Edward Caban

Representation matters to Edward Caban, the NYPD’s first Latino police commissioner. “In those days,” Caban said in a speech after his appointment, referring to the beginning of his NYPD career, “the top bosses of the police department didn’t really look like me. Police officer Eddie Caban could not walk into the 4-0 Precinct, look up at the leadership photos hanging on the wall, and envision his future…Given how many great leaders of Hispanic descent have come before me in the NYPD, to be the first Hispanic police commissioner is an honor of the highest measure.” 

Caban, a career cop, is the son of a retired NYPD detective, and during his long tenure with the department, he’s climbed the its ranks at a steady clip, despite accumulating myriad misconduct allegations from both civilians and the NYPD along the way. After Adams’s last pick for commissioner considered disciplining one of the mayor’s closest allies in the department, perhaps an NYPD insider like Caban was a natural choice for top cop.

Based on a review of police files, the Post reported last year that he was among more than two dozen law enforcement officers accused 30 years ago of cheating on the a sergeants exam. He was found not guilty after an internal investigation and avoided disciplinary action. Almost immediately after becoming a sergeant that year, Caban was hit with a complaint alleging he shoved someone, searched their vehicle, and cursed at them, but the person didn’t make themselves available to investigators, so the complaint was dismissed. Three years later, he was disciplined for abuse of authority after a Civilian Complaint Review Board investigation substantiated a claim that he refused to give a woman the names of two patrol officers whom she accused of wrongfully arresting her and cursing at her.

None of this impacted Caban’s rise. When he was a police captain, in 2006, a man accused Caban of cursing at him and making a vulgar and threatening comment. The unnamed 60-year-old accuser told CCRB investigators that Caban asked for his ID while he was waiting for his daughter in Harlem, then cursed at him, slammed him against the hood of a squad car, and arrested him when the man refused to provide ID. Later, while in a holding cell, the man complained about back pain, and he alleged that Caban then told him he was “getting the ready with the broomstick,” which he interpreted as an allusion to the assault of Haitian immigrant Abner Louima, who was sodomized with a toilet plunger by an NYPD officer in 1997. The CCRB substantiated the man’s claim of a retaliatory summons during the incident, but cleared Caban of making threats or cursing, after a police witness maintained that the future commissioner was “very nice and polite” during the wrongful arrest. The allegation of excessive physical force was also determined by the CCRB to be “unfounded.”

In spite of these potholes in the road to success, Edward Caban grabbed the reins of the nation’s largest police force in 2023, when original Adams appointee Keechant Sewell—the first Black woman to hold the title—stepped down as police commissioner. Sewell was reportedly pressured out of the position after she refused to let Adams ally Jeffrey Maddrey, the NYPD’s chief of department, off the hook for his alleged involvement in voiding the arrest of a former cop who had allegedly brandished a gun at some teens in a park. Caban was elevated from the rank of first deputy commissioner, a role that Adams himself pushed for Caban to fill in 2022 over higher-ranking NYPD chiefs. 

As commissioner, Caban cleaned house, ushering out several high-ranking NYPD officials in August—including Department Advocate Amy Litwin, who actually made the recommendation that Sewell discipline Maddrey—and attending a tourism security forum in Qatar during a department-wide mobilization over pro-Palestine protests in October. (Luckily, Caban had enough free time to squeeze in an induction into the Freemasons, along with Maddrey and Adams, in September.) A disclosure to the Conflict of Interest Board later revealed that Caban’s trip to Qatar was bankrolled by the Qatari government, along with trips to Florida and Australia.

 While complaints against the NYPD are at an 11-year high under the Adams administration, Caban reportedly “swooped in” to soften or nullify disciplinary action against cops for misconduct such as sleeping with a witness and lying about it and using an illegal chokehold.  The NYPD did not respond to multiple requests for comment about Caban.

In April, the family of Kawaski Trawick was dealt the full blow of Caban’s tendency to side with his officers as their search for justice for Trawick’s 2019 killing came to a painful close. Officers Herbert Davis and Bernard Thompson, who shot and killed Trawick after spending less than two minutes in his Bronx home, avoided criminal charges in court and were cleared of wrongdoing in a stilted, painfully slow internal investigation by the NYPD—and then, thanks to Caban, kept their jobs in the department.

But in the end, there was one job in the NYPD that Caban couldn’t manage to save—his own. On September 12, Caban resigned from his role as the NYPD commissioner in the midst of multiple investigations involving himself, other high-ranking members of the NYPD, and his twin brother, James Caban, possibly as part of an investigation into nightlife enforcement by the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York (although, per the Post, the feds may also be poking into Edward’s Qatar-funded trips abroad).

Let’s take a moment to talk about James Caban. James joined the NYPD in 1989 and became a sergeant in 2001—but was kicked off of the police force after he was found guilty of grand larceny in the second degree for threatening to arrest Juan Alvarez, a cab driver who James believed stole $100 out of a purse his wife left in the cabbie’s vehicle. Prior to the larceny charge, James racked up six substantiated CCRB complaints for two 1996 incidents. One incident included substantiated claims that James used his gun as a club, conducted an unlawful premises search, and abused his authority; in the other, James was found guilty of punching and kicking the complainant, cursing at them, and, again, abusing his authority. No arrest was made in either incident. James later went on to become a landlord in the Bronx who made Bill de Blasio’s list of the city’s worst landlords in 2013, and was sentenced to 30 days in jail by a housing court judge for refusing to make City-mandated repairs to his building. He reportedly preferred to make renovations to the nightclub on the building’s ground floor, formerly known as “Twins.” 

Reports emerged in September 2024 that James used his influence with his twin brother and other members of the NYPD to make money as a “nightlight security consultant,” promising to sweep noise violations and underage drinking complaints under the rug for clubs in Queens and Manhattan willing to pay for his services. As one Brooklyn bar owner told NBC New York: “[James] said he will mediate my issues…he said he could bring the NYPD to me and resolve our issues is what he said he could do.” But the bar owner said he declined after James asked for $2,500: “After he said I had to pay him for it, I felt like he was trying to extort me and I said, ‘Nah I’m good.'”

On September 5, the Caban brothers’ phones were seized by federal agents. That same day, Adams’s good friend Timothy Pearson’s phone was similarly seized, and the homes of Philip Banks III, Terence Banks, and David Banks and Sheena Wright were raided. (They also, if you can believe it, had their phones taken away). Then, two days later, Edward’s home was raided by IRS agents as a part of the same nightlife enforcement investigation. Public calls for Edward Caban’s resignation immediately emerged, from City Council members and the New York Post editorial board, and internal pressure reportedly mounted within City Hall. Although he denied any wrongdoing through his lawyers, Caban eventually folded. “My complete focus must be on the NYPD — the department I profoundly honor and have dedicated my career to serving,” Caban said as he stepped down. “However, the noise around recent developments has made that impossible and has hindered the important work our city requires.” 

After Caban resigned from his post, the New York Times reported that federal investigators were reviewing text messages between the ex-commissioner and James dating back to January 2018. According to the report, Caban’s lawyers maintain that he is not the target of the investigation.

As the former commissioner exited, Adams praised Caban as someone who “dedicated his life to making our city safer.” But looking back on Caban’s tenure, which he used to shield cops who kill and maim New Yorkers, one has to ask: Safer for whom?