Keechant Sewell's borderline residency issue

Daily Point

No nudging city’s top cop out of Nassau

When Mayor Eric Adams chose Keechant Sewell as his new NYPD commissioner in December 2021, she was expected to meet the same requirement as her predecessors — that she live in the five boroughs.

After 18 months in the urban limelight, Sewell is leaving without saying why or where she’s going next. As it turns out, Sewell, 51, never moved out of her home in Valley Stream. She’d been with the Nassau County Police Department for a quarter century and was serving as NCPD’s chief of detectives when recruited away.

Sewell’s residence made no practical difference to her city service. She lived barely two miles from the border of the 105th Precinct, which is based in Queens Village, in the borough where she lived as a youth. Besides, NYPD officers are permitted to reside in Nassau, Suffolk, Rockland, Westchester, Putnam or Orange counties.

The Point asked Nassau County Executive Bruce Blakeman if he’d try to draw Sewell back into county employment. He said through a spokesman: “Nassau County would love to have Commissioner Sewell back in just about any capacity she would want. However, the reality is that she will probably get a multitude of offers from the private sector for enormous sums of money for which she is richly entitled.”

Either way, wherever she goes, she’s unlikely to face another such residency quandary.

Adams has been all over the board on this issue. Early in his tenure, the mayor said he thought it a “smart idea” to require all cops to live in the city, a dead-end proposal for decades that has remained that way. The blowback from officers was predictable. Yet in 2020, the Gothamist news site quoted Adams as saying: “A lot of NYPD officers who happen to be people of color are living in the suburbs for purely economic reasons, because they can’t find enough affordable housing here.”

Suburban residency was once a question for the mayor, too. During the 2021 campaign, Adams’ rivals chewed on the fact that he co-owned a co-op in Fort Lee, N.J. Last September, Adams publicly defended the fact that Sewell still had no plans to move to the city. The rationale was this: Due to an earlier executive order signed by ex-Mayor Bill de Blasio, the residency requirement for the commissioner was suspended. Adams didn’t reinstate the mandate. “She’s in full compliance,” the mayor said of Sewell. “The rules are clear.”

On March 15, addressing residency rules at a Crain’s New York breakfast, Sewell came out on the side of her rank and file, with whom she’s been popular, by declaring that she opposed the imposition of a five-borough residency rule.

Whatever the reasons for Sewell’s departure, which had been rumored for months, her story illustrates that the question of residency rules for public employees can be nearly as divisive as the broader issue of housing itself.

— Dan Janison dan.janison@newsday.com

Pencil Point

The AIs have it

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Final Point

NYU Langone pays a visit

NYU Langone Health’s plan to buy 40 acres of Nassau Community College land in order to build a $3 billion medical center has been years in the making.

Officials with NYU Langone met with the Newsday editorial board this week to discuss their plans and their broader efforts to grow across Long Island.

Representatives with the medical giant have been eyeing potential sites for a new medical center to replace its early foothold at the former Winthrop-University Hospital in Mineola and they’ve been talking to Nassau County officials about the possibility of a move for years, dating back to the Laura Curran administration. Sources have told The Point previously that NYU Langone had at some point considered taking up residence on the land around Nassau Coliseum. But the Nassau Community College site became an option during Nassau County Executive Bruce Blakeman’s tenure. Blakeman announced the move in May.

“We looked for a site large enough to accommodate our campus,” said Joe Lhota, NYU Langone’s executive vice president. “A number of sites emerged. This one emerged as the best one.”

Added senior vice president Vicki Match Suna, who heads NYU Langone’s real estate development efforts: “The relationship with the community college really resonated with us and the site wasn’t encumbered by other factors.”

NYU Langone likely would move its inpatient operation to the new location, without expanding the total number of inpatient beds, but the medical system would maintain a presence at its existing Mineola location, hospital executives said.

And they noted that there’s room for NYU Langone’s presence in the region, even among other medical center giants here, like Northwell Health.

“The landscape on Long Island is very large so it can accommodate multiple health care systems,” said Joseph J. Greco, chief of hospital operations at NYU Langone Hospital—Long Island. “It gives people an alternative.”

Officials emphasized that they’re still early in the process of securing the land and building a new facility. The hospital system will need a memorandum of understanding with the county, along with an environmental review and zoning approval from the Town of Hempstead.

— Randi F. Marshall randi.marshall@newsday.com