De Blasio Misused NYPD Security Detail, Investigators Find

NEW YORK CITY — A blistering 47-page report found Mayor Bill de Blasio and his family misused a city-funded security detail for personal errands and an ill-fated presidential bid.

De Blasio found himself on the defensive Thursday, swatting back question after question during his daily briefing over the Department of Investigation's findings.

Investigators failed to question top NYPD officials who fielded numerous security threats to the entire de Blasio family for years, he said.

“I am literally shocked at the number of inaccuracies in this report,” he said. “I am shocked that a professional agency would not have pursued interviews with the most important figures in the security field in this city.”

But de Blasio's overall defense sidestepped many questions raised by the report.

The investigation found, among other misuses of public resources, that:

• The mayor's security detail helped his daughter Chiara de Blasio move from Brooklyn to Gracie Mansion in 2019.
• Dante de Blasio, the mayor's son, received numerous rides to and from Yale University, as well as across the city, despite having declined a security detail.
• The city spent $319,794 for de Blasio's security detail to travel on his failed 2020 presidential campaign's trips.
• The NYPD inspector in charge of the First Family’s security detail obstructed the investigation by trying to destroy his NYPD-issued phone and deleting all communications from his devices.

De Blasio effectively used his detail as a "concierge service," said Margaret Garnett, the commissioner for the Department of Investigation, in a news conference before de Blasio addressed the report.

“I think that our work speaks for itself,” she said.

De Blasio, in his response, called himself a public servant whose first responsibility remains to be a father and a husband. Recent changes in political culture meant his family faced threats that he entrusted the NYPD security detail to handle, he said.

The DOI investigators did not interview John Miller, the NYPD's deputy commissioner of intelligence and counterterrorism, who assessed a number of threats, de Blasio said.

"To me, that omission is just plain unprofessional and unfair and inaccurate,” he said.

Miller said NYPD intelligence logged 308 separate threats to de Blasio, including 33 to the mayor's family. One such threat involved a man in 2019 who tried to perform a "citizen's arrest" on de Blasio at Gracie Mansion, he said.

Three weeks later, that man shot a Gambino crime family boss in Staten Island in a bizarre, QAnon-linked incident, Miller said.

"The mayor and the First Lady since the beginning of the administration have accepted full protection, based on the recommendations of the NYPD's intelligence bureau," Miller said. "We also recommended at the beginning of the term that his children also received the same full coverage."

But, as the report notes, Chiara and Dante de Blasio declined full coverage as adults.

While Miller said NYPD security tried to provide as much security as de Blasio's children would accept, the DOI investigators had a different view.

"In other words, since the dissolution of their standing security details, Dante and Chiara’s use of NYPD resources is driven solely by their preference and the availability of personnel and vehicles, without regard to any particularized threat assessment or the relative security concerns posed by any given situation; they may be unaccompanied in potentially high-risk situations and accompanied in low-risk situations," the report states.

De Blasio defended his use of city security during his failed presidential campaign. Being mayor of New York City carries inherent "vulnerabilities," he said.

Other New York City mayors such as Ed Koch and John Lindsay ran for other political offices, he noted.

"The notion that someone participating in the democratic process, running for office, which is how our system works, should be treated different: no, I don't hear that, nor do I understand it," he said.

De Blasio, either personally or through his campaign, has not reimbursed the city for the expense of paying his security detail to travel on his campaign or having them transporting campaign staffers.

"Both reflect a use of NYPD resources for political purposes," the report states.

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