Mayor Adams defended NYPD Commissioner Edward Caban’s decision to save the job of a police officer who admitted to submitting a phony COVID-19 vaccination card and then lying about it, saying Tuesday the cop in question ultimately suffered a “huge penalty.”
As first reported Monday in the Daily News, Caban overrode the department’s own recommendation that Officer Kimberly Lucas be terminated for her transgressions, opting instead to dock her 85 vacation days and slap her with a year’s probation.
Prior to Caban intervening, Anne Stone, an NYPD assistant deputy commissioner of trials, ruled Lucas should be fired for lying to the NYPD’s Internal Affairs Bureau. Stone also wanted to show some level of leniency, although less than Caban, and recommended that Lucas be permitted to “file for vested-interest retirement.”
But Caban ruled that termination was too severe, a decision backed Tuesday by the mayor.
“There were extenuating circumstances with this young lady,” Adams said during his weekly off-topic press briefing.
“She was given 85 days suspension — 85 days — and one year probation. That is a huge, huge penalty,” he said. “The commissioner wanted to send the right message, but I never want Commissioner Caban and any of my commissioners to be robotic. I want them to be human beings, and I want them to make the right call.”
One cop, who asked to remain anonymous to avoid retribution, told The News last week that Lucas’ admission that she lied would have a practical bearing when it comes to testifying under oath — something officers are often required to do.
“If she ever takes the stand, her confession to lying under oath would discredit her. Your word has to be like gold. It can’t be suspect in any way,” the NYPD source elaborated Tuesday. “It would destroy any court case where her veracity is called into question.
The decision marks Caban’s first departure from what’s known as the department’s “disciplinary matrix,” an internal punishment rubric that lays out the proscribed penalties for various forms of police misconduct — a fact first reported by news outlet The City.
The NYPD’s disciplinary matrix stipulates that lying in official statements should be punished with termination “absent extraordinary circumstances.”
In his memo recommending that Lucas remain with the department, Caban appeared to make the case that her nine years of “exemplary service,” “favorable performance evaluations” and no “formal disciplinary history” qualified as “extraordinary circumstances.”
But Caban has been less lenient with other cops facing discipline. According to The City, he sought the termination of an officer for failing to show up for a meeting with Internal Affairs — a penalty Caban recommended despite the officer’s service as a Marine in Afghanistan.
Adams said Tuesday no other officer “was fired” for that same type of infraction Lucas admitted to.
The revelation’s about Lucas’ fate come months after The News first revealed Caban passed on disciplining an NYPD deputy chief who yanked a female protester’s hair and shoved her to the ground. Over the past year, Caban has blocked disciplinary cases involving 54 officers from going to trial, as reported recently by ProPublica and The New York Times.
Lisa Zornberg, Adams’ chief City Hall counsel, argued Tuesday that Caban is perfectly within his rights to do that in certain cases.
“This process is transparent,” she said.
Adams also defended his record when it comes more broadly to police accountability and transparency, pointing to “beefed up” inspection teams tasked with rooting out cops who “are not following the rules” as one of his top reforms.
But the biggest reform he cited fell more under the category of policing rather than police accountability.
“The best reform we can have is people being safe,” he concluded. “Having police officers respond courteously, professionally and respectfully to the people in the city that they have and driving down crime, that is a huge reform for me.”
