Ed Mullins, the controversial head of one of the largest cop unions in New York City and a bitter foe of police reform, resigned from his position as Sergeants Benevolent Association president following early-morning FBI raids on his office and home on Tuesday.
Federal agents hit the Manhattan headquarters of the Sergeants Benevolent Association and Mullins’s home on Long Island, according to the New York Post, in what the FBI said was part of an “ongoing investigation” that the Post said involves accusations of mail and wire fraud. Agents seized “computer gear” from his residence, per the Post, and were seen carting off boxes of documents from SBA headquarters. The SBA did not respond to a request for comment.
The SBA is the second-largest of the city’s five police unions, which represent the city’s nearly 35,000 officers, including Mullins, who is a sergeant. He was elected president of the SBA in 2002 and “has been a thorn in the side of four commissioners,” Bill Bratton, the police commissioner under both Bill de Blasio and Rudy Giuliani, told New York last year. On Tuesday night, the SBA announced that Mullins had resigned upon request by the union’s executive board:
The New York Daily News reports that Mullins officially filed for retirement Wednesday after turning in his gun and badge. Sgt. Vincent Vallelong, previously the SBA’s vice president, will now take over as president.
Mullins has frequently made offensive comments on race and crime, once comparing an arrested NFL player to a “wild animal.” Many of these comments came from the official SBA Twitter account, which Mullins controls, and included calling Representative Richie Torres “a first class whore” and Dr. Oxiris Barbot, then the city’s health commissioner, a “bitch.” In another, the Civilian Complaint Review Board is called “a disgrace” for a tweet reminding New Yorkers about their Fourth Amendment rights, which protect them from unlawful search and seizure. Last year, the SBA account posted the arrest report on Chiara de Blasio, the mayor’s daughter, which included personal information such as her birth date and home address.
Earlier this year, the CCRB recommended three misconduct charges against Mullins: two counts of offensive language for the comments against Torres and Barbot and one count of abuse of authority for the arrest report. Last month, Mullins was put on trial in a departmental hearing on the charges.
