Friday marked NYPD Commissioner Keechant Sewell’s last day after 18 months leading the police department.
The mayor has not yet picked a replacement but First Deputy Commissioner Edward Caban will run the department in the interim.
The commissioner abruptly announced her resignation in a message to department employees earlier this month. The memo did not cite reasons for her departure or her plans for the future.
Sewell was the first woman — and the first Black woman — appointed to the top post in the nation’s largest police department. She went from leading a 350-member detective unit in the Nassau County Police Department to running a department with almost 34,000 uniformed officers and 17,000 civilian employees, according to NYPD data.
Sewell spent her last day praising officers at a promotion ceremony and thanking them for their “unyielding commitment to the protection of our city.”
“You will never be just a number to me,” she said. “On your shoulders, you carry the weight of a safe city.”
After Sewell shook hands with the promoted employees and handed them their certificates, a short video tribute played and the crowd gave her a standing ovation. Sewell, typically stoic and straight-faced, dabbed tears from her eyes. Then she laughed and motioned for everyone to stop applauding.
“She broke the glass ceiling,” said mayoral adviser Ingrid Lewis-Martin before handing Sewell a bouquet of flowers. “She made the way for young girls to know that anything is possible.”
In her year-and-a-half at the helm, Sewell oversaw drops in homicides and shootings, following a spike in violent crime during the pandemic. Police statistics show that homicides are down more than 14% compared to two years ago, while shootings have decreased more than 30%. Some other crimes, including robberies and assaults, increased during the same time period.
At the mayor’s urging, Sewell brought back the NYPD’s controversial anti-crime units, now called Neighborhood Safety…
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