NYPD anti-harass honcho is facing probe in hate posts
A high-ranking NYPD official in charge of equal opportunity hiring efforts and stopping workplace harassment has secretly posted racist comments on a notorious law enforcement message board for at least a year, according to a City Council investigation.
Deputy Inspector James Kobel, 50, posted under the name “Clouseau” on the “Rant” — a message board where current and former cops gripe about politics, police matters and the media, often using racist remarks and insults, the council’s Oversight and Investigations Division found.
The division, which is run by Council Member Ritchie Torres, penned a 31-page draft report laying out its findings.
According to the council report, Clouseau’s comments targeted former President Barack Obama, Bronx D.A. Darcel Clark, Council Speaker Corey Johnson, and his own fellow officers and police brass.
The report found more than 500 posts between June 2019 and September 2020 under Clouseau’s handle.
Clouseau described Eric Garner, whose 2014 chokehold death on Staten Island helped spark the Black Lives Matter movement, as “a morbidly obese, diabetes havin’, high blood pressure ignorin’, asthma havin’, chicken wing eatin’, grape soda drinkin’, loosie sellin’ fat bastard” who died of his “poor dietary choices,” according to the council report.
And in June, after demonstrators marched throughout the city and the country demanding police reforms after George Floyd’s death, he encouraged officers to call out sick, writing, “Sadly the blue flu needs to be spread nationwide and more furious than the Wuhan Flu.”
He referred to Bronx District Attorney Darcel Clark as a “gaptooth wildebeest,” to Assembly Speaker Carl Heastie as a “savage,” to former President Barack Obama as a “Muslim savage,” and to Mayor de Blasio’s son Dante as “brillohead.”
Kobel denied the allegations in comments to the New York Times Thursday. “”I am unfamiliar with any of these posts,” he told the paper. “I’m unfamiliar with ‘Clouseau.’ I don’t post on the Rant.”
The council report found references that matched up with specific details about Kobel’s life, family and 28-year career in several of his comments.
Attempts to reach Kobel were unsuccessful Thursday.
Kobel runs the NYPD’s Equal Employment Opportunity Division. The NYPD relieved him of that command and placed him on modified assignment as it does its own investigation.
“A report detailing the allegations was provided to the NYPD on October 14th. The report attributed comments made in an internet chat room to Kobel that included numerous instances of prejudice, sexism and intolerance,” the NYPD said in a statement Thursday. “While the evidence provided in the written report was circumstantial, it merited immediate investigation by the NYPD’s Internal Affairs Bureau.”
“Deputy Inspector Kobel has cooperated with the investigation, but given the nature of the allegations and the sensitivity of his assignment, the decision has been made to remove him while the investigation proceeds.”
When asked about Kobel Thursday, NYPD Commissioner Dermot Shea said, “That is a drastic step but we thought it an appropriate step due to the nature of the assignment as well as the allegations, and what we have learned thus far.”
Christopher Monahan, president of the NYPD Captains’ Endowment Association, the union that represents Kobel, disputed the report’s findings, and suggested that he may have been targeted by someone seeking revenge over the internal investigations he’s conducted.
“Clearly, he has angered some people along the way. In any event, he looks forward to being fully exonerated when all the facts come out,” Monahan said. “The CEA plans on doing their own investigation, including computer forensics, to dispute the department’s position that it points to him.”
A high-ranking police official said NYPD investigators were entertaining the possibility that someone was framing Kobel, but the evidence so far points to him as the author of the posts.
“The virulent bigotry of Deputy Inspector James Kobel has no place in the NYPD, much less in the Office of Equal Employment Opportunity. The shocking nature