The drip-drip of all the federal investigations and allegations related to Mayor Eric Adams and his most senior staff reasonably has some New Yorkers asking: who’s minding the store here?
The feds seem to be spearheading every inquiry into open corruption by the administration while local authorities falter. The FBI and federal prosecutors obviously have the benefit of a remove from the churn of local politics and plenty of resources to go after big fish, but it seems a little odd that it’s taken fully external entities to come in and examine what appears to be some rather brazen alleged conduct.
With that in mind, I thought it might be worth it to zoom out a little and examine some of the local entities that are supposed to be keeping an eye on things, and perhaps think a bit through why they’re more constrained in their ability to really keep the mayor and his administration in check.
Department of Investigation
The Department of Investigation (DOI) has a strange relationship to the city. The investigative agency has been around for about 150 years, getting its start during the heyday of corrupt New York politics as best exemplified by the infamous Boss Tweed. Its wide mandate was to root out fraud, waste, corruption, and abuse within and around New York City government.
Mainly, it was intended to protect taxpayer funds from being wasted or lost to corrupt practices, but its duties, as laid out in Chapter 34 of the City Charter, extend to trying to ensure the good and accountable functioning of city agencies and departments, with specific instructions to monitor the Department of Correction and NYPD. A 1978 executive order from Mayor Ed Koch further expanded the scope of the DOI’s powers and clarified that city personnel and those doing business with the city had a responsibility to report malfeasance, cooperate with the department’s investigations, and establish agency-level inspectors general, among other things.
Still, neither the Charter nor subsequent executive action have given the DOI quite the same level of authority as a standard law enforcement agency. While they are technically designated as state peace officers, they rarely make arrests directly, often partnering with other law enforcement entities. Despite its relatively broad objectives as a city corruption watchdog, the DOI remains a city agency, with a budget and scope of authorities as laid out by the City Council and the mayor. The commissioner is, in fact, directly appointed by the mayor, which obviously presents something of a potential conflict.
Current DOI Commissioner Jocelyn Strauber was appointed by Adams shortly after he took office at the beginning of 2022, and has since worked to stress her supposed independence. To her credit, this seems like more than lip service, as the DOI has in fact been involved with some of the investigations at issue here. It was reportedly already investigating Adams advisor Timothy Pearson (albeit for apparently different reasons than the FBI; the man has plenty of scandals to go around) and Adams official Winnie Greco. The recent arrest of two former FDNY chiefs on corruption and bribery charges by federal officials originated with a DOI investigation, which the department then brought to the FBI and the U.S. Attorney’s office.
Still, the agency just doesn’t have the same bite as these counterparts. The extent to which the city and its agencies have overlooked DOI recommendations in recent years led our friends at THE CITY to dub it the “Department of Ignored,” in part due to its relative inability to force the changes it seeks.
NYPD Internal Affairs Bureau
It seems like at least part of the FBI’s inquiry here is focused on the NYPD and its upper echelon, so what about the department’s own internal watchdogs? While entities like the Civilian Complaint Review Board are set up to investigate misconduct and issues between officers and the public, oversight over potential malfeasance within the department falls to the Internal Affairs Bureau.
Here, we run into a similar problem as with DOI: this is a bureau of the NYPD, meaning that it structurally falls under the chain of command which the commissioner sits atop. Constitutionally, it’s not really a bureau geared towards examining structural corruption emanating from the upper ranks so much as more individualized allegations of misconduct against specific officers arising out of specific incidents. As some other watchdogs like the NYCLU have noted, the IAB itself seems to have been getting less transparent and less aggressive over time anyway.
ProPublica recently documented how the NYPD’s public discipline database was disappearing records of officer misconduct, and the IAB has had a number of questionable high-profile decisions as of late. Most notably, it determined that Chief of Department Jeff Maddrey — who was found responsible for using his position to spring a buddy out of jail after this buddy was credibly accused of waving a gun at some kids — did nothing wrong. Suffice it to say, it doesn’t seem like the IAB is particularly keen on holding the department’s own leadership to account.
City Council
Outside of the executive environment, we of course have the City Council, which is both a lawmaking and oversight body. Aside from committees with jurisdiction over particular agencies — like the Committee on Public Safety and its oversight of the NYPD — there’s a standing Committee on Oversight and Investigations, which has purview over the DOI but also a mandate to examine concerning “property, affairs, or government of New York City.”
This committee can and has looked into deficiencies, graft, and incompetence in all sorts of city functions, but it is ultimately a legislative body without an investigative staff per se. The committee and its individual council members of course have staff that are able to look into particular issues, but they do not have investigators in the same way a law enforcement agency would. Instead, they’re able to drag agency heads in to testify about things under oath and demand follow-up information and reforms.
This is useful as an accountability tactic, but it doesn’t really give them the ability to surface new information or follow leads in the same way. The Council does have the ability to issue subpoenas compelling appearances and information, but seems to have been reluctant to use the power in general.
That leaves the Feds as the entity that seems best suited to sidestep some of the structural and political considerations that hold local entities back and focus simply on following the evidence and netting arrests and indictments. Everyone else is either too close, too bought in, too reliant on each other for keeping on keeping on, even when the malfeasance is as brash as it seems to be.
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