NYPD ousts over half a dozen public info cops in ‘massacre’ as new boss takes over
The NYPD ousted over a half dozen cops with cushy public information jobs — a “massacre” to bring in pals of the new boss to the office, according to police sources and documents.
Eight officers in the Deputy Commissioner of Public Information Tarik Sheppard’s unit were called into a room one by one on Sept. 12 and told to find new jobs at the NYPD, police sources said.
Sheppard took the new post in August after Julian Phillips, who held the title for a year, stepped down.
“What made this massacre even worse is about a week before Sheppard held a meeting with the entire staff assuring them that everyone was safe and nobody was getting transferred,” one former worker said, adding that it’s rare to “launch” so many public info cops at once.
Sheppard said he was changing staff to make the office more efficient and up to date.
“There’s going to be people who are not happy that they’re not here anymore,” Sheppard told The Post. “I understand that.”
He said he identified people “who either should not be here professionally, the way they handle themselves, or some people who are resistant to change.”
He wants DCPI to grow and engage with Hispanic and Asian media “and things like that that we haven’t been doing,” Sheppard said.
A couple dozen cops work at DCPI, where service can be “too slow” and “sometimes unprofessional,” Sheppard said.
The cops occupy a 13th-floor office at One Police Plaza in downtown Manhattan. Their duties range from answering reporters’ calls and providing data to media outlets to handling press conferences at crime scenes.
Sheppard, a 19-year veteran of the NYPD, did a prior a stint at DCPI and is the former commanding officer of Harlem’s 28 Precinct. He’s bringing 14 new cops into the unit — seven from his former command, paperwork shows.
One of the workers who got asked to find work elsewhere in the NYPD is Taylor Cannon, whose police officer uncle Jeff Herman was shot and killed in the line of duty in 1989. Cannon was offered her job back after she was asked to leave, but refused “because she didn’t want to work where she wasn’t wanted,” a police source said.
