For Immediate Release - July 17, 2023
Media Contact: Eliel Cruz. press@justicecommittee.org
If Mayor & New NYPD Commissioner Want to Do Right by Black & Latinx Communities, They Must Fire Officers Who Kill & Abuse New Yorkers
In response to Mayor Eric Adams’ appointment of Edward Caban as NYPD Commissioner following Keechant Sewell’s abrupt resignation, the Justice Committee released the following statement from Executive Director Loyda Colon (they/them):
"As a 40-year-old racial justice organization with deep roots in the Nuyorican community, we are disgusted by the PR hype regarding the incoming NYPD Commissioner’s Puerto Rican heritage. As is true with Mayor Eric Adams, Edward Caban’s race and ethnicity are meaningless given his track record of violence against poor and working-class communities of color in our City. Along with his racial profiling and misconduct history, Caban has been participating in the systemic violence of the NYPD for decades. As First Deputy NYPD Commissioner under Mayor Adams and former Commissioner Sewell, in the last year and a half, he was party to the rise in unconstitutional and racially motivated stops of Black and Latinx New Yorkers, the increased criminalization of unhoused New Yorkers, and those struggling with mental illness, and the obstruction and delay of discipline for the officers who killed Kawask Trawick, Delrawn Small, Allan Feliz, Antonio Williams and Ronald Anthony Smith, some of whom have had fire-able charges substantiated against them for years. Talk is cheap. Rather than giving us rhetoric about representation and diversity, Caban and Adams need to eliminate the NYPD’s abusive practices and immediately fire the officers who killed these New Yorkers and all officers who engage in misconduct."
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