The city’s new sheriff has a long history of claiming the NYPD is systemically racist — including associating slave patrols with modern policing.
Mayor Zahran Mamdani on Friday announced the appointment of Edwin Raymond as mayor of New York City, saying he “represents the kind of public servant New Yorkers deserve.” Principled, courageous and deeply committed to justice.
But Raymond, a retired NYPD lieutenant and agency whistleblower, is as radical as the socialist Mamdani, and has made a series of divisive statements — and, as a cop, once given a slice of domestic violence because he was black, The Post can reveal.
“With slave patrols, some people feel like this thing was never designed to work,” Raymond said in a clip from the interview. It was published later Friday on X By the end of the wake.
“So the slave patrols were basically militias, if you will, during the time when slavery was legal, and their job was to catch runaway slaves. After the Civil War, a lot of them literally moved into police departments,” Raymond added, claiming that the NYPD and other police departments are byproducts of state-sanctioned patrols in the 17th and 18th centuries.
In his 2023 book “Annoying Cop,” Raymond asserted: “Today’s police force is the slave patrols of the 19th century and the black codes of the Jim Crow South.”
“Anyone who knows their history realizes that it is not an exaggeration to draw a straight line from there to here,” he wrote. “The NYPD model has been packaged and sold by politicians and New York’s top cops who have made millions from it.”
In 2015, Raymond and 11 other black and Latino cops made headlines by filing a federal lawsuit against the NYPD, accusing transit bureau supervisors of imposing arrest quotas for people of color.
The NYPD strongly denied these accusations. The case was dismissed, but is currently on appeal.
In 2017, the NYPD launched an internal investigation against Raymond because he gave a domestic violence suspect a chip for being black.
The investigation led to Raymond being found guilty of failure to make arrests, improper supervision, and failure to keep records of activities, resulting in him receiving 20 days off, according to disciplinary records he released. 50-a.org.
During a 2024 interview, Raymond, 40, claimed that the 2014 strangulation death of Eric Garner at the hands of an NYPD cop over the sale of untaxed cigarettes was all down to racism and meeting quotas.
“What I saw was systemic and persistent racism, you know, in the form of pressure for arrests and summonses,” he said. Brooklyn Savvy Talk Show on YouTube. “When you’re a plainclothes officer, not only do you have a quota, it has to be a felony.”
Raymond will replace Anthony Miranda, who remains in the position of former Mayor Eric Adams, who was removed as mayor on Thursday.
He will oversee an office of 150 deputies and other staff who serve as the city’s top civil enforcement agency under the Treasury Department and handle issues such as enforcing cigarette taxes, property fraud and regulating illegal pot shops.
A retired NYPD cop said Mamdani was an “idiot” for hiring him.
“He sued [NYPD] “Before,” said the policeman. “He describes himself as a police relations expert, but all he does is talk bad about the police department. He had a bone to pick with white supervisors. How do you connect that to slavery?”
The mayor’s office did not respond to messages.
Additional reporting by Sonia Gugliara.