The mayor made the remark during a Tuesday press conference while talking about wanting to address the city’s shortage of lifeguards.

He said hiring migrants for lifeguard posts would make sense since they “are excellent swimmers” before lamenting that the “only obstacle is that we won’t give them the right to work.”

Matamoros, Mexico

Some immigration advocates blasted Adams’ comment as distasteful, given that many newly arrived migrants crossed the treacherous Rio Grande on the Mexican border to make it into the U.S.

But the mayor said Wednesday afternoon that wasn’t at all what he was getting at.

“I go to the [migrant shelters], and I’m blown away by how many of the West Africans — swimmers, how many of the South Americans — swimmers. I say, ‘How many of you guys know how to swim?’ Hands go up,” he told reporters at City Hall after an unrelated press conference.

“So we have these capable people who know how to swim from West Africa, from Ecuador, from South, Central America, from Mexico, and we have a shortage of lifeguards, so if we start planning out now, we can be prepared.”

Murad Awawdeh, president of the New York Immigration Coalition, didn’t buy the mayor’s explanation and said he should apologize for his “out of line” remark.

“His comments on asylum seekers being ‘excellent swimmers’ implies that because some immigrants had to swim or wade across water on their dangerous journeys to seek safety in the United States, that they would make good lifeguards,” Awawdeh said.

“This comment is racist, and the mayor should not be making light of the perilous and often life-threatening journeys people are forced to make to escape violence and persecution. It’s demeaning and dehumanizing.”

Staff shortages in the city’s lifeguard ranks started hampering the city during the COVID-19 pandemic, part of a pattern seen across the U.S.

Last summer, just about 750 lifeguards were staffing the city’s 14 miles of beaches and dozens of public pools. That’s far short of the 1,400-1,500 lifeguards that the Parks Department aims to hire ahead of every summer.

In defending his comments Wednesday, Adams noted that he has proposed hiring migrants to fill the city’s shortages of nurses and food service workers, too.

“Now why people want to just hang on to the swimming … I’ve been saying this over and over again: Let people work,” he said.

migrants

The letter, signed by 17 Council members and 14 mostly Muslim community groups, took particular issue with claims from the mayor and his press office that Naveed was axed last month because he didn’t put “bringing hate crimes down first.”

“To suggest that he prioritized himself over the city’s mission of combating hate crimes against all New Yorkers is not only unfounded, but deeply offensive to those who have worked closely with him, and who he has helped over the years,” read the letter, a copy of which was exclusively obtained by the Daily News.

“Questioning his integrity and character is not just disheartening; it is an affront to everything we stand for as a city.”

Asked for a response to the letter Wednesday, Adams’ office referred to comments the mayor made about Naveed last month.

In those remarks, the mayor dismissed that Naveed was canned due to his Muslim faith. Instead, he suggested Naveed didn’t “live up” to the job, given that there has been a recent spike in hate crimes in the city.

The Hamas Oct. 7 terror attack in Israel and the war in Gaza that followed have sparked protests and anger across New York.

As of April 14, there had been 96 reported anti-Semitic hate crimes this year, a 45% increase compared with the same time frame in 2023, and nine reported Islamophobic hate crimes, compared with just one in the same span in 2023, NYPD data show.

In responding to Naveed’s discrimination accusation, Adams also noted he has other Muslim employees in his administration.

The signatories on Wednesday’s missive include Brooklyn Councilwoman Shahana Hanif and Manhattan Councilman Yusef Salaam, the chamber’s only two Muslim members.

Among the community groups that signed on to the letter is Majlis Ash-Shura, an umbrella organization representing more than 90 local mosques.

That group has a history of supporting Adams that includes inviting him to deliver remarks at its 30th anniversary gala in 2019, when he was Brooklyn borough president. But the group has recently been critical of politicians who aren’t calling for a ceasefire in the Israel-Hamas war; Adams is among those who haven’t. More than 35,000 Palestinians have been killed in Gaza as part of the military campaign Israel launched in response to Hamas’ Oct. 7 terror attack.

