Mayor’s Office Denies NYPD’s Shea, Monahan Being Replaced

Mayor Bill de Blasio’s press secretary on Sunday night denied social media chatter that NYPD Commissioner Dermot Shea and NYPD Chief of Department Terence Monahan will be replaced.

“This is not true,” Freddi Goldstein tweeted in response to a tweet by Newsmax media channel’s John Cardillo, who wrote, “NYPD sources telling me these rumors are flying around the dept: Police Commissioner and Chief of Dept. out, major shuffling of chiefs and units. Being told Juanita Holmes, a de Blasio ally, will be next Commissioner. Holmes, a Chief, was brought out of retirement in Jan.”

NYPD Deputy Commissioner Richard Esposito also said that the rumors were not true.

From all this talk, it seems that there are tensions behind the scenes about the fate of two NYPD officers involved in confrontations with protesters in recent days.

Both of the officers were suspended without pay on Friday.

One of them allegedly knocked down a female protester outside the Barclays Center in Brooklyn in the early days of the George Floyd protests.

Another cop was seen on video pulling down the mask of a male demonstrator and spraying the man’s face with pepper spray.

Multiple police officers have been under siege during the protests, trying to fend off looters, brick and bottle throwers and the burning of NYPD vehicles.

Officer Yayon Jean Pierre was stabbed in the neck last week while working an anti-looting post, and two other officers were shot in the hand. Several other officers have been hit by cars, one of them seriously wounded.