New NYPD commissioner's sordid history.

The first female NYPD police commissioner, Keechant Sewell, has officially left the department, in a manner that makes it highly likely she quit because Mayor Eric Adams is an asshole.

Even former Police Commissioner Bill Bratton speculated that there may have been too many cooks in the kitchen.

A rift between Sewell and Adams may have formed when she decided to go forward with departmental charges against Chief of Department Jeffrey Maddrey, a close ally of the mayor, after the Civilian Complaint Review Board substantiated a complaint that he abused his authority by voiding the arrest of a retired cop accused of pulling his gun on three teens in Brownsville.

Adams, who was not present at her farewell celebration, defended his management skills.

“Now some people may call that a micromanager,” he said after Ms. Sewell resigned, reports the New York Times. “I call it being the mayor of a city that you love.”

Adams micromanaged into appointing Edward Caban, Sewell’s second in command, to replace her for the time being.

The thing about top NYPD brass is that they don’t have bad records. Sewell has no official complaints of abuse or misconduct during her decades as a cop. Her replacement, on the other hand, has 10 CCRB complaints against him, which is high (40% of NYPD staff have 0). They include abuse and retaliation. Force, cursing, and using “Department vehicle and E- Z Pass for personal reasons.”

He was accused of threatening a wrongfully arrested man that he’d “getting ready with the broomstick,” a reference to the 1997 case in which Abner Louima was raped by NYPD officers, an attack that required three surgeries. Caban was disciplined four times (also a relatively high number, given how little the NYPD disciplines officers, ever). He was accused of cheating on his sergeant’s exam.

The guys (yes it’s almost always guys) with a history of skull-busting don’t ascend to top leadership. I don’t know if it’s for P.R. reasons or because Mayors know they’re not leadership material. But while the skull-busters may get to the rank of top detectives, they don’t become the public-facing leadership of the department.

Until now. You have to hand it to Eric Adams for breaking glass ceilings.