Assignment- CLOSE RIKERS

Wednesday’s letter echoed some of Majlis Ash-Shura’s concerns over the tumult in the Middle East, charging there has recently been “a change” in the Adams administration’s “approach with vulnerable communities, raising concerns about fair representation for all New Yorkers.”

Hanif, a frequent Adams critic who is co-chairwoman of the Council’s Progressive Caucus, said in an interview that part of the letter is about what she sees as a disregard for Palestinians and Muslims amid the devastation in Gaza.

“Since Oct. 7, the Adams administration has consistently dismissed discrimination against Muslims and Palestinians,” she said.

Naveed declined to comment on the letter to the mayor.

As first reported by The News, Naveed was booted on April 16 from his job as executive director of the Office for the Prevention of Hate Crimes. He told The News he wasn’t given a reason for his firing, but that he believes it was the result of his Muslim faith. He also said he has hired an attorney and that he’s in the process of filing a legal claim alleging he was the victim of discrimination.

It’s unclear who’ll replace Naveed, and his former office now has only one staffer.

The letter from the Council members and the community groups argued it’s preposterous for Adams to point blame at Naveed for a hate crime uptick, since his administration has cut funding and staff for the Hate Crimes Prevention Office. The letter also contended City Hall’s treatment of Naveed sets a troubling precedent.

“Despite the presence of a few Muslim members within this administration, using their mere existence as grounds to dismiss legitimate claims of discrimination is unacceptable,” it said. “Publicly singling out an individual like Mr. Naveed and attributing circumstances solely to unsubstantiated performance issues, while disregarding such discrimination claims, sends a chilling message to others and creates a barrier that discourages reporting workplace harassment, hate crimes, discrimination, bullying and bias incidents without fear of retaliation.”

The first batch of closures marks a drop in the bucket as there are believed to be some 3,000 illegal pot shops operating in the Big Apple, most of which cropped up in the wake of the state legalizing marijuana in 2021 without immediately rolling out a comprehensive legal market.

In a press briefing at City Hall on Tuesday morning, Mayor Adams acknowledged there’s a lot more work to do.

“They are just getting started,” he said of the Operation Padlock strike force, which is being led by the city Sheriff’s Office.

The operation was launched in response to Gov. Hochul and Albany lawmakers granting the city expanded enforcement powers last month that allows it to close down illegal weed shops without first securing approval from the state.

Before the state gave the city the beefed up authority, Adams promised repeatedly that he would shut down every unlicensed weed shop in the city “within 30 days” of being awarded the expanded enforcement powers. But on April 30, shortly after the state finally gave him those powers, Adams tempered expectations, saying he’d instead make “a substantial dent” in reducing the number of illicit shops within 30 days.

The locations of the 75 newly-shuttered shops weren’t immediately known. An Adams spokeswoman declined to immediately identify them.

The spokeswoman also would not give a specific number of shops that Operation Padlock aims to shut down each week, but said the strike force will have 15 teams deployed across the city doing closure operations each day.

Going forward, enforcement teams will “proactively monitor” establishments that have been shuttered to make sure they stay closed, the spokeswoman added.

The 75 fresh padlock cases resulted in nearly $6 million in penalties being issued against the operators of the shops in question, according to Adams’ office. It’s unclear how many of those penalties have so far been collected.

A cannabis enforcement-related issue that has lately caught the attention of lawmakers is court processing.

Under the expanded enforcement authorities, the city’s Office of Administrative Trials and Hearings, known as OATH, must adjudicate any weed shop padlock case within five days.

OATH is already scrambling to address growing case backlogs that have resulted in the average adjudication time for summonses being 12 days in the current fiscal year, according to data contained in the latest Preliminary Mayor’s Management Report.

Manhattan Councilwoman Gale Brewer, a Democrat who chairs the Council’s Oversight and Investigations Committee, sent a letter to OATH Commissioner Asim Rehman last week raising concern about how the agency will be able to comply with the five-day timeline, given existing backlogs.

In a Tuesday response letter obtained by the Daily News, Rehman wrote that OATH is “actively working to hire additional staff” in order to quickly adjudicate the expected influx of new weed shop padlock cases.

OATH spokeswoman Marisa Senigo said the agency is, among other positions, looking to hire new judicial hearing officers, attorneys and support staff. She did not provide a specific number of new hires that the agency is looking to make.

