Another NYPD Commissioner Raided by Feds

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After the Feds came charging into New York City and began seizing the data and electronic devices belonging to former NYPD Commissioner Edward Caban and his twin brother, a bit of a hornet’s nest had been kicked over. Caban was eventually compelled to resign from his post. Another of the Mayor’s top aides soon followed him out the door. We’re still awaiting an official explanation of how they drew the attention of Big Brother, but a thorough housecleaning appeared to be underway. Still, we might take some small comfort in knowing that justice is being pursued and Caban was quickly replaced by interim commissioner Thomas Donlon. Now the NYPD can get back to the business of keeping the streets of the Big Apple safe and life can begin returning to normal. But wait… apparently I spoke too soon. On Friday, barely a week after Caban left the stage, the feds raided the homes (note the plural) of Donlon and began seizing his devices and files as well. We still don’t know precisely what was in the barrel that the feds are investigating, but they clearly haven’t gotten to the bottom of it yet. (NY Post)

Federal authorities raided the home of NYPD Interim Commissioner Thomas Donlon on Friday — just over a week after his predecessor, Edward Caban, resigned following an FBI raid at his residence.

Donlon admitted to the search in a brief statement released by the department late Saturday night — saying that authorities “took materials that came into my possession 20 years ago and are unrelated to my work with the New York City Police Department.”

He added that the department would not be commenting further, as it’s not an NYPD matter.

Everyone in the Mayor’s office and the upper levels of the NYPD are remaining very tight-lipped about what’s going on. Donlon acknowledged that officials had seized “materials that came into my possession 20 years ago.” He didn’t specify what sort of “materials” had been seized, but claimed that they were “unrelated” to his work on the NYPD. That seems like an awfully cold case to be dredging up after all of this time, doesn’t it? After all, it’s not as if he disappeared and went underground. He’s been rising through the ranks of the NYPD the entire time. Otherwise, why would he have been appointed as the interim Commissioner?

Let’s take Donlon at his word for the moment, as least in terms of how cold of a case this is. The statute of limitations would run out on the vast majority of cases by now. In fact, there are only a handful that would still be potentially relevant to a criminal case. These include conspiracy in the first degree, possession or sale of a controlled substance in the first degree, kidnapping, and Aggravated enterprise corruption. That last one is interesting because enterprise corruption means “knowingly participating in a criminal organization or enterprise.”

If Donlon had some street drugs he picked up more than 20 years ago, you would assume that he would have disposed of them by now. If he had participated in a kidnapping, someone would have noticed by this time. This is all simply speculation, of course, but it seems unlikely that the feds would come busting in on him in this fashion without having something fairly solid to back up their case. It might also be worth asking how Thomas Donlon was able to afford multiple “homes” (plural) in one of the most expensive real estate markets in the world on a public servant’s salary. I suppose he could have won the Powerball lottery and just forgot to tell anyone. Who knows?

Perhaps we will have answers to all of these puzzling questions eventually. But at least for the moment, it appears that there have been some rotten apples at the bottom of the Big Apple’s barrel for quite a while now. If the Adams administration was as pure as the driven snow as we have long been assured, how was it that they weren’t already on top of this mystery? They clearly should have been. And yet… here we are. Just another day in Gotham and another highly placed official in the sights of federal law enforcement agencies.