NYPD Union Tweet On Chiara De Blasio Violates Charter, Pols Say

NEW YORK, NY — The New York City Police Department's union may have violated the city's charter when it tweeted out personal information about Mayor Bill de Blasio's daughter, who was arrested at a George Floyd protest near Union Square, elected officials said this week.

The City Council has demanded an investigation into a since-removed Tweet that posted the arrest report for Chiara de Blasio from the Police Benevolent Association, who represents the NYPD, Gothamist first reported.

Council Speaker Corey Johnson and Council Member Ritchie Torres, the chair of the Oversight and Investigations Committee, argue the Tweet not only violated City Charter rules about releasing private information, but might have been a more sinister move to harm the mayor.

"We are also concerned that the timing of this release — in the midst of severe public unrest — strongly suggests willful conduct calculated to inflict personal harm on the Mayor and a member of his family," the council members wrote.

De Blasio expressed similar concern in a press conference following Chiara's arrest, which Johnson and Torres reference in their letter. Chiara, 25, was taken into custody on Broadway near 12th Street May 30 and given a ticket for blocking traffic before being released.

“The SBA did something unconscionable, and it's not just because it's my daughter," de Blasio said when asked about the arrest. "They do this all the time with people's privacy. When they leak information on someone, it's absolutely inappropriate.”

Johnson and Torres specifically pointed to City Charter rules that prohibit city employees from releasing private information that wouldn't normally be available to the public. And, if it is done frequently as the mayor said, they said the conduct also violates a rule that requires city employees report this behavior.

"Publishing the private information of the Mayor's daughter on Twitter, as @SBANYPD
egregiously did a few weeks ago, is an illegal invasion of privacy that cannot and must not go unpunished," Torres tweeted Tuesday. "We live in a new age of police accountability."

SBA president Ed Mullins told Gothamist that he was not responsible for the data breach, saying he copy and pasted the information from a reporter for the Daily Mail who initially tweeted it and believe it had been scrubbed of personal information.

“That was my mistake on an assumption,” he told Gothamist.

A DOI spokesperson told Gothamist they received the letter, but declined to comment, and an NYPD spokesperson said the matter is under internal review, according to the outlet.

Read the full Gothamist report here.