According to four sources with direct knowledge of the matter, the speaker broached the proposal during a conference meeting Monday with fellow Democratic members.

All city agency commissioner posts are being considered as part of the proposal to expand the Council’s so-called “advice-and-consent” powers, said one of the sources. However, the source cautioned it’s not likely that the Council will seek approval powers for all posts.

A spokesman for the speaker’s office did not immediately return a request for comment Tuesday.

The agencies currently under consideration to be included in the advice-and-consent process are the Buildings Department, the Office of Emergency Management, the Administration of Children’s Services, the Department of Citywide Administrative Services and the Department of Youth and Community Development, two sources briefed on the matter told The News.

Two of the sources familiar with the speaker’s proposal noted that it did not seem like there’s interest from the Council at this point for requiring advice-and-consent on any of the uniformed commissioner positions.

The behind-the-scenes moves come as Mayor Adams is pushing for the Council to approve controversial lawyer Randy Mastro as a replacement for current Corporation Counsel Sylvia Hinds-Radix. As The News reported Monday, Mastro, who served as a deputy mayor in the Giuliani administration, has started talking to Council members about taking on the corp counsel role, even though he’s running into serious pushback.

The corporation counsel, who leads the Law Department and represents the mayor and other city employees in various legal matters, is currently one of the only top city government positions that require Council approval before a hire can be made by the mayor.

Other posts that currently require advise-and-consent approval from the Council include the Department of Investigation commissioner, some city Planning commissioners and the Taxi & Limousine Commission chief.

The corporation counsel post did not require Council consent until 2019, when city residents adopted a City Charter amendment via referendum that made the job fall within the chamber’s advice-and-consent purview.

The pathway to the latest proposed expansion of the Council’s advice-and-consent powers isn’t entirely clear.

According to one Council source, such an expansion would require a ballot referendum on top of any bill being passed. But another source claimed it could be accomplished simply through adopting a bill.

The conference meeting Monday was a “preliminary conversation about adding more categories” to the advice-and-consent process via legislation, according to another Council source.

The source noted that if such a bill passes, a City Charter amendment — which can only be done by a ballot referendum — would likely need to be enacted for the new categories to become legally binding.

Louis Cholden Brown, an attorney who served as former Council Speaker Corey Johnson’s top lawyer, agreed that a referendum is likely necessary — and said the Council would need to act quickly if it hopes to expand advice-and-consent this year.

“A referendum is absolutely necessary. The Council would need to pass by end of June to qualify for ballot this year,” Cholden Brown wrote on X of the new bill being considered.

But the mayor would not elaborate on what influenced his decision to let Greco, whose homes were raided by the FBI earlier this year, come back, only saying that employment matters such as hers are handled on “a case by case basis.”

“The final decision is up to me, and that’s the final decision we made,” he told reporters at City Hall.

Greco, who serves as Adams’ Asian community liaison and has been a prolific fundraisers for his various political campaigns over the years, came back to work in early May after going on paid sick leave in February in the wake of FBI agents raiding her two Pelham Bay homes.

The exact focus of the investigation that prompted the raids remains unclear, and Greco hasn’t been accused of wrongdoing.

The searches of her homes came on the same day the feds raided the New World Mall in Queens, where Greco helped host multiple fundraisers for Adams’ 2021 campaign that generated tens of thousands of dollars in contributions, some of which have been identified by the news outlet The City as potentially illegal.

Also at the time of the raids, Greco was known to be facing scrutiny from the Department of Investigation over allegations that she misused municipal resources, including by having a subordinate help renovate her kitchen.

A separate federal investigation into allegations that the Turkish government funneled illegal foreign money into Adams’ 2021 campaign coffers prompted FBI agents to raid the home of another Adams aide, Rana Abbasova, last fall.

Abbasova was suspended from her job shortly after the raid, and she has not been allowed to return to work, according to sources familiar with the matter. Adams has not been accused of any wrongdoing in the probe.

Adams declined to explain at Tuesday’s news conference why Abbasova, unlike Greco, hasn’t been allowed to come back.

“I talked about it already, there’s no more I have to add to that,” he said.

