Queens-raised Sewell named police commissioner
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Keechant Sewell, a Queens native, was named police commissioner by Mayor-elect Eric Adams on Wednesday, Dec. 15, 2021. AP Photo/Brittainy Newman
By Jacob Kaye
Mayor-elect Eric Adams named Keechant Sewell, a Long Island police chief and Queens native, as the city’s next police commissioner on Wednesday.
Sewell will become the first woman and third Black person to lead the NYPD, the largest police department in the country.
Adams made the announcement inside a building in the Queensbridge Houses, where Sewell grew up. In front of a mural depicting Black leaders including Malcolm X, Angela Davis and Huey Newton, Adams called Sewell “the woman for the job.”
“She carried with her throughout her career a sledgehammer and she crushed every glass ceiling that was put in her way,” Adams said. “Today, she has crashed and destroyed the final one we need in New York City.”
Though she was raised in Queens, Sewell, who will begin her new job on Jan. 1 when Adams takes office, has spent the bulk of her career working in Nassau County.
She began as a patrol officer in 1997 and worked her way up to precinct commander. In 2020, she was named as the Nassau County Police Chief of Detectives.
“I am mindful of the historic nature of this announcement as the first woman and only the third Black person to lead the NYPD in its 176-year history,” Sewell said. “Mr. Mayor-elect, I am humbled and honored by the trust you have placed in me. My shoes are laced up. I'm ready to get to work.”
Keeping in line with his comments on criminal justice throughout the campaign, Adams said he and Sewell would focus on the “justice we deserve, and the safety we need.”
“Let's understand that there's two voices that are going on, we can address both of them,” the mayor-elect said. “We have a violence problem and we have a problem with police that are heavily heavy handed.”
Though increases across major crimes vary greatly – murders are up around 2 percent while hate crimes are up over 91 percent – New York City has seen a bump in nearly all major crime categories in the past year.
The incoming mayor and police commissioner said that they’d bring back broken windows theory policing, a tactic used by the NYPD throughout the 1990s and early 2000s.
“I think lower level crimes have to be enforced when it's appropriate,” Sewell said. “When they can be balanced with the needs of the public and the needs of the community and not all circumstances is the interest of justice served.”
Adams said that he is “exploring” the option to put social services inside of police precincts so that repeat petty crime offenders can be connected with services instead of being prosecuted.
“If you’re arrested for shoplifting, then you’re hungry,” Adams said. “This is a new way of thinking – if you’re dealing with mental health illnesses, why not have the local [community based organizations] right there.”
“I was elected by the people of this city with a very clear message – we're going to successfully use the tools and not abuse the tools,” he added.
Sewell fought back questions about her leadership experience. The NYPD is by far the largest police force in the country, with about 35,000 officers. As chief of detectives in Nassau, she oversaw around 350 people.
Promising she does, indeed, have the experience, Sewell said that if the public doesn’t believe she’s ready, “talk to me in a year.”
The Queens native said that as a woman and as Black police officer, she’ll bring a new perspective to a position that has been dominated by white men.
“I bring a fresh set of eyes,” she said. “We keep using the phrase emotional intelligence but I think sometimes the first thing people say is, ‘You're a women, you are a little sensitive.’ I think sensitivity is strength. I think that adds to the emotional intelligence. If I can bring that to the table, I'm ready to go.”
Police unions in New York City welcomed Sewell to the job Wednesday but also warned that the road ahead may be tough.
“We welcome Chief Sewell to the second-toughest policing job in America. The toughest, of course, being an NYPD cop on the street,” said PBA President Pat Lynch. “New York City police officers have passed our breaking point. We need to fix that break in order to get our police department and our city back on course. We look forward to working with her to accomplish that goal.”
Paul DiGiacomo, the president of the New York City Detectives Endowment Association, said that the city was in an “unprecedented time in our history when leadership has never been more important.”
“It’s no surprise to this union that the new police commissioner is Nassau’s current chief of detectives, and we have no doubt Chief Sewell knows how hard our members work,” DiGiacomo said.
The Legal Aid Society also welcomed Sewell, asking that she spearhead reforms to the department.
“We welcome the appointment of a new NYPD Commissioner who we hope will bring a new approach to the helm of an agency in dire need of top-to-bottom reforms,” the public defense organization said in a statement. “The next Commissioner must demonstrate an understanding that many community problems do not warrant a law enforcement response; that police misconduct must be taken seriously and addressed swiftly; and that tackling some of our city’s most pressing public safety issues, especially gun violence, requires full funding for proven, community-based approaches, including the CURE Violence model, and not a knee-jerk resort to the failed, aggressive and racist approaches of the past.”
Commenting on the Black Lives Matter protests of 2020, during which a handful of officers used excessive force and now face disciplinary action, Sewell said that she’d take a look at how the department reacted to the protests.
“I absolutely intend to look at what was done two years ago, and see what we can do to improve what happened,” she said. “And I know the NYPD is working on that now as well and I'm looking forward to finding out what that is.”
As part of her interview, Adams and his team had Sewell field questions at a fake press conference. The scenario: a white police officer had just shot and killed an unarmed Black teenager.
Adams said that he was impressed with Sewell’s performance, and took note when she led by offering support to the community.
“She started out her response, that it was a tragedy to lose a young person,” Adams said. “She showed that compassion, others went into the technical aspects of policing, they went into the theories, but she started out with the human part of it. That made me sit up, because she understood that there was a tragedy because a life was lost. That's what we have to understand.”
