There’s good reason that the city Department of Investigation (DOI) has sometimes been called the Department of Whitewash (DOW), with a mayoral-appointed commissioner often covering up problems for Hizzoner and other higher-ups in favor of exposing penny-ante corruption by relatively little guys and gals. But Margaret Garnett is no DOW commissioner, rightly body-slamming Bill de Blasio with a damning report on how the NYPD’s protective detail was repeatedly misused by the First Family as movers and a limo service by the First Children.
As exposed by this newspaper, highly trained and armed police detectives loaded up First Daughter Chiara’s Brooklyn apartment and delivered her belongings to Gracie Mansion. The Daily News also reported that the cops were used over and over by First Son Dante on trips back and forth to Yale.
Oh, and DOI says that NYPD Inspector Howard Redmond not only failed to cooperate, but actively obstructed the probe; the investigators have referred the inspector’s actions to the Manhattan district attorney to decide on any criminal charges.
We don’t begrudge de Blasio his security detail, not even on his political travels. A mayor and his immediate family are entitled to 24-hour NYPD protection for the entirety of his time in office. But Chiara was already out of the house and in college when dad was sworn in, so she was not covered, as was her choice. At first, Dante, then a student at Brooklyn Tech, had a constant minder. When Dante turned 18 and headed to New Haven, he dissolved his police detail (presumably with his dad’s knowledge).
That should have been the end of the kids’ involvement with the protective squad, absent dad or mom, and not the hogwash offered by the NYPD’s John Miller yesterday that the cops always want to protect the First Family at all times. Either a person is a formal protectee or not. And neither child met that definition. De Blasio cries about inaccuracies in the DOI report. The only inaccuracy is his claim to have followed the rules.