In addition to being allowed to return to work, it was revealed last week that Greco has since last summer received a $96,267 raise.

Asked Tuesday what prompted the raises, Adams said Greco was among members of his administration who came onboard with salaries that “were not in parity” with their job descriptions.

“To their credit, they didn’t complain every day,” he said. “They continued to do the job.”

The newly envisioned police academy with its expanded mission will remain in its College Point, Queens, location, but will get a name change, according to the sources, who said monikers floated include the Public Safety Academy and the Public Safety Training Academy.

The effort is being driven by Deputy Mayor Phil Banks, two administration officials directly familiar with the matter told The News. The expansion marks a significant shift, as currently all agencies have their own small academies where their enforcement personnel are trained.

Banks, who served as the NYPD’s chief of department, has been working on the academy expansion project for two years, according to one source, who said the deputy mayor views it as a way to put forth a “national model” for other cities.

That official noted that part of Banks’ motivation is rooted in his “concerns about performance and quality” in certain agencies, such as the parks and sanitation departments. It was unclear if the training would just be physically located at the academy or if there would be a shift in how the training programs are managed.

Some of Banks’ concerns have been addressed by the Sanitation Department through its efforts to use cameras to track illegal dumping. Other concerns over questions of jurisdiction between the Parks Department police and the NYPD continue to linger, the source said.

An official announcement touting the rebranding and restructuring of the academy is anticipated as early as this month, two of the sources noted. The NYPD did not immediately respond to a request for comment Tuesday. A City Hall spokeswoman said “all announcements are made if and when appropriate.”

According to one of the sources, Banks’ office on May 3 held a briefing with high-level staff from all city agencies with enforcement arms to inform them the administration will centralize training for all of them at the NYPD’s College Point building.

Among the agencies included in the planned overhaul are the Departments of Correction, Sanitation, Probation, Parks, Health and Mental Hygiene, Homeless Services as well as the Sheriff’s Office, Health + Hospitals and the Taxi and Limousine Commission, according to the sources.

All of those agencies were on the May 3 briefing, the digital invite for which was billed “Public Safety Academy,” one official noted.

“It’s professionalizing the idea of how to do enforcement training,” the official said.

Concerns and unanswered questions remain, though.

“He’s trying to break down the silos, and that’s a good thing,” another administration official said, but added that “the devil’s going to be in the details.”

It’s also not entirely clear how much the new training structure will cost, given that it’ll likely require an expansion of facilities at the Police Academy.

The effort to broker private sit-downs with Mastro has unnerved some Council members, who question why they should meet with him even though he hasn’t yet been officially nominated by the mayor for the corporation counsel position.

Among the skeptics is Manhattan-Bronx Councilwoman Diana Ayala, a Democrat who serves as the chamber’s deputy speaker. She told the Daily News on Monday she recently rejected an offer from City Hall to meet with Mastro because she doesn’t see a need to speak with him outside of a formal Council nomination hearing.

“Whatever he needs to say can be said at a hearing should one be called,” Ayala said.

Mastro did not return a request for comment.

Adams’ office said late Monday it’s “the norm” for the administration to introduce any “potential nominee” to Council members.

“Collaborating with our partners at the City Council is integral to moving our city forward, and the administration appreciates feedback from the Council on any nomination process,” Adams spokeswoman Liz Garcia said.

Members who have taken Adams’ office up on the offer to meet with Mastro include Manhattan Councilman Keith Powers, a Democrat who chairs the Council’s Rules Committee, multiple sources familiar with the matter told The News.

The corporation counsel is one of the only senior, non-elected positions in city government that requires approval from the Council before a hire can be made. Powers’ committee is tasked with reviewing any corp counsel nomination before it can move to a full Council vote.

Powers declined to comment Monday. Sources familiar with the matter said Mastro pitched himself in his meeting with Powers as a veteran lawyer who can “rebuild” the Law Department and recruit experienced attorneys.

“I don’t know if they’re definitely warming up [to Mastro],” one source said of Council members’ reactions to their meets with him. “But I don’t think it’s hurting him.”

Council Speaker Adrienne Adams (D-Queens), who holds immense sway over the chamber’s agenda, hasn’t met with Mastro, according to her office. It’s unclear if she will.

