De Blasio: Un-guard!
Drops cops amid Congress bid
Now that he’s running for Congress, ex-Mayor Bill de Blasio has given up his NYPD bodyguards — after years of abusing the taxpayer-funded security, The Post has learned.
The seven cops who continued to safeguard de Blasio after he left office Dec. 31 were reassigned July 1, law enforcement sources said.
De Blasio could have asked the Police Department to extend his protection, sources said. But he likely decided against it given the optics of a former mayor getting taxpayer-funded bodyguards while the rest of the residents in the violence-wracked city are left to fend for themselves, a source said.
“It doesn’t look good for him to have bodyguards while the city is getting shot up,” the source said.
The source noted there were no threats against the former mayor “besides the millions of New Yorkers who hate him and would like to punch him in the face.”
De Blasio, who is $2.5 million in debt, also may have had to reimburse the city at some point for the security coverage given his new political bid.
A Brooklyn neighbor who spotted de Blasio walking alone to the gym recently said, “He looks like a lost soul.
“No one even said anything to him, a far cry from six months ago,” the neighbor added.
Past practices
De Blasio’s predecessor, billionaire ex-Mayor Michael Bloomberg, kept his security detail in place after he left office by having the cops on the publicly paid assignment retire from the force and hiring them on his own, said sources familiar with the situation.
Former Mayor Rudy Giuliani’s bodyguards continued protecting him at taxpayer expense after he left office in the wake of the Sept. 11 terror attacks, but it’s unclear for how long. The cops later retired and were hired by Giuliani to continue guarding him, sources said.
A spokesperson for the NYPD, in a statement, told The Post: “Typically a mayor’s security detail is maintained for a determined period and reduced based on periodic threat assessments.”
During his eight years as mayor, de Blasio regularly had his bodyguards drive him from Gracie Mansion on Manhattan’s Upper East Side to the Prospect Park YMCA in Brooklyn on weekday mornings for light workouts of stretching and riding a stationary bicycle while watching TV.
Official schedules obtained by The Post in 2020 revealed the entire routine took around 2¹/2 hours, with de Blasio finally arriving at City Hall around 10:30 a.m.
Squandered cash
Last October, de Blasio’s handpicked investigations commissioner issued a blistering, 49-page report that found the mayor squandered nearly $320,000 worth of city resources by using his security detail for “political purposes” during his quixotic 2020 presidential campaign.
The report also faulted de Blasio for having cops chauffeur his kids around.
The city Conflicts of Interest Board ordered de Blasio to reimburse the city $319,794 — an amount that could have increased if the former mayor continued being protected by the NYPD as he campaigns in the Democratic primary for the newly redrawn 10th Congressional District seat.
The district’s crowded field of candidates includes US Rep. Mondaire Jones, who now represents parts of Westchester and Rockland counties, Assemblywoman Yuh-Line Niou (D-Lower Manhattan) and Daniel Goldman, former lead counsel for House Democrats during the first impeachment of former President Donald Trump.