One Police Plaza

Shilling for de Blasio

April 1, 2019

Once a political operative, always a political operative.

How else to explain Phil Walzak’s appearance at a fundraiser for South Bend Indiana Mayor Pete Buttigieg, where Walzak shilled for his boss, NYC Mayor Bill de Blasio?

The New York Times headlined its story on the fundraiser: “New York Buzzes Over a Mayor Mulling a 2020 Bid (Buttigieg, Not de Blasio).” Walzak opined to the Times that while Buttigieg had “a compelling story and message,” de Blasio “has a real record to run on.”

Oh, by the way, Walzak has a day job. He serves as the NYPD’s deputy commissioner for public information. His actions have caused some at Police Plaza to wonder whether he serves the department or the mayor’s political agenda.

In response to questions from NYPD Confidential, Walzak emailed the following: “Let me ask you this question: is this a topic you have decided to include in your next upcoming column or are you in a consideration period?”

His reticence notwithstanding, the question of his priorities is compelling because for the past 40 years or so the NYPD has prided itself on appearing to be largely free of politics. Because of that, Walzak’s appointment a year ago was controversial. PBA president Pat Lynch called it “the clearest sign yet that the de Blasio administration thinks the NYPD’s primary mission is to serve as a political tool ….”

A former top police official said at the time, “Will he [Walzak] use the NYPD platform for the greater promotion of Bill de Blasio to the national spotlight or secondarily to help his wife achieve whatever her goals are?”

While it is not uncommon for City Hall to select department spokespersons, the best of them — Alice T. McGillion under Ed Koch and Tom Kelly under Rudy Giuliani — were able to serve the NYPD while remaining in City Hall’s good graces. As far as I can recall, neither ever publicly shilled for a mayor’s political agenda.

But the relationship between the department and the de Blasio administration is different from past administrations. While de Blasio has basked in the afterglow of the city’s low crime numbers, many of his actions appear to be critical of the NYPD. These include: his public criticism of a sergeant for fatally shooting an emotionally disturbed woman in the Bronx before the internal investigation was completed; his $50 million award to the so-called Central Park 5, despite the belief by top department officials that while the five had been mistakenly accused of rape, they had been beating up people in the park that night; and the mayor’s attempts to link the city’s low crime numbers to his signature policy of neighborhood policing despite qualitative evidence that it had no more to do with reducing crime than did Ray Kelly’s stop-and-frisk.

The mayor’s most successful move was his appointment of Jim O’Neill as NYPD commissioner. A thoroughly modest man (in contrast to predecessors Kelly and Bill Bratton), O’Neill has proved pliant in acquiescing to mayoral appointments like Walzak.

More recently, O’Neill accepted the appointment of Ernest Hart as deputy commissioner for legal matters after City Hall rejected his initial two choices. Perhaps this can be Hart’s first assignment: to determine the appropriateness of Walzak’s actions.