Last November, a top Manhattan police commander with an ambitious plan to give away 2,000 turkeys to New Yorkers for Thanksgiving but short of cash turned to an ally of Mayor Adams to push local businesses into contributing, a new lawsuit alleges.
The campaign by Asst. Chief Ruel Stephenson and Susana Osorio, the Adams backer and uptown food maven known for Mama Sushi, targeted restaurant and bar owners in Washington Heights and Inwood. They raised close to $30,000 in just four days, records show.
But the effort may have bumped up against city conflict of interest rules, according to a good government group, and is detailed in a discrimination and retaliation lawsuit filed by Lt. Jamie Nardini, who works for Stephenson in Patrol Borough Manhattan North.
Nardini alleges Stephenson made his cops spend months planning holiday parties including a July 2024 “White Party” that was attended by Mayor Adams at the expense of day-to-day police operations.
“Rather than confronting Stephenson’s repeated misconduct, the NYPD shielded him and fueled a party culture that undermined real police work,” Nardini’s lawyer John Scola said.
Nardini claims Stephenson pressured his precinct commanders to sell tickets to the parties – giving them quotas and threatening to interrogate them for hours on their crime statistics if they did not sell enough. He also deputized a favored detective on his staff as his “party planner” and then backed her promotion to the coveted rank of detective first grade for performing that role, Nardini claims.
“He would go around the room – how many have you sold? Who’s going to end up at Borough Stat for two hours,” Nardini said. “I would get calls from commanders complaining about this constant pressure to sell tickets.”
Nardini alleges when she objected to being forced to help organize the parties, Stephenson repeatedly passed her over for promotion.
“The message has been you don’t want to be part of my party planning team, fine, but you’re going to feel it,” Nardini said. “It all takes a toll.”
Scola said Nardini was interviewed by NYPD Internal Affairs on Aug. 12. The NYPD did not reply to repeated inquiries from The News, while Osorio did not reply to emails to her businesses.
The events surrounding the turkey giveaway are recounted in the lawsuit and in interviews with Nardini and two other police supervisors who requested anonymity.
In November, Stephenson initially proposed to give away 500 turkeys then increased the number to 2,000. But the borough’s fundraising account had been depleted. So, the lawsuit alleges, Stephenson turned for help to Osorio, the owner of several upper Manhattan restaurants who has been a vocal Adams supporter for years.
Stephenson and Osorio came up with a list of businesses to contact and were overheard pressing them to contribute to the turkey drive, the lawsuit alleges. Between Nov. 18 and Nov. 22, 16 checks including 14 from food and drink concerns totaling $21,150 flowed into the giveaway coffers, records show. At least four of the contributors in addition to Osorio had also given money to Mayor Adams election campaigns.
“There are a lot of people calling 311 to complain about noise, people hanging out outside these places, but he’s collecting donations from the same businesses,” Nardini said.
The suit also alleges the ticket revenue passed through a private bank account set up by two cops at Stephenson’s direction that was not vetted and approved by the NYPD’s Internal Affairs Bureau as is required.
City Conflict of Interest rules state a public servant may not solicit a donation from “an individual or firm that has a particular matter pending before the public servant.” The bars and restaurants could be vulnerable to police enforcement from cops overseen by Stephenson.
“If the business owners are within the command, they very well could have matters before the NYPD overseen by that officer, in which case, this would not be permissible,” said Rachel Fauss of Reinvent Albany, a good government group.
Among the attendees at the July 2024 “White Party” was James Caban, the brother of ex-Police Commissioner Edward Caban who was embroiled two months later in an investigation over whether he was using his family ties to obtain favorable treatment for nightspots. James Caban and Mayor Adams, who a spokesperson said arrived at the event separately, greeted each other cordially, according to a photo of the two of them.
The “party planning” detective, Parastoo Rouhi, was promoted June 2024 six months after transferring in from the Intelligence Bureau. The lawsuit alleged that “it was clear that Rouhi and Stephenson have more than a professional relationship.”
“She was an intel detective for most of her career. She comes here and is promoted within a short amount of time,” Nardini said.
Rouhi allegedly told a group of cops, “I didn’t receive this promotion because I was f—–g a chief. I received this promotion because my father contributed more than $40,000 to Mayor Adams’ campaign,” the lawsuit claims.
None of Rouhi’s listed relatives appeared in city campaign finance board records as contributing to Adams, though those don’t capture donations to political action committees. Adams campaign spokesman Todd Shapiro declined to comment on the pending litigation.
“What we can say is that Mayor Adams and his administration have always obeyed the law and followed proper procedures, he said. “The Mayor made no communications or exerted any influence on the NYPD regarding this promotion. Personnel matters are decided internally by the department, and we are confident the facts will bear that out.”
Adams spokesperson Kayla Mamelak added that Osorio never called Adams to ask him to back Rouhi’s promotion. She added Rouhi was promoted in a reasonable amount of time after she spent years working her way up the ladder.