Mastro, a white-collar crime lawyer known for his aggressive legal tactics, first landed in the headlines last month after it emerged that Adams was pushing to install him as his new corp counsel, a role that comes with the responsibility of overseeing the Law Department and representing the mayor and other city government employees in various legal matters.

Current corp counsel, Sylvia Hinds-Radix, is expected to vacate her post in coming weeks. Sources and published reports have said her departure comes amid debate between her and top members of Adams’ administration over a number of sensitive legal issues, including the Law Department’s representation of the mayor in a civil lawsuit accusing him of sexual assault. Adams has vehemently denied that claim.

The push for Mastro quickly ran into issues, as a large contingent of Democratic Council members vowed to block his nomination. They’ve argued Mastro, who served as a deputy mayor in the Giuliani administration, isn’t the right fit to serve as corp counsel for an overwhelmingly Democratic city, pointing to his lengthy record of fighting for conservative causes in the legal arena, including representing real estate and fossil fuel interests.

In addition to Powers, members Mastro have met with this month include Staten Island Councilwoman Kamillah Hanks, a centrist Democrat, and Brooklyn Councilman Justin Brannan, the Democratic chair of the Council’s powerful Finance Committee, sources said.

Brannan declined to comment. Hanks confirmed she sat down with Mastro and called it a “good meeting,” but wouldn’t elaborate further.

Another member who was asked to meet with Mastro was Councilman Oswald Feliz, a centrist Democrat representing a section of the Central Bronx, sources confirmed.

Ingrid Lewis-Martin, Adams’ chief adviser at City Hall, tried to broker a meeting between Feliz and Mastro after Feliz posted a tweet on April 29 saying the mayor would be “knowingly wasting your time” by nominating Mastro, given the widespread opposition to him in the Council. Feliz rejected Lewis-Martin’ offer for a meeting with Mastro, though, the sources said.

Feliz declined to comment Monday.

With Michael Gartland 

DocGo, which has so far received tens of millions of dollars to help house and provide services for newly arrived migrants, became the subject of a state attorney general’s probe last August after it was accused of lying to migrants, threatening them and wasting an inordinate amount of food.

On April 9, Adams administration officials said the city was winding down its relationship with DocGo, pointing in particular to a decision by the city Department of Housing Preservation and Development to not renew a $432 million contract the firm was awarded last year to staff emergency migrant housing facilities.

In a statement at the time, Camille Joseph Varlack, Mayor Adams’ chief of staff, said the move “will ultimately allow the city to save more money and will allow others, including non-profits and internationally recognized resettlement providers, to apply to do this critical work.”

But days before Varlack’s comments, the board of the city’s Health + Hospitals network had voted to enter into two new 12-month contracts with DocGo and several other providers worth as much as $403 million, records reviewed by The News show.

A third deal, this one for $40.9 million, between DocGo and the Department of Housing Preservation and Development was recently submitted for review by the city comptroller’s office.

Those previously unreported deals came on top of a $176.8 million 12-month contract H + H awarded DocGo and four providers in late December to perform migrant “case management” services.

The four contracts are jointly worth more than $620 million, and require DocGo and the partner providers to perform a variety of services, ranging from medical to custodial.

The three new H + H contracts, which make up the lion’s share of the new spending, don’t make clear how much of the money will go to DocGo versus the other providers, and hospital network officials said in a March 28 board meeting that’s determined by how much work each vendor performs.

DocGo’s latest earnings report says the company expects to generate between $320 million and $350 million in revenue this year from contracts with H + H and the Housing Preservation and Development agency.

In a statement to The News, a DocGo rep said the company considers itself an “ongoing partner” with “continuing” city contracts. H + H’s relationship with DocGo dates back to the COVID-19 pandemic, when it paid the company to help the city distribute vaccines.

DocGo, responding to allegations over the migrant contract, has said it’s cooperating in the AG investigation and operates in “compliance with applicable law.”

An Adams spokesman said Wednesday the new DocGo deals don’t suggest “a departure from our policy shift made public in early April that the city will not be renewing a separate $432 million contract with DocGo.”

One of the two most recent contracts pertain to “site administration staffing services” at the city’s Humanitarian Emergency Response and Relief Centers, mega shelters overseen by the hospital system that house tens of thousands of migrants. That contract is worth $192 million, and Chris Keeley, an assistant H + H vice president, said during the March board meeting that DocGo and three other partner providers were picked for it out of a pool of 18 bidders.

The other most recent contract is worth as much as $211.3 million, and involves DocGo and three other providers who will provide medical services for migrants. DocGo and the others were picked for that deal out of a pool of 21 bidders, Keeley said.

Both of those contracts, which were approved by the H + H board at the March meeting, can be extended for another year on top of the 12-month terms at the discretion of the hospital network.

Manhattan Councilwoman Gale Brewer, a Democrat who chairs the Council’s Oversight Committee, said she doesn’t understand why the city would continue working with DocGo, especially given Varlack’s April statement about switching to nonprofit procurement models.

“I am very surprised that out of 18 proposals in one case and 21 proposals in the other case that there weren’t both less expensive and higher quality candidates than DocGo,” Brewer said, noting she has long voiced concern about the quality of DocGo’s food and case management services. “To me, this is a company that hasn’t performed very well so why are we rewarding them? They have shown us that they should not be rewarded. I am pretty surprised by all this to put it mildly.”

The third contract totaling $40.9 million between DocGo and the Department of Housing Preservation and Development was sent to City Comptroller Brad Lander’s office for approval on April 22, a memo obtained by The News shows.

That emergency, no-bid contract is for managing a migrant shelter in Long Island City, Queens and specifically involves incidental transportation, food, laundry and translation work services.

A source with direct knowledge of the matter noted the contract was originally sent to Lander’s office for approval on March 18, but it was returned to HPD due to incomplete paperwork. The hospital system sent the updated paperwork on April 22.

According to Lander’s office, which serves as the city’s fiscal watchdog, the contract began several months earlier in September 2023, though.

Under city procurement rules, the administration is required to give the comptroller notice of an emergency contract within 15 days of it being entered into. In this case, notice of the emergency contract didn’t come to Lander until several months after the fact.

Lander spokeswoman Chloe Chik said her boss has “no intention” of allowing the contract to be renewed once its term expires in September “because of DocGo’s track record of shoddy service to asylum seekers in their care.” She also slammed HPD’s “incredibly delayed” submission of the contract.

The Law Department, which is also required to approve such contracts, signed off on the HPD contract just this past Monday, documents obtained by The News show.

Adams spokesman William Fowler said DocGo was running the Queens shelter site “at risk of not being paid” prior to a contract being ironed out and that the deal is, in part, to pay for services “retroactively.”

He added that once the contract’s term expires in September, the migrant shelter will “transition out of DocGo’s hands” and that the city’s planning to put out a request for bids and will select a contractor based on those submissions.

NYPD Chief of Patrol John Chell and Commissioner of Operations Kaz Daughtry skipped the morning budget hearing even though they’d been scheduled to attend. Mayor Adams’ office told them at the last minute to not appear, according to multiple sources with knowledge of the situation.

Around 7 a.m. Thursday, the mayor’s office told the duo not to show up, fearing that the hearing would turn into a “circus” over their tweets that some Council members claim violate departmental policy, are inflammatory and potentially dangerous, the sources told the Daily News.

NYPD Deputy Commissioner of Public Information Tarik Sheppard also skipped the hearing, though he’d been scheduled to attend, too.

While the department has traditionally used social media to spread word about good arrests and tips on how to fight crime, Chell began using the platform to criticize judges he believed were soft on crime in March.

Since then, he and Daughtry have been lobbing critical tweets against journalists, columnists and elected officials they disagree with. The department previously said it was “correcting the narrative” on social media, which they believe was skewed against police.

Sheppard and the mayor have supported the new social media tactic.

At the hearing, neither Police Commissioner Edward Caban nor Michael Gerber, the NYPD’s deputy commissioner for legal matters, would comment on Chell and Daughtry’s posts, citing an ongoing investigation into the matter by the city’s Department of Investigation.

“It’s inappropriate to comment as the investigation is ongoing,” Caban said.

