FBI Raids NYPD Union Headquarters (UPDATED)
Photo by Stephen Lovekin/Getty Images for Sony Pictures Entertainment.
The FBI raided the headquarters of a New York Police Department union on Tuesday, according to multiple media reports.
An FBI spokesperson told The New York Daily News that the bureau was “carrying out a law enforcement action in connection with an ongoing investigation” into the Sergeants Benevolent Association.
The SBA represents 13,000 NYPD members and is the fifth-largest police union in the United States, according to its website.
The New York Daily News reported:
The union is headed by [Ed] Mullins, a brash leader known for his over-the-top social media attacks on NYPD leadership and Mayor [Bill] de Blasio. Mullins, a member of the NYPD since January 1982, took over as head of the SBA on July 1, 2002.
“No comment for now,” said Mullins’ lawyer Andrew Quinn about the morning raid. The typically outspoken Mullins could not immediately be reached for a response.
He came under fire in 2020 when he posted the arrest report of de Blasio’s daughter, Chiara de Blasio, on social media following her arrest during George Floyd protests. Mullins was hit with departmental charges for the violation of NYPD rules.
In another instance during the pandemic, Mullins tweeted that the city’s health commissioner was a “b—h” who had “blood on her hands” after she sparred with the NYPD over half a million hospital-grade face masks.
In a piece written earlier this summer for the MailOnline, the Greenwich Village native tore into the soon-to-depart mayor’s two terms in City Hall.
“Since first taking office in 2014, de Blasio’s incendiary anti-police rhetoric has already resulted in three police officers being executed while sitting in police vehicles, Molotov cocktails being lobbed at officers and into police vehicles, armed assaults on police facilities, cops being pelted with debris, and wholesale damage to police and public property,” he wrote.
UPDATE: On Tuesday night Mullins resigned.
The union said in a statement, “Given the severity of this matter and the uncertainty of its outcome, the SBA Executive Board has requested that President Mullins resign from his position as SBA President.”
