Corey raps judge
Calls F-bomb rant vs. cop ‘unacceptable’
The leader of the City Council blasted the de Blasio administration’s top administrative judge for screaming F-bombs at a City Hall cop.
Council Speaker Corey Johnson said the behavior of Fidel Del Valle, the commissioner of the Office of Administrative Trials and Hearings, was wrong.
Del Valle (photo) unleashed the foulmouthed tirade on a veteran City Hall cop on Nov. 13 after she asked him to explain why he was visiting City Hall.
“Listen, babe, I don’t give a f---! Do you know who I am?” the volatile Del Valle yelled at the female officer, according to a letter by the Patrolmen’s Benevolent Association. “Who the f--- do you think you are?”
“It’s never appropriate to be disrespectful to anyone, especially a member of the NYPD, a woman who was just doing her job,” Johnson said at an unrelated press conference at City Hall.
“My understanding from (the Daily News) reporting and from other things that I’ve heard is that he flashed a badge, and she didn’t know what he was flashing and she very respectfully asked who he was. And he went on a tirade and started swearing at her and calling her ‘babe.’ It is totally, wholly inappropriate, unacceptable,” Johnson said. Johnson said the commissioner needed “better temperament and noted that just like the NYPD officer manning the City Hall gate, he wouldn’t know Del Valle by sight, either.
“I was at that event. I don’t remember him being there,” Johnson said. “It’s my understanding that there is body-worn camera footage. And I’m told that it’s even more disturbing than the reports suggest,” he said.
In the aftermath, the officer insisted on filing a complaint, but sources said Inspector Howard Redmond, the head of the mayor’s security detail, tried to discourage her.
But a police official said a preliminary review doesn’t support that allegation.
“There has been no indication whatsoever that Inspector Redmond discouraged the officer from making a report, or was anything other than supportive,” said the police official, who did not want to be identified because the incident is still under review.
The cop’s lawyer, Yetta Kurland, called for an independent investigation of the incident beyond the NYPD review.
“Rather than the city trying to figure out details of what was said, why doesn’t the city just open up an investigation?” she said.