TO PROTECT & SERVE BLAS
Hizzoner used NYPD team for prez run & kids' trips, DOI finds
Mayor de Blasio “misused” his taxpayer-funded NYPD security team for “political purposes” during his failed presidential campaign as well as to run “errands” for him throughout his mayoralty, including helping daughter Chiara move and chauffeuring son Dante a city investigation has found.
The Department of Investigation probe revealed that the NYPD never produced written assessments of supposed security threats to the mayor and his family, and that security shifts were often dictated by the de Blasios’ personal preferences.
“In practice, what is happening is that it’s not security,” DOI Commissioner Margaret Garnett said Thursday morning after the investigation’s findings were released.
“It’s essentially a concierge service, primarily for Dante.”
The DOI’s extensive investigation found the NYPD shelled out at least $319,794 to accompany de Blasio on trips related to his 2020 presidential bid, which included a visit to a Red Sox game.
And it uncovered that the detail “occasionally” transported Hizzoner’s presidential-campaign staffers while driving the mayor around on the road.
“Both reflect a use of NYPD resources for political purposes,” the report determined.
The findings led Garnett, de Blasio’s handpicked DOI commissioner, to reiterate an order from the city’s Conflicts of Interest Board that the city be reimbursed for the expenses. De Blasio has appealed the COIB ruling.
The DOI report also documented how de Blasio’s taxpayer-funded security detail in recent years became a concierge service for the first family:
Dante de Blasio (opposite page), 24, requested and received regular rides to and from his job in Brooklyn after graduating from Yale University.
Officers regularly accompanied Dante on trips to and from New Haven, Conn., while he was an undergrad student at Yale from 2015 to 2019.
Cops in 2018 helped move Chiara de Blasio, now 26, from her Brooklyn apartment into Gracie Mansion, an act that constituted a “misuse of NYPD resources for a personal benefit,” the report said.
The detail picked up one of de Blasio’s brothers at the airport and squired him on a nearly twohour trip to New Jersey to pick up a rental car.
“Protecting the mayor and his family is a serious and significant job that should be guided by best practices, formalized procedures and an understanding that security details are not personal assistants in a dignitary’s daily life but provide essential protection,” Garnett said.
The probe concluded that de Blasio’s actions and the NYPD’s management of his security amounted to “potential violations of the New York City Conflicts of Interest Law, lapses in best practices, corruption vulnerabilities and inefficient uses of public resources.”
Garnett’s investigation confirmed that an NYPD van was used in Chiara’s move, and that First Lady Chirlane McCray’s detail transported personal items — an act that also constituted a “misuse of NYPD resources for a personal benefit.”
The DOI investigation docu
mented “multiple” trips in which officers assigned to the city’s first family drove Dante between New York City and Yale without his mother or the mayor in the car.
The NYPD’s chauffeuring did not end with Dante’s graduation.
Starting in December 2019 or January 2020, Dante “began receiving rides from NYPD personnel each weekday morning” from Gracie Mansion on the Upper East Side to his job in Brooklyn, according to the report. The luxury commute stopped amid the COVID-19 pandemic.
De Blasio denied knowledge of the arrangement when asked by investigators, while McCray told the DOI that she was aware of it.
The mayor insisted the review was littered with “inconsistencies” and “inaccuracies” — although he did not specify any errors in the findings.
He ripped investigators for not interviewing Deputy Police Commissioner John Miller, who oversees the department’s intelligence, counterterrorism and public-affairs divisions.
And the mayor argued that the “fraught reality” has produced a less safe environment for elected officials and their loved ones — a context he claimed the probe’s authors didn’t appreciate.
“Look, I’m honored to be the mayor of this city, but my first responsibility is as a father and as a husband, and so I think of the safety of my family all the time,” he said during a Thursday-morning press conference as Miller sat next to him.
The mayor said he appealed a decision from the Conflicts of Interest Board that he should pay for the security detail’s expenses. COIB declined to comment on the status of that appeal.
Miller, meanwhile, claimed that McCray and his children have received “full coverage” from the NYPD at its recommendation, and that the department had detected 308 threats against the mayor — 33 of which referenced his family, including 11 specifically against McCray and 14 against his children.
“In that context — which is not contained in the DOI report — we take the protection of the mayor and the mayor’s family extremely seriously,” Miller said. “Our policy — regarding the mayor’s family, particularly his children — has been to provide for them whatever security they will accept.”
But the DOI investigators evaluated those claims and found the NYPD could not provide any documents or assessments to support them. Instead, the report concludes that the security provided was based far more on the “personal preferences” of de Blasio’s adult children, not security concerns.
Democratic mayoral candidate Eric Adams was sympathetic toward de Blasio, saying that “if there were credible threats,” the mayor needs to protect his family. “Far too often, we don’t understand he may be a mayor but he’s still a father,” Adams added.“He’s still a husband and he must do everything that’s needed to protect his family.
“He signed up to run for mayor; they did not.”