Ignoring Ethics Concerns, Adams Selects Ex-Police Official as Deputy Mayor
Source: NYT
In the last few weeks, as Mayor Eric Adams unveiled top members of his new administration in one splashy news conference after another, one expected move had not come: the naming of a controversial former top police chief as the deputy mayor for public safety.
On Friday morning, the former chief, Philip Banks III, announced his own appointment as deputy mayor in an opinion piece in The Daily News.
Mr. Banks’s appointment had been delayed amid concerns about whether his 2014 resignation from the New York Police Department while the subject of a federal corruption investigation would hamper his credibility and ability to perform the job. Mr. Banks was named as an unindicted co-conspirator in a wide-ranging corruption investigation that resulted in several convictions.
When he left the force, Mr. Banks had been chief of department, the highest-ranking uniformed position, and was about to become first deputy to William J. Bratton, then the incoming police commissioner.
Read more: https://www.nytimes.com/2022/01/07/nyregion/eric-adams-philip-banks-deputy-mayor.html
His announcement:
The law is in my blood. My brothers and I grew up with it, watching my father leave the house every day from our home in Cambria Heights, off to protect the people of the city. His name was Philip too. And I, like many other people, followed in my father’s footsteps.
Now, nearly 40 years after I left home, and after nearly 30 years as a member of the NYPD, I still want to serve. But as I take on a new role as deputy mayor for public safety, I owe it to New Yorkers, and to our new Mayor Eric Adams, to answer some questions that have been raised about me.
Based on the release of court records, there has been much speculation about my relationship with two men, Jona Rechnitz and Jeremy Reichberg, who were later convicted as part of a corruption investigation. I was never charged with any crime as part of that investigation, which is why I never felt it necessary to address the reports.
The central theme of the reports about my involvement in the corruption scheme was that I was party to it; that I traded favors as a senior NYPD official for some form of compensation. That is 100% false. In fact, neither defendant even claimed this. I never did anything in my official capacity for Rechnitz or Reichberg.
https://www.nydailynews.com/opinion/ny-oped-philip-banks-eric-adams-nypd-20220107-is4fxfskuzcr7pdt4cq5ytphvu-story.html
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