During his nearly two decades as head of the NYPD’s sergeants union, Ed Mullins has fought virtually every attempt to curb brutality and corruption. MrJDWalsh reports on the volatile union leader’s anti-anti-police agenda
Photo: Malike Sidibe On a recent Monday morning, Joe Piscopo — “former Saturday Night Live superstar” — used his AM-radio show to decry the plight of Italian Americans. City officials in Newark, New Jersey, had just taken down a statue of Christopher Columbus, and Piscopo feared other effigies of the Italian explorer might be under threat. “If these creepy losers, these thugs, go near that statue in Columbus Circle, we will mobilize,” he vowed.
During his nearly two decades as president of the SBA, Mullins has used that attention to fend off virtually every attempt, no matter how modest, to curb police brutality and corruption. In his view, police are not above the law. Rather, the law should empower police to operate however they choose, almost entirely free of oversight or consequence.
Mullins was sitting behind his desk in the union’s headquarters in Tribeca. Like roughly a quarter of all NYPD officers, he drives into work each day from his home on Long Island. He hadn’t put on his tie yet, and, like the other SBA officials milling around the office, he wasn’t wearing a mask. He was, however, wearing a gun on his belt. The union’s bylaws require its president be a police officer, which means Mullins, though he works full-time as a labor boss, is still a sergeant in the NYPD.
After briefly considering enlisting in the Marines, Mullins joined the NYPD in 1982 and was assigned to the 13th Precinct in Gramercy Park. It was a tumultuous period in the city’s history — “the bad old days,” as Mullins puts it. The NYPD was reeling from budget cuts, the crack epidemic raged, homicide was on the rise, and whites were fleeing the city.
Mullins recalled the lessons from that case in 2016, when an NYPD sergeant named Hugh Barry was called to the apartment of Deborah Danner, another elderly Black woman with a history of mental illness. When Danner swung a baseball bat at Barry, the sergeant shot and killed her. A grand jury indicted Barry on murder, manslaughter, and negligent homicide. Mullins sprang into action. “People don’t even understand the work that I put into that case, the money that we spent on that case,” he told me.
Mullins admits that police unions have lost some power, but he insists that the SBA has never stood in the way of reform. His complaint with the latest batch of reforms is that the police unions were not consulted. He made the same argument about stop and frisk, claiming the unions did not have a seat at the table when police came under fire for using the policy to target people of color.
Like the SBA, the other four unions representing the NYPD are led by white men — a lack of diversity that doesn’t sit well with many officers of color. “The unions have made almost no effort to acknowledge that they have a diversity problem,” says Philip Banks, the first Black officer to serve as chief of department, the NYPD’s highest uniformed position.
The union’s full-fledged attack on the mayor is remarkable given how little he has done to actually challenge the NYPD. It was de Blasio, after all, who increased the department’s budget, supported the use of 50-a to shield police misconduct from public scrutiny, and brought back Bill Bratton, who was well liked by the rank and file.
Mullins is halfway through his final full term as union president. In 2025, he’ll be 63, the NYPD’s mandatory retirement age. When I asked him if he would ever consider running for office, he seemed to light up. “A lot of people want me to, to be honest. I get begged all the time,” Mullins said. “I’ve been asked to run for Senate, asked to run for Congress, asked to run for mayor.” He claims to be in regular contact with the White House, providing advice on issues of law enforcement.
Earlier this month, the SBA joined 17 other police unions to sue the city in an effort to block the Eric Garner Anti-Chokehold Act. I asked Mullins if Caruso’s stance on hog-tying has made him rethink the use of choke holds. Mullins said he’s open to a ban, but then immediately launched into a defense of the tactic and the officer who killed Garner. “I don’t believe that Pantaleo did anything wrong,” he said. “I believe that the circumstances were bad, and it just ended tragically.
“I had a friend call and ask if I was okay,” says Tramell Thompson, one of the prayer marchers. “She said protesters were getting locked up. I said, ‘I’m with the church. Why would I be getting locked up?’ Then I realized — Oh, this became a Blue Lives Matter march all because the SBA decided to have their own narrative. I was so angry.”
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