City Hall Seeks New York Police Commissioner’s Resignation

Mayor Eric Adams’s administration is seeking the resignation of Edward A. Caban, New York’s police commissioner, less than a week after agents seized the commissioner’s phone in one of several federal investigations that have engulfed City Hall, according to two people with knowledge of the matter.

Commissioner Caban has been under growing pressure to step aside since last Thursday, when news broke that federal agents had taken his cellphone, as well as phones belonging to several of the highest-ranking officials in the Adams administration.

The mayor, a retired police captain who served on the force with the commissioner’s father and was close to him, appointed Mr. Caban in July 2023, making him the department’s first Latino commissioner.

But the seizure of the phone belonging to the man in charge of the nation’s largest police force sent shock waves through the agency’s headquarters and City Hall. Agents last week also seized the phones of the first deputy mayor, Sheena Wright; her partner, Schools Chancellor David C. Banks; the deputy mayor for public safety, Philip Banks III; and a senior adviser to the mayor, Timothy Pearson, a retired police inspector who is one of the mayor’s closest confidants.

The mayor’s own phones were seized in a separate earlier investigation.

None of the people have been charged with a crime, but the raids buffeted the administration of Mr. Adams, which was already reeling from other legal problems. They include a federal inquiry into whether Mr. Adams and his campaign conspired with the Turkish government to collect illegal foreign donations in exchange for pressuring the Fire Department to sign off on a new high-rise Turkish consulate in Manhattan, despite safety concerns.

It was not clear whether Commissioner Caban would actually resign. The Police Department did not immediately offer a comment.