NEW YORK. Keechant Sewell will be the next New York Police Commissioner (NYPD), the first woman to lead the largest police force in the United States. Mayor-elect Eric Adams announced this at New York Post, describing the current Nassau County Police Chief Investigator and former NYPD captain as “a proven crime fighter with the emotional intelligence to offer both the security and justice that New Yorkers deserve.” The 49-year-old African American will replace Dermont Shea, commissioner for two years and close to retirement after 30 years in service. He will take office on January 1, when Adams takes office as mayor.
Sewell, a native of Queens, will also be the third black person in NYPD history to lead the force, after Benjamin Ward and Lee Brown, in the 1980s and 1990s. It inherits a changing police department, which in recent years has had to go back to fighting crime, especially violent crime of shootings and killings, after years of the lowest figures ever seen.