LUTHMANN NOTE: I’ve spent nearly sixteen months with the threat of arrest hanging over a return to New York. Crooked District Attorney Michael McMahon turned a personal grievance into a police matter after I reported on his handling of threats against Muslims. I asked Jessica Tisch to withdraw the I-card and have yet to see a decision that settles its status or explains its basis. Loft is asking a question I recognize. Who has the authority to give you an answer when the NYPD’s own conduct is the subject of the complaint? In my case, a detective put the power of the complainant into words. In Loft’s case, the neighborhood is still asking for a room. Tisch should answer both. If she can’t make her department do that much, City Hall should find a commissioner who will. This piece is “One Police Plaza’s Selective Hearing,” first available at NY News Press.
STATEN ISLAND, N.Y. – When we asked Loft what had become of the NYPD’s relationship with the North Shore, the answer was “they literally are missing in action.”
Loft, a Staten Island resident who agreed to speak under that name, was describing what happens when the people who used to connect a neighborhood to its police department become hard to reach. Tenant leaders and other residents had told Loft they felt they had lost a dependable contact.
“They feel like when something does happen, they don’t have that connection anymore that they get a response immediately,” Loft said. “The point of having an officer assigned to community work is that somebody should know the people on the block well enough to hear about a problem while there is still time to do something about it.”
Loft put the grievance in writing on November 1. The 3:16 p.m. email, signed “Concerned North Shore Community Residents,” went to Deputy Commissioner Alden Isiah Foster and a list that included Council Member Kamillah Hanks, District Attorney Michael McMahon, and City Hall addresses. It asked NYPD Commissioner Tisch to review the lieutenant overseeing Staten Island Community Affairs and consider a replacement. It questioned why a sergeant described as assigned to the 120th Precinct was reportedly working from the borough office.
The arrangement could have an ordinary explanation. Loft wanted the department to give one. The writer estimated a petition had about 400 signatures. The complaint’s central demand was simpler than any head count. The person assigned to community relations should be “visible, accessible, responsive, respectful, and willing to work directly with the people.”
Foster asked for a phone number five minutes later. At 3:45 p.m., a “recall notice” appeared in the thread. Loft asked to keep the conversation in writing or hold a town hall, then asked about the recall. Foster said he was unsure why the recall notice had appeared.
At 7:34 p.m., he wrote that he would reach out “in the next few days to host conversations.” On November 3, Loft copied Rick LaRivière and asked the question the first reply had left open.
“Which Community are you reaching out to?” The email called for a borough town hall open to all Staten Islanders, “NOT AN INVITE ONLY DISCUSSION.” The chain we reviewed ends without a reply to that request or a substantive response from the elected offices copied on the original complaint.
Ask Loft about the elected officials who used to answer, and the name that comes up is Debi Rose, the former District 49 council member.
“Debi Rose had relationships, built relationships,” Loft said, and “gave her personal number to plenty of us in the community.”
Asked if the North Shore would be dealing with the same disconnect if Rose were still in office, Loft said Staten Island would be “a lot better across the board.” Asked about help from her successor, Council Majority Whip Kamillah Hanks, Loft laughed.
“Who’s that?” It was a sharp answer from somebody whose complaint had actually gone to Hanks. She represents the people asking to be heard and sits on the Council’s Public Safety Committee. She can ask the NYPD for an accounting, help convene the meeting, and sit there while her constituents ask their own questions.
The City’s own records show what Loft is talking about. In May 2014, more than 60 Staten Islanders turned out at Curtis High School in St. George to discuss street safety. Rose and three NYPD officers sat on a panel that took residents’ concerns about speeding and enforcement.
In 2018, Mayor Bill de Blasio’s office announced a town hall with Rose at the same school as part of a week of public events on the island. Loft’s memory of earlier City Halls has a concrete counterpart in that 2014 public meeting.
Local residents got a location, an occasion to speak, and people in front of them who could act on what they heard. In Loft’s account of what neighbors are saying today, “it has not been this way in the last 10 years.”
“The last administration put the community first alongside the crime,” Loft said. “Now communities forgotten about.”
Loft dates the deterioration to Tisch’s leadership and holds Mayor Zohran Mamdani responsible for the response today. The timeline puts both where they belong. Eric Adams appointed Tisch in November 2024, and Mamdani chose to keep her.
When Loft says the neighborhood no longer recognizes the relationship it had with the NYPD, the commissioner can call in the people who made the assignments and find out what changed. The mayor who kept her in the job can require her to answer in public. Whatever happened under earlier administrations, those decisions belong to the officials in office now.
Loft had a specific picture of the work a Community Affairs officer should do. The officer should hear what tenants and neighborhood leaders are dealing with, take that information to patrol supervisors, and give the people who raised it a way to follow up.
“They’re not using their sources that they have,” Loft said. “The loss of contact matters especially to families looking for something for their children to do. Where is the youth strategies? Where is all these youth programs? Where are they?”
The NYPD advertises Blue Chips, Explorers and OPTIONS, and both North Shore precincts list local contacts. Foster can answer Loft with dates, locations, sessions that actually ran, and aggregate attendance. He can explain how a tenant leader reaches the assigned officer and who follows up when that officer is unavailable. A family trying to get a teenager into a program needs that information before the next press conference.
Bring the crime numbers to the same meeting. Loft’s impression of a citywide rise is at odds with the department’s weekly reporting and its October 6 report. NYPD figures through September showed citywide major crime down 6.6 percent, shooting incidents down 11.6 percent, and murders down 19.8 percent.
