City, state officials sit on sidelines as feds investigate Adams

Corruption amongst city officials in New York City is nothing new, but never have the probes into malfeasance by appointed city officials been so widespread as today.

Even before the five boroughs merged in 1898 to become the Greater City of New York, a name not often used today, there was the Lexow Committee, which uncovered widespread police corruption. The committee was named after Clarence Lexow, a Republican New York State senator who called for a bi-partisan investigation into the NYPD at the behest of a prominent reformer, the Rev. Charles Parker.

The probe uncovered how police officials, acting on orders from Democrats affiliated with Tammany Hall, collected bribes and/or extorted money not only from gamblers and prostitutes, but also their police colleagues who, in order to advance in rank, were forced to pay tribute to their Tammany Hall patrons.

This scandal led to the election of William Strong as mayor in 1895 and the subsequent appointment of Theodore Roosevelt as president of the four-person Police Board. Roosevelt established civil service rules for the NYPD that governed appointments and promotions, in an effort to eliminate payoffs.

For the Democrats, the unsavory disclosures proved only a temporary setback. By the time the boroughs merged, they were back in power until another investigation into police corruption initiated by Alderman Henry H. Curran in 1912. The “Curran Committee” also found a vast network of corruption in the police department. One of the accused, Lieutenant Charles Becker, paid for his actions with his life when he became the first and only NYPD officer sentenced to die in the electric chair.

Another reform mayor, Republican John Purroy Mitchel, was elected to clean house, but after just one term in office Tammany Hall convinced the public that it had enough of the “do-gooder,” and took charge of the city again for the next sixteen years.

Things got even more crooked during Prohibition and for a second time the New York State legislature opened an inquiry into the NYPD and the city’s judicial system. The chief prosecutor was Judge Samuel Seabury, for whom the hearings are most remembered. Mayor Jimmy Walker, a dapper dresser who let his patronage appointees run roughshod, dodged most of the bullets fired at him early on during the investigation. But he couldn’t explain the $26,000 in bonds paid to him by the taxi industry, which the city regulated, without incriminating himself. 

Rather than face charges, he resigned and fled to Europe. Shortly thereafter, Governor Franklin Roosevelt removed the New York County sheriff, Thomas Farley, whose job was apparently more lucrative than the mayor’s. He had $360,000 in his bank account that he couldn’t account for.

A year and a half later, reformer Fiorello LaGuardia became mayor. It took three terms for another Democrat to get elected and it resulted in the same outcome. Mayor William O’Dwyer and his police commissioner resigned from office after yet another gambling scandal involving the NYPD came to light.

Since then, there have been two other high-profile investigations into the NYPD. The Knapp Commission and the Mollen Commission, but in those instances, Mayors John Lindsay and David Dinkins ordered them and in both occasions their police commissioners left office never to return.

With all of the headlines in recent weeks involving Mayor Eric Adams’ political appointees, it begs the question of why no city or state official formed a committee or appointed a special prosecutor to get to the bottom of what’s going on? Several officials have resigned, but left many questions unanswered. In the past, the allegations that have been reported by the press would have been enough to fire up at least one ambitious politician to take the lead and make a name for him or herself going after the mayor and his administration. But there’s been nothing. Nothing from the City Council, nothing from the governor, from the district attorney’s office, from the State Attorney General or from the Department of Investigation and very little from the mayor himself, although that is probably a decision based on advice from his lawyers now that he has been indicted.

Adams will continue to proclaim his innocence, just as Jimmy Walker and William O’Dwyer did while behind the scenes deals were worked out. In order to do so, some members of his administration will have to become sacrificial lambs. Meanwhile, the public advocate, Jumaane Williams, who is next in line to become mayor should Adams resign, can start measuring the windows at City Hall for new curtains.

Bernard Whalen is a former NYPD lieutenant and co-author of “The NYPD’s First Fifty Years” and “Case Files of the NYPD.”