NYPD union chief resigns following FBI raid

Ed Mullins has often sparred with public officials and used social media for scathing attacks on them

File: Ed Mullins has courted controversy many times in the past (AP)

The controversial chief of a New York Police Department (NYPD) sergeants’s union has resigned after the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) raided his home and the union headquarters.

Ed Mullins, the president of the NYPD Sergeants Benevolent Association (SBA), resigned on the request of the union’s board, according to a message it sent to its members.

FBI spokesperson Martin Feely told the Associated Press (AP) that agents were “carrying out a law enforcement action in connection with an ongoing investigation.”

Agents were seen coming out of Mr Mullins’s home in Long Island and the SBA’s headquarters in Manhattan, where they were seen clutching big boxes and black garbage bags.

“The nature and scope of this criminal investigation has yet to be determined,” the SBA message said. “However, it is clear that President Mullins is apparently the target of the federal investigation. We have no reason to believe that any other member of the SBA is involved or targeted in this matter.”

FBI agents carry boxes from the SBA headquarters, where local reports confirmed the agency was conducting an investigation (Reuters)

The union also said Mr Mullins was “entitled to the presumption of innocence” and asked its members to “withhold judgment until all the facts have been established.”

The union’s day-to-day functioning and the “important business of the SBA” could not be distracted by the “existence of this investigation,” it said.

Messages seeking comment over the raids were left with Mr Mullins by the AP but calls to him went to his voicemail.

Mr Mullins has courted controversy many times in the past, often the result of his social media use.

The former union chief had last year attacked NYPD leadership and the city’s Mayor Bill de Blasio, a frequent source of his anger.

He had come under fire and was slapped with charges after posting the arrest details of Chiara de Blasio, the mayor’s daughter, over protests that had erupted in the city after the death of George Floyd.

Mr Mullins had also attacked Mr De Blasio for taking an anti-police stance.

“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 in an article for the Daily Mail earlier this year.

Mr De Blasio shot back at Mr Mullins after the FBI raids, saying he had “dishonoured his uniform, his city and his union more times than I can count.”

“It was just a matter of time before his endless hatred would catch up with him. That day has come.”

In another instance, Mr Mullins had tweeted, using the SBA’s official Twitter account, calling the city’s health commissioner a “b***h” who had “blood on her hands” after she sparred with the NYPD over half a million hospital-grade face masks.

He had also reportedly called Congressman Ritchie Torres a “first-class w***e.”

Along with the FBI raids, Mr Mullins is also facing an NYPD enquiry for his posts on social media and violation of NYPD conduct rules.

He has openly supported former US president Donald Trump, who he met at the White House in 2020. He also appeared in a TV interview with a QAnon coffee mug in the background.

Mr Mullins, a police officer since 1982, rose to the rank of sergeant in 1993 and was elected president of the SBA in 2002.

Additional reporting by agencies