Waved off cops in ‘lover’-gun fray
AN NYPD police chief accused of having a seven-year fling with a subordinate was docked 45 vacation days over a rendezvous that ended with his alleged lover pulling a loaded weapon on him.
Police Commissioner James O’Neill levied the stiff penalty on Chief Jeffrey Maddrey after department investigators determined that he had waved off responding officers who saw the woman point a gun at him.
Investigators also said Maddrey, the commanding officer of Patrol Borough Brooklyn North, failed to notify a patrol supervisor about the December 2015 incident at a Queens park and impeded an investigation.
The disciplinary action was the latest twist in a he said, she said saga involving accusations of infidelity, steamy text messages and million-dollar lawsuits.
Former Police Officer Tabatha Foster is suing Maddrey and the city for $100 million, claiming she and he hooked up for years, getting busy in stationhouses and his police car.
Her lawsuit also details the 2015 incident at Tudor Park in Ozone Park. She said she pulled a gun on her ex-boss to stop him from beating her during an argument.
But Maddrey, a married father of three daughters, said that the romance was all in her head.
He filed a $2 million countersuit, accusing her of lying, repeatedly sending him unwanted text messages and harassment.
“This girl railroaded me when I should have had her arrested for pulling a gun on me because I didn’t invite her to a party,” Maddrey said Friday.
“I took the harsh penalty after being victimized by her when I was just protecting her and her kids by not having her arrested.”
Foster threatened to kill him, his wife and children, and to “shoot up a party” the chief planned to attend without her, according to the countersuit.
“Foster held in her hands a loaded weapon while in the presence of (Maddrey) and threatened to kill him and went on to physically assault him without provocation,” the suit says.
Foster is also accused of posting “fake” and “defamatory” posts about Maddrey on social media.
In Facebook rants, she chronicled her torrid trysts with Maddrey and accused him of having a fetish for pregnant married women.
“Somebody needs to stop chasing pregnant married girls around the department,” Foster wrote in one post. “What is wrong with this guy?”
Maddrey’s lawyer Lambros Lambrou said Foster has a vendetta against his client.
“She is clearly carrying out her threats to destroy him, but that’s not going to happen,” Lambrou said.
“The lawsuit is nothing more than the product of an attention-seeking lawyer and client. My client looks forward to getting this frivolous suit behind him and move on with his life.”
Foster, who retired from the NYPD on Aug. 30, 2015, after suffering a stroke, told the Daily News last year why she whipped out her piece in the park.
“I was so mad, I actually pulled my gun on him and literally had him at gunpoint,” she said. “He said, ‘Don’t shoot! Put the gun down!’
“I put the gun down and my ass got beat for real. He choked me up. He threw me from side to side like I was a rag doll.”
When a marked police car arrived at the Ozone Park green space, Maddrey ordered the officers to leave, Foster said.
In her suit, Foster’s lawyer Eric Sanders said Maddrey never faced prosecution because of his high rank and “white-shirt immunity,” referring to the uniforms chiefs wear.
Maddrey’s defenders said that the chief documented months of unwanted contact with Foster, who texted him naked photos of herself, begged for sex and threatened him.
“It’s about to be a war,” she texted him on Jan. 31, 2016.
Sources said Foster had been harassing Maddrey for years, and was upset that he spurned her advances.
Sanders said the countersuit “confirms what we said in the beginning — that he had an inappropriate relationship with a subordinate.”
“We are looking forward to fully litigating this,” he said.
An NYPD spokesman declined to comment on the docked vacation days, citing a state civil rights law that allows police agencies to withhold personnel records and disciplinary findings from the public.