,’ or, ‘I need a guy from Precinct X.’ Kelly centralized all of that,” said the staffer.
The report comes a day after Kelly’s early morning paramilitary-esque raid on Zuccotti Park that ousted protesters and arrested at least five journalists from The Associated Press and DNAInfo.com.
Commissioner Kelly went on NY1 last night to explain why some reporters – nearly all of them wearing press credentials – were arrested during the raid.
“What happened is there were trespassers on private property, demonstrators on private property. Police went on that private property and asked those demonstrators to leave. Some left, some didn’t. They were going to be arrested.
There were reporters on the scene as well. They were asked to leave because they don’t have a right to be on private property, just as the trespassers didn’t. Some refused to leave. Some reporters left, others refused to leave. They were arrested with the demonstrators. I think there was confusion on their part as to just what they are allowed to do. They are private citizens, they were technically trespassers. I think that was worked out, and their arrests were voided.”
The past few months have been a publicly trying one for Mr. Kelly, who will soon become the longest-tenured commissioner in the NYPD’s history. Ticket scandals, racist stop-and-frisk cops, off-duty officers running guns and cigarettes on the side, undercover cops spying on Muslims in mosques, and now the Zuccotti madness, have each tested Mr. Kelly’s seemingly indestructible public image.
That, in turn, may or may not mitigate his chances of becoming Mayor Mike Bloomberg’s successor – should he ever decide to run.
