Federal agents on Tuesday raided the offices of a New York City police union, the Sergeants Benevolent Association, and the Long Island home of its bombastic leader, who has faced city authorities over his incendiary tweets and their hardline tactics.
FBI spokesman Martin Feely said the officers were “conducting police action in connection with an ongoing investigation.”
In addition to the union’s Manhattan headquarters, agents also searched the home of union president Ed Mullins in Port Washington, Long Island, Feely said.
Messages seeking comment were left with Mullins and the union.
Mullins, who is also a police sergeant, is in the midst of disciplinary proceedings by the department for tweeting last year New York police documents relating to the arrest of Mayor Bill de Blasio’s daughter during protests over the murder. George Floyd at the hands of the Minneapolis police.
Mullins’ department’s trial began last month, but was postponed indefinitely after one of his attorneys suffered a medical emergency.
Mullins’ attorney denies violating the department’s guidelines, arguing that documentation with Chiara de Blasio’s personally identifiable information, such as her date of birth and address, was already posted on the Internet.
Mullins has also sued the department, claiming they were trying to gag him by questioning him and recommending disciplinary action for his missives online.
When asked about the raid on Tuesday, Mayor de Blasio told reporters that he did not have enough information to comment.
“I think it’s been a divisive voice,” de Blasio said of Mullins. “But that doesn’t make me feel anything in this situation because I don’t know what’s going on. All I hear is an FBI raid. I don’t know the details, I don’t know who it is targeting. I really want to hear the details before I do more. comments”.
The Benevolent Sergeants Association represents some 13,000 serving and retired NYPD sergeants, a rank higher than police officer and detective but lower than captain and lieutenant.
Under Mullins’ leadership for nearly two decades, the union has fought for a pay upgrade – with contracts that have resulted in 40% pay increases – and has held a prominent position in the anti-reform movement.
Along with Mullins’ regular appearances on cable television networks such as Fox News and Newsmax – including one in which he was photographed in front of a QAnon mug – perhaps the union’s most powerful megaphone is his Twitter account, with 45,000 followers. , which Mullins directs himself, often to fiery effect.
In 2018, amid a spate of incidents in which police officers were doused with water, Mullins suggested it was time for then-Commissioner James O’Neill and department head Terence Monahan to “consider another profession” and tweeted that ” O’KNEEL must go! “
O’Neill replied that Mullins was “a bit of a keyboard gangster” who rarely showed up for department functions.
Last year, Mullins came under fire for tweets in which he called former city health commissioner Dr. Oxiris Barbot “pu ..” and Congressman Ritchie Torres “pu .. top.”
Mullins was upset by reports that Barbot refused to give police face masks in the early days of the pandemic and angered by Torres’ requests that a possible reduction in police work be investigated in September 2020.
Torres, who is gay, denounced Mullins’ tweet as homophobic.
On Tuesday, Torres referenced that tweet when reacting to news of the raid, writing: “Ed Mullins, who famously called me” pu … first class “for daring to ask questions about @SBANYPD, just received a FBI first-class raid. “
Ed Mullins, who famously called me a “first-class whore” for daring to ask questions about the @SBANYPD, just got a first-class raid from the FBI. https://t.co/MgHwNdJ3g8
— Ritchie Torres (@RitchieTorres) October 5, 2021
In 2019, it wasn’t the tweets that got Mullins into trouble, but the comments she made in a radio interview suggesting that murdered Barnard College student Tessa Majors had gone to the park where she was murdered to buy marijuana. Police later arrested three teenagers, saying they had been stabbed during an attempted robbery.
The Majors ‘family called Mullins’ comments on the radio show “deeply inappropriate” to blame the victims and urged him “not to participate in such irresponsible public speculation.”
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