Running on empty

At the New York City marathon, NYPD Commissioner Thomas Donlon and his chief of staff, Tarik Sheppard, who is also the department’s deputy commissioner of public information, got into an embarrassing shouting match while posing for a photograph with the NYPD Running Club. 

Things like this seldom happen in public. Normally, underlings bite their tongue when in disagreement with the police commissioner. Since the reason for the squabble seems pretty petty, it is obvious that the strife between the two parties that has been simmering ever since Sheppard’s appointment by Mayor Adams to chief of staff over Donlon’s objections, has reached the boiling point. Since reports of Sheppard’s ouster after the incident were quickly walked back by the mayor, it is apparent that Donlon is police commissioner in name only. It is no way to run a department.