NYC needs to stop worrying about NYPD optics and just pick the overall best cop

As Police Commissioner Edward Caban resigns under the growing cloud of a federal corruption investigation, New York City’s finest are in a tough spot.

The NYPD has been a model for police departments in the US and abroad thanks to one principle: A Merit-based ethic that promotes the best people, ideas, strategies, and technologies led to excellence. Yet for the past decade, the department has had this ethic chipped away.

Former Mayor Bill de Blasio ushered in an era focused neurotically on race and gender .

This led to promotions, policies, and a trumpeted new narrative that put “anti-racism” and self-flagellation over good policework, public safety and respect.

Mayor Eric Adams not only extended this identity-based framework — pledging to hire the first black, female police commissioner — he layered on top his own trademark weakness for appointing his vaguely sketchy, not-ready-for-primetime inner circle to top posts.

Phillip Banks III, for whom Adams augmented the role of Deputy Mayor for Public Safety into a near executorship over the NYPD, exemplified this patina of “ unindicted co-conspirator ” among Adams’ leadership.

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Banks, eerily mirroring Caban, resigned as NYPD Chief of Department a decade ago, while under federal investigation for corruption.

And now, Banks, along with First Deputy Mayor Sheena Wright, had his house searched last week by FBI agents .

FBI agents also seized phones from Banks’ brother and fellow Adams appointee, Schools Chancellor David C. Banks (who is, yes, Sheena Wright’s partner), and their kid brother, Terence, amid a city contracts bribery probe.

Adams’ Special Adviser and Director of Asian Affairs, Winnie Greco, also recently had her home searched for a separate investigation.

Meanwhile, Commissioner Caban’s phone was seized , as was that of his Wario-esque, underworldy twin James Caban — who also left NYPD under a cloud two decades ago.

As one NYPD exec remarked portentously to me after Adams’ election: ‘It’s okay to appoint your friends — but you can’t appoint your friends who aren’t qualified.”

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Caban’s demise should be the explosive warning that we need to demand NYPD return to a merit-led approach.

Gotham faces monumental public safety challenges.

As we mark the anniversary of 9/11, hordes of openly pro-terrorist demonstrators violently disrupt and vandalize the city.

NYC’s uniquely self-sabotaging housing and migrant policies have made the city a magnet for underemployed and under-supervised men, infusing the city with disorder from pickpocketing to rape.

And even though Adams touts a dip in violence, we just marked three subway murders within two weeks , and youths are being stabbed and slashed at twice the rate they were in 2021.

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On top of these challenges, NYPD efforts are hobbled by progressive statewide “ Raise the Age ,” bail , parole , over-demanding “ discovery ” laws, and by citywide bans on types of grappling and protest enforcement .

To triumph, NYPD will need to harness its awe-inspiring legacy of elevating what works, regardless of where a person or a strategy came from.

After all, in even darker times, NYPD pioneered scrappy new ideas like “ broken windows ” policing and harnessed creative technology to invent CompStat.

NYPD officers have long-since been majority minority and have had heroes from colorful rascal Jack Maple to soft-spoken Bostonian wonk Bill Bratton.

And with these progressive and innovative bona fides, the agency used to attract recruits who had the natural talent and character to choose other careers — but who chose to serve.

Adams’ new pick to replace Caban will lead a department critically short-staffed and hurting from the loss of so many of those talent-based hires who have recently quit in frustration with mismanagement, uninformed strategies, or the offensive knowledge that they are too white or too male to rise to the top.

Just get us the actual best person — with no nepotistic or criminal taint — and let him or her do the job.

Hannah E. Meyers is a fellow and director of policing and public safety for the Manhattan Institute.

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