Keechant Sewell, current chief of detectives for New York’s Nassau County, will become the first woman to lead the NYPD since it was created 176 years ago, according to the announcement made by the city’s mayor-elect, Eric Adams.
Adams noted, according to local media such as The New York Post, that Sewell, 49, “is a proven crime fighter with the experience and emotional intelligence to offer New Yorkers the security they need and the justice they deserve. ”
The mayor-elect, a former New York police captain, promised when he took office that he would appoint a woman as the chief police officer and conducted a nationwide selection process. According to the NY1N portal, Adams also considered former Seattle chief Carmen Best, Philadelphia commissioner Danielle Outlaw, former Newark chief Ivonne Roman and New York police patrol chief Juanita Holmes as candidates.
This medium ensures that Sewell, born in Queens (New York), will be the third black person to lead the New York police, after Benjamin Ward and Lee Brown, who served in the 1980s and 1990s.
He will inherit a police department with some 35,000 ever-changing officers, which has tried over the past decades to keep levels of violence down that are now on the rise, mainly influenced by the coronavirus pandemic.
Mario Twitchell is an accomplished author and journalist, known for his insightful and thought-provoking writing on a wide range of topics including general and opinion. He currently works as a writer at 247 news agency, where he has established himself as a respected voice in the industry.
