Bumped to auxiliary boss over beef with Brooklyn club
A Brooklyn NYPD precinct commander accused of shaking down a nightclub owner has been transferred to run a group of citizen police volunteers, the Daily News has learned.
Deputy Inspector Emmanuel Gonzalez, who in 2018 was accused of threatening rapper 50 Cent’s life, is being pulled out of the 72nd Precinct in Sunset Park to lead the NYPD’s auxiliary section, Police Department officials confirmed.
The transfer, effective Friday, comes as Gonzalez, 52, is facing departmental charges for cajoling the owner of Love & Lust, a now-closed Sunset Park bikini bar, to send a generator and supplies to a location in Hurricane Maria-ravaged Puerto Rico in 2017 that the cop had links to, high-ranking NYPD sources said.
Gonzalez was a partial owner of the warehouse he asked the supplies be delivered to, according to sources and the lawsuit.
The NYPD departmentally charged Gonzalez (inset) for conducting personal business with a club in his precinct and having the relief items sent to a building he co-owned, authorities said.
If found guilty, he may get a command discipline from the department, meaning he may receive a formal reprimand and could be docked up to 10 vacation days, sources said.
Some see the transfer as a demotion, since Gonzalez will be leading unpaid, unarmed volunteers rather than the highly trained police officers he’s used to commanding.
Members of the NYPD’s auxiliary section help bolster police presence at parades, street fairs and other city events, but are not allowed to take enforcement action.
“When you’re a high-ranking cop and you’re moved to the auxiliary unit, what they’re saying is you better retire because your career is pretty much done,” one NYPD source said. “You have a better chance getting promoted by UPS then getting promoted out of auxiliary.”
Gonzalez was transferred out of the 72nd Precinct and not demoted or given a harsher punishment because the inspector managed to prove that after receiving the items at his address in Puerto Rico he distributed them to people in need, a highranking official said.
“This looks to be a case of a good guy who made a bad judgment call,” the official said.
As head of the auxiliary section, Gonzalez will oversee more than 4,000 volunteers across the city. The NYPD auxiliary unit is the largest volunteer police force in the nation.
Gonzalez and the department are currently fighting a $125 million federal lawsuit filed by Love & Lust owner Imran Jairam, who claims in court documents that, besides forcing the club owner to send items to Puerto Rico for him, he also tried to get the businessman to pay for 11 round-trip tickets to Puerto Rico, which would have cost the club about $80,000.
When Jairam turned Gonzalez down, the club was suddenly targeted by the NYPD, the State Liquor Authority and other agencies, the lawsuit claims.
After being repeatedly slammed with summonses and violations, Jairam shut the club down.
Jairam told the Daily News he was happy to hear the NYPD is finally taking his claims seriously.
“There are hundreds of great law enforcement out there, but there’s a bad apple in every bag,” Jairam said. “While I’m glad to be hearing [about department charges], it’s unfortunate that I can’t track back the millions of dollars I have lost and the hundreds of minority jobs that were lost to his selfishness.”
The lawsuit is pending in Brooklyn Federal Court.
“Gonzalez’s disgraceful conduct in conjunction with the department and the SLA failure to act caused irreplaceable damage to my clients, their employees and the hip-hop culture,” Jairam’s attorney Eric Sanders said.
The State Liquor Authority has filed a response to Jairam’s lawsuit denying the allegations.