New York Police Commissioner Dermot Shea tested positive for COVID-19, an NYPD spokesman told Fox News on Friday.
Deputy Commissioner Richard Esposito said Shea was going “well” and “staying home and he is running the police department remotely.”
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Police said 463 employees tested positive for the virus this month. The news comes days after Mayor Bill de Blasio announced that law enforcement members had been given the green light to receive their first shot of the COVID-19 vaccine, despite conflict with Governor Andrew Cuomo, who did not yet pass the measure under the guidelines of the state has not approved.
The NYPD experienced a difficult year in 2020 as department staff were extensively cut, despite an increase in crime that recorded 447 murders on Tuesday, an increase of 41% over last year and the largest number since 2011. The number of people shot has more than doubled last year’s total, and it’s a 14 – year high.
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New York City, hit hard by the coronavirus, which devastated the city’s economy and killed record numbers of people – making it the center of the country in the first months of the pandemic – also fought through violence, looting and homicide following numerous Black Lives Matter protests following the death of George Floyd in Minneapolis. Civil rights activists were partially successful in calls to disregard the police, and de Blasio, on behalf of local lawmakers, made the $ 1 billion budget on the budget.
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“We are definitely coming out of the dark period,” Shea said at police headquarters on Tuesday. “The confluence of COVID in the protests in all the debates over the detonation of the police – I can not imagine a dark period.”
The Associated Press contributed to this report.