NYPD boss Caban defends push vs. critics

Police Commissioner Edward Caban on Wednesday backed the NYPD’s aggressive new social media push against journalists and critics — though he stopped short of saying he agrees with the tone of some of the postings.

“I can tell you that my executives are very passionate about defending their specific bureaus,” Caban (inset) said when asked about a recent move by top NYPD brass to post sharp criticism online. “And as an agency, I don’t think we get credit, or the officers get credit, for the work we do.”

In recent weeks, top NYPD brass, most notably Chief of Patrol John Chell and Deputy Commissioner Kaz Daughtry, as well as Chief of Transit Michael Kemper and the department’s top spokesman, Deputy Commissioner Tarik Sheppard, have called out a number of people on X.

The latest target, Harry Siegel, came under fire following a Sunday op-ed column for the Daily News in which he took issue with how police are portraying their efforts to fight crime in the subway. The column had a crime statistic error that Siegel corrected, but Chell, Kemper and Daughtry took exception with the tone of the column and the official NYPD account called the writer “Harry ‘Deceitful’ Siegel.”

Chell and Sheppard in television interviews Tuesday refused to back down and said much the same at a Wednesday press conference.

Caban said police aren’t getting enough credit for their work.

“Every time we do good work, everybody goes back to 2019,” he told The News, referring to the year before violence spiked sharply. “This administration wasn’t here in 2019. They forget that in 2022, we inherited it.

“We are down in crime for the first time in years,” he added. “Our officers are doing great work.”

Caban said he didn’t believe rank-and-file cops will follow their bosses’ examples and start calling out critics by name on social media, a move that could result in internal discipline.

Chell — who like precinct commanders and other brass has authorized social media accounts — last month apologized after he misidentified the Bronx judge who released a repeat offender without bail.