Less than a day after the FBI raided the New York Police Department (NYPD) Sergeants Benevolent Association (SBA) union’s headquarters and his Long Island home as part of an ongoing investigation reportedly involving mail and wire fraud, the union’s president Ed Mullins resigned on Tuesday evening, The Hill reports.
According to the FBI, the raid of Tuesday morning was part of an ongoing investigation, but has not yet disclosed further details on what precipitated the raid.
FBI spokesman Martin Feely confirmed the law enforcement agency agents raided the lower Manhattan offices of the country’s fifth-largest police union with 13,000 active and retired police sergeants among its members, leaving the building with open boxes that included documents, a jacket and a backpack.
During the raid in Mullins’ home in Port Washington, Long Island, the officers reportedly took away computer gear.
Last month, Mullins faced trial on three departmental charges: one count of abuse of authority for posting on the social media the arrest report of Mayor Bill de Blasio’s daughter Chiara after she was detained during the George Floyd riots last summer, and two counts of offensive language in connection with the verbal attacks on the city health commissioner Oxiris Barbot.
He called Barbot a b**ch for not providing his officers with sufficient PPE and also called Representative Richie Torres a “first class whore” for passing laws to defund police.
The union boss is also notorious for his foul-mouthed Twitter tirades via the official SBA account, regularly blasting politicians and celebrities who speak ill of the police or whom he perceives as defending criminals.
According to sources who spoke to the New York Times, the public corruption unit of the US Attorney’s office in Manhattan was also involved in the probe
The SBA executive board informed its members in a letter that the nature and scope of FBI’s criminal investigation has yet to be determined though it’s clear that the apparent target is Mullins, and also affirmed that it would fully cooperate during the investigation.
The SBA executive board also noted that due to the severity of the matter and the uncertainty of its outcome, they asked Mullins to resign from his position as SBA President.
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