But the DOI said there isn’t a gag order on the investigation, so the department could have spoken about the posts if officials wished.

“DOI has not instructed NYPD to refrain from speaking about its social media use during our ongoing investigation,” said DOI spokeswoman Diane Struzzi.

Council Speaker Adrienne Adams said NYPD brass should have addressed the controversial posts.

“I find it very appropriate given what I’m looking at,” she said at the hearing as she looked over posts on X including one put out by Chell that blasted progressive Councilwoman Tiffany Caban. In it, he rejected her comments against the NYPD’s crackdown on Columbia University protesters as “garbage” and urged his followers to “vote the change you seek” if they dislike her, too.

“These posts can often convey inaccurate or misleading information and can potentially incite threats of violence,” said Speaker Adams, who’d called for the DOI investigation.

“I use the word potentially with caution because they have in some cases incited threats of violence to individuals,” she added. “This conduct is dangerous, unethical, unprofessional because included in the department’s mission is to preserve the peace, protect the people and reduce fear.”

City ethics law bars police officials from using city resources such as department social media accounts for blatantly political purposes. The NYPD’s patrol guide prohibits police employees from engaging in political activities while in an official capacity.

Gerber repeatedly declined to comment as Speaker Adams peppered the dias, which included First Deputy Commissioner Tania Kinsella and Chief of Department Jeffrey Maddrey, with questions about who was responsible for approving social media posts before they go online and if Chell and Daughtry’s tweets are examples of an ongoing change in the department’s social media policy.

“We are fully cooperative with (the DOI) investigation and it’s critical that the investigation be allowed to play out,” Gerber said, adding that the department doesn’t believe the post against Councilwoman Caban violated the law or the NYPD patrol guide or could be considered political activity.

“It’s part of a context of a significant debate about the nature of public safety in the city, the role of the police department and the role of policing in New York City,” Gerber said, refraining from elaborating further.

Councilwoman Caban of Queens, who attended the hearing, said Gerber and Commissioner Caban were hiding behind the DOI investigation.

“You could have and you should have answered, but you chose not to,” she said.

An email to the department for comment was not returned. The mayor’s office did not return a request for comment, either.

The Legal Aid Society called the social media activities from the police officials “a clear abuse of the NYPD’s authority.”

In addition to the requests for DOI involvement, dozens of local elected officials, including members of New York’s congressional delegation, sent a letter to Mayor Adams last week demanding that he reprimand Chell for his recent social media posts.

Adams spokeswoman Kayla Mamelak said Wednesday the mayor’s team determined last week that Greco could come back to work. Mamelak didn’t explain what prompted that decision.

Greco, who has been a key political fundraiser for Adams since his days as Brooklyn borough president, is now back at her post as his Asian affairs director, reporting directly to Fred Kreizman, the mayor’s community affairs commissioner, Mamelak said.

The feds raided Greco’s two Pelham Bay homes on Feb. 29. Agents were seen leaving with boxes of documents and electronics. She has not been accused of wrongdoing.

After the searches, City Hall announced Greco had gone on paid sick leave due to an unspecified medical condition. At the time, City Hall said Greco would have to go on unpaid leave after her medical absence was over.

Mamelak wouldn’t say if Greco ever went on unpaid leave.

The exact focus of the probe that prompted the Greco raids remains unknown. On the same day as her homes were searched, the feds raided the New World Mall in Queens, where she helped host several fundraisers for Adams’ 2021 campaign that generated tens of thousands of dollars in donations, some of which have been identified as potentially illegal by the news outlet The City.

At the time of the raids, Greco was also facing a Department of Investigation probe into allegations that she had misused municipal resources, including by having a subordinate help renovate her kitchen.

As reported by The News and other outlets, Greco also has ties to China that include serving as a consultant for multiple local groups funded by Beijing’s Communist government.

The probe scrutinizing Greco is one of several looming over Adams’ team.

Federal prosecutors in Manhattan are investigating allegations that Turkey’s government pumped illegal contributions into Adams’ campaign coffers. FBI agents raided the home of Adams’ top fundraiser and seized his cell phones in November as part of that probe. The mayor has not been accused of wrongdoing.