The local figures tell two different stories. In the reports for the week ending November 1, the 120th Precinct logged 872 major-crime complaints year to date against 988 in the same period the year before. In the 121st Precinct, the total moved from 790 to 785, while felony assaults went from 206 to 236, shooting incidents from one to four, and shooting victims from one to five. The 121st’s increase comes from a small shooting count. It still leaves actual families and blocks to talk about.
Tisch can explain what improved in the 120th and what her department is doing about the increase in assaults in the 121st, face to face, in front of people who live in both.
Loft was emphatic about who bears the brunt when the department runs this way.
“These police officers are working beyond what they should be working,” Loft said. “And us as the community, we back the NYPD, but the NYPD up top isn’t backing the NYPD and is not there for the community.”
The City Comptroller’s June overtime report put projected fiscal 2026 uniformed overtime at roughly $890 million, down from $960 million the previous year, and found that the department’s plan lacked enforceable fatigue protections. Those figures are citywide.
Foster can tell the North Shore whether its outreach assignments are being staffed consistently, where vacancies or reassignments have cut into the work, and how often the same officers are asked to cover the gaps.
Loft believes race has a lot to do with who feels welcome in the room and who gets the benefit of the doubt inside headquarters.
“You wanna feel comfortable when you go into a room,” Loft said, explaining that a uniform can already make a resident uneasy and that residents may speak more candidly with officers they feel can relate to them.
Loft described the department’s senior uniformed command as overwhelmingly white and, when asked whether the problem amounted to racism, answered, “Absolutely.”
That is Loft’s assessment. The record also includes First Deputy Commissioner Tania Kinsella, who started on patrol in the 120th and later commanded it. She was the first woman of color appointed first deputy commissioner.
Tisch can answer the narrower question about senior bureau posts with actual appointment and promotion data. The City’s 2026 racial equity plan already identifies leadership demographics and promotion rates by race and ethnicity as measures to track. The department should show residents those figures for the commands they are asking about.
Former Chief of Department Jeffrey Maddrey was the example Loft pointed to when the conversation turned to discipline. Loft argued that Black officers can face consequences that better-connected white officers escape, and said: “If you’re white and privileged, you’re allowed to get away with it.”
Maddrey’s case has its own evidence and disputes. Lieutenant Quathisha Epps’s December 2024 EEOC charge alleged sexual coercion tied to overtime. Maddrey’s lawyer denied coercion and described the relationship as consensual. Tisch announced his suspension in January 2025 as authorities executed search warrants. This outlet previously challenged Tisch’s handling of Maddrey’s case and examined the overtime dispute around Epps’s allegations. The records reviewed here give us no final adjudication resolving those competing accounts.
Loft’s question deserves a comparison of who faced similar allegations, what investigators substantiated, and what command did with those findings.
There is a comparison within Community Affairs itself. In “NYPD’s Two-Tier Justice,” Luthmann previously examined the departure of civilian director Brian Adams and the discipline imposed on Deputy Chief Richie Taylor. The department confirmed that Adams was out. The reported allegations about his hours, use of a department vehicle, and statements to investigators came from a source, and Adams’s representative denied them. Taylor kept his rank and was transferred under a reported agreement that included approximately $20,000 in repayment, a penalty equal to 60 days’ pay, and a year of dismissal probation.
Those are substantial penalties. Employment status, prior history, and the evidence in each file can account for different outcomes.
The question for Tisch is which of those differences actually mattered. A clear explanation would give the public a way to judge Loft’s charge of favoritism without asking it to take anyone’s side on faith.
The 120th Precinct Loft raised in the staffing complaint is also the precinct identified in Luthmann’s records request concerning the disputed I-card. The August 18, 2026 request identifies NYPD complaint 2025-120-006454 and asks for the full card and its audit history.
Luthmann’s published November 2025 demand to Tisch and Corporation Counsel Muriel Goode-Trufant identifies Detective John Wilkinson as assigned to the 120th Precinct Warrant Squad. Community Affairs and the detectives had different jobs. What the two records put in front of us is the difference in access to police authority on the same part of Staten Island. Loft could get an offer of a call and a promise of conversations. The district attorney, acting as the personal complainant, had a detective discussing felony treatment over email.
McMahon’s complaint, as described in the published police paperwork and Frank Report’s examination of it, arose after he received an email on July 13, 2025. He told police he feared for his safety. The reported theory was criminal contempt involving a protection order. Luthmann says the email was a mass newsletter carrying another writer’s piece, contained no threat or reference to McMahon, and reached an address that had already been receiving the outlet’s publications.
He says he was in Florida and had never been served with the order he was accused of violating. Each of those assertions can be checked against the order, the service record, the original email, and the distribution history. The public deserves to know which of those records the detectives checked before treating a publication sent to a mailing list as grounds for a felony arrest.
Then there is the detective’s own voice. In the July 21 recording published by NY News Press, Wilkinson confirmed that McMahon was the complaining witness and said, “With the victim who it is… I get whatever I want.”
He told Luthmann’s lawyer the police intended to treat the case as a felony and discussed obtaining an arrest warrant. The records reviewed here contain no warrant for the alleged newsletter violation. That is why the case is particularly egregious. The detective invoked the identity of a powerful complainant while discussing the force the department could bring to bear on a journalist over a mass mailing.
The recordings document what the detective said. It calls for an inquiry into whether McMahon’s position affected what was done. If a prosecutor’s title counted for more than the evidence in his personal complaint, that would be corruption in the use of police power. Tisch had reason to order an independent review then, and the public has reason to ask for its findings now.
An I-card is an internal NYPD investigation alert that an officer can encounter when checking a person’s nam…
