5 things to know about Edwin Raymond, New York City’s new sheriff

Mayor Zohran Mamdani has selected Edwin Raymond, a retired New York Police Department (NYPD) lieutenant, to serve as New York City’s new sheriff after the firing of Anthony Miranda from the position. But before he got this job, Raymond gained notoriety for challenging the NYPD for its quota policing, racialized enforcement, and retaliation inside the department. He has said that he had once hoped to reform the NYPD from within.

In his new role, Raymond will oversee court mandates, tax enforcement, property seizures, and enforcement actions against unlicensed cannabis businesses under the city’s Department of Finance.

Who is Edwin Raymond?

A Brooklyn-born son of Haitian immigrants, Raymond joined the NYPD at 22 after studying criminal justice at John Jay College. He spent 15 years on the force, serving first in Transit District 32 and the 77th Precinct, then rising to sergeant and lieutenant. He eventually became the commanding officer of Brooklyn North Community Affairs.

Raymond has said that he wanted to be the kind of officer his childhood neighborhood of East Flatbush, Brooklyn, deserved. What he found instead, according to his 2023 memoir, “An Inconvenient Cop: My Fight to Change Policing in America,” was a department where “activity” — such as issuing summonses, performing stop-and-frisk actions against Black people and Latinos, and making arrests — was encouraged more than community safety or crime reduction.

2015 federal lawsuit

In 2015, Raymond joined 11 other police officers in a federal lawsuit alleging that the NYPD continued to use unlawful numerical quotas for summonses and arrests despite a state ban, and that the burden of those practices fell disproportionately on communities of color. The litigation lasted years. Parts of the case were dismissed at different stages, and the docket shows the case remained active through 2026, including an appeal notice this spring.

The work he did after leaving the NYPD

Raymond retired from the NYPD in 2023, wrote the memoir “An Inconvenient Cop,” and continued speaking publicly about police reform.

He later joined Attorney General Letitia James’s office as the nation’s first social justice liaison, focused on accountability and integrity in law enforcement.

East Flatbush shaped him

The child of Haitian immigrants, Raymond was raised in Black working-class East Flatbush, Brooklyn. Raymond has said that growing up in a place where police scrutiny was persistent shaped his decision to enter law enforcement and has guided his ideas about how public safety and enforcement should look — particularly in Black neighborhoods.

In Raymond’s memoir, he writes about his years as a Black officer in New York City and argues that the NYPD does not simply have a few rogue officers but a system of incentives, training, and supervision that rewards the wrong behavior.

In the book’s introduction, Raymond notes: “I’m a police officer, but it’s not my identity. I am a man who became a cop. At one time, I saw becoming a police officer as a way to serve my community. But when I got into uniform, got a look at things from the inside, I saw something that I couldn’t ignore. Despite my aspirations and inspirations, I wasn’t in a position to fix anything. In trying to rectify the issues, I was mocked, insulted, gaslit, elbowed aside, set up, lied about, retaliated against, and treated as the problem.

“There are eighteen thousand law enforcement agencies in the country. Because of New York City’s claim as this country’s safest big city and its influence across the nation, its policing model has been packaged, marketed, and sold across the United States and even to cities overseas.

“So when I speak of the ills inside the NYPD, I am speaking of all U.S. policing. New York City is the headwaters of the behavior infecting modern police departments, the red-hot center of the problem.”

New sheriff, new program

In announcing his appointment, Mayor Mamdani described Raymond as someone who “represents the kind of public servant New Yorkers deserve: principled, courageous, and deeply committed to justice.”

And while Raymond said he wants to help build “a safer, fairer, and more accountable city for all New Yorkers,” the Sheriff’s Office is not the NYPD. Raymond’s office will wield similar enforcement power, though, and Raymond now has the opportunity to enforce institutional accountability in this new agency; something he can do on his own.

The post 5 things to know about Edwin Raymond, New York City’s new sheriff appeared first on New York Amsterdam News.