NEW YORK—New York City Police Commissioner Edward Caban on Sept. 12 resigned from his position, days after his phone was seized in a federal investigation.
Caban said he made the decision to resign after the “news around recent developments” had “created a distraction for our department,” according to an email to the police department obtained by The Associated Press.
“I am unwilling to let my attention be on anything other than our important work, or the safety of the men and women of the NYPD,” he said.
The Epoch Times contacted the New York Police Department for more details but didn’t get a response by publication time.
New York Mayor Eric Adams said on Sept. 12 that he had accepted Caban’s resignation. “I respect his decision, and I wish him well,” he said in a streamed appearance from the Mayor’s mansion.
Caban had been on the job for a little more than a year, having been appointed by Adams in July 2023.
The resignation comes as part of a federal probe of high-ranking members of the Adams administration.
On Sept. 4, federal law enforcement officials seized Caban’s phone and those of his brother James, Adams’s first deputy mayor, schools chancellor, and others close to the mayor.
Federal agents also raided the homes of several administration officials. Federal authorities have not disclosed the subject of the investigation or whether there are multiple probes.
Adams said that Tom Donlon, a law enforcement veteran with experience in anti-terrorism efforts, has been appointed interim commissioner.
Donlon served as the city’s director of the Office of Homeland Security, led the FBI’s national threat center, and played a role in investigating the 1993 World Trade Center attack. He started his own security firm in 2020.
In November 2023, agents took the mayor’s phone and iPad in order to examine them for evidence relating to his fundraising activities during his 2021 mayoral run.
As police commissioner, Caban played a central role in Adams’s efforts to fight crime and promote public safety. But under Caban’s leadership, the NYPD’s recent record on this front has been mixed.
In other categories of serious crime, such as rapes and robberies, the rates are higher than for the same period last year, the figures show.
A total of 1,119 rapes were reported in the city in the first nine months of 2024, compared with 1,008 in the same period in 2023, while 11,536 robberies were recorded, up from 11,358 in the equivalent 2023 period.
In an email to The Epoch Times, Brendan McGuire, an attorney at the law firm WilmerHale, which is representing Adams in the federal probe, said he had no comment.
