At 8:38 p.m. on April 26, the St. John’s County Sheriff’s workplace close to Jacksonville, Fla. acquired a name from the NYPD about on-line threats that have been made to a retired NYPD lieutenant who now lives within the space.
The threats concerned photos of a map with a route drawn to Florida, an image of a person’s arm holding a gun and posts with textual content written over inventory photos about harming the sufferer’s youngsters.
The decision was marked by the sheriff’s workplace as precedence 2, that means not against the law in progress, car collision or different high precedence, and inside 5 minutes the primary unit was dispatched to the house of former NYPD lieutenant John Macari.
Macari, 44, is the founding father of a podcast about policing that has been unsparing in its criticism of the leaders of the division for over two years. He launched the podcast, which he co-hosts with former NYPD Lt. Eric Dym, after he says he was pressured to resign from the division in 2021 for refusing to take the COVID vaccine, citing a non secular exemption that the NYPD denied.
On that Saturday, Macari was studying his cellphone on the sofa at 9:05 p.m. when he heard a knock on the door and noticed gentle beams pointed via the glass panes. He mentioned his first intuition was to seize his gun, however afterward it obtained him to assume extra deeply concerning the incident.
On the face of it, the arrival of three sheriff’s automobiles to his residence would possibly look like an acceptable response to a reputable report that he had been the goal of threats. However that’s not the way in which Macari took it.
The surprising go to opened the door on a two-year saga that has featured an unusually public battle between the previous lieutenants and outspoken division leaders. At its core is the police division’s response to the lieutenants’ issues about what they understand as retribution for talking out — which at one level crossed the road into an overt menace.
Retired officers with the New York’s Most interesting Unfiltered podcast documented what they described as threatening posts from a former Instagram account referred to as “AllCopsAreWoke.” Credit score: Screengrab by way of John Macari
It was that menace that was the topic of the NYPD’s notification to the St. John’s sheriff, however the menace was hardly imminent. Macari and Dym had reported it to the NYPD’s Inner Affairs Bureau 15 months prior, on Jan. 22, 2024.
They took their grievance to IAB as a result of they’d motive to imagine the account posting the threats, AllCopsAreWoke, was run by a number of members of the division.A day earlier, they’d filed a grievance with the bureau a few separate slew of adverse posts about them, which they believed had been orchestrated by then Assistant Commissioner Kaz Daughtry after which Chief of Patrol John Chell.
Retired officers with the New York’s Most interesting Unfiltered podcast documented what they described as threatening posts from a former Instagram account referred to as “AllCopsAreWoke.” Credit score: Screengrab by way of John Macari
Metropolis Corridor spokesperson Kayla Mamelak Altus mentioned of the chance that Daughtry and Chell orchestrated the posts by NYPD members: “These accusations are baseless and false.”
Macari mentioned if the NYPD’s issues concerning the threats in opposition to him have been real, the division would have alerted him that the sheriff was being dispatched and would have made the notification at an everyday hour.
Requested why the NYPD dispatched the sheriff’s workplace on a Saturday night, with out informing Macari they have been coming, a police spokesperson who declined to offer a reputation mentioned, “The NYPD has no control over any other law enforcement agency or their actions.”
George Harrigan, commander of the sheriff’s workplace, mentioned his officers noticed the NYPD’s notification as a typical name for service from one company to a different, which he mentioned amounted to a “check on welfare” on the goal of threats.
In line with data of the decision Harrigan offered to THE CITY, the NYPD additionally instructed his workplace that Macari “will be home to make a report.”
Since he was not knowledgeable of the go to, Macari says that’s one thing the NYPD couldn’t — or shouldn’t — have recognized, which contributed to his issues concerning the interplay.
“That situation could go bad a million different ways,” Macