The mayor ought to remove NYPD Commissioner Keechant Sewell for inviting rapper Cardi B, a convicted felon, to speak at the Police Academy, according to a former city officer who was fired from the department for associating with Trump adviser Roger Stone.
Officer Sal Greco called out Sewell in a Monday court filing in his case against the NYPD, and said Mayor Adams should dismiss her, and anybody else who associated the rapper on her Feb. 23 visit.
Greco stated on Tuesday that "the NYPD broke their own patrol guide procedure" when they incorrectly and deliberately associated and appeared with Cardi B, a known criminal and gang member, while escorting her around a restricted police facility. "If I were fired because of my association with Roger Stone, the police commissioner, every other officer, and every civilian employee of the department who interacted with Cardi B would also be fired," the employee said.
The rapper showed up at an NYPD “Girl’s Talk” event at the Queens Police Academy, where she spoke to and danced with dozens of teens, giving out prizes and offering advice about peer pressure.
Greco was fired in August after the NYPD brought internal charges accusing him of associating with Stone — who was convicted of lying to Congress in 2019 and sentenced to 40 months in prison before Trump pardoned him.
At Stone's sentencing hearing in Washington in 2020 and the weekend of the uprising on January 6, 2021, the former police officer was present. There was no evidence he participated in the takeover of the US Capitol.
The NYPD claimed that Greco was serving as Stone's paid, armed bodyguard during his departmental trial. The Oathkeepers, who guarded Stone and played a crucial role in the failed uprising, were implicated by the department as having connections to Greco.
His amended lawsuit against the city, filed Monday in Brooklyn Federal Court, referenced the 30-year-old rapper’s admitted ties to the Bloods gang, her tweets talking about criminal activity and her arrest on felony charges for her role in a 2018 bottle-throwing attack at the Angels Strip Club in College Point, Queens.
In one 2017 tweet referenced in the lawsuit, the “Bodak Yellow” and “WAP” entertainer boasted that she was “a big time Blood since I was 16.”
She also talked about being a member of the Bloods in a 2018 GQ profile.
Greco's lawyer, Eric Sanders, called his firing "hypocritical," and argued the police regulation forbidding officers from socialising with known criminals is too wide, and used arbitrarily to punish cops the department doesn't like.
That just serves to highlight the hypocrisy of the actions taken by the Police Department. This First Amendment material is standard. Who establishes what is good and bad? said Sanders.
He also questioned what advantage the NYPD gets from having Cardi B enter a secure police facility to speak to young people, even if it's in a mentorship role.
“If that’s true, then I guess we should take Roger Stone and put him in the police society, have him speak, right? He’s paid his debt to society. As a matter of fact, he’s been pardoned.
Announcing to the Daily News on Tuesday that Cardi B's "hobnobbing with NYPD brass violates the very same regulation Greco was fired and lost his career, pension, and his ability to work as a police officer in any jurisdiction under," Stone also criticised the event with Cardi B.
One and only one standard is possible. In this case of blatant double standards, I'm hoping the court will give Officer Greco justice," Stone said.
After entering a guilty plea to misdemeanour charges related to a violent altercation with bartender sisters Jade and Baddie Gi at the Queens strip club, Cardi B, whose actual name is Belcalis Almanzar, was given a 15-day community service sentence. By March 1st, she had to finish her community service or spend 15 days in jail.
According to the authorities, Cardi B was one of the roughly ten participants in the melee. She was first charged with felony assault.
The NYPD and Cardi B’s representatives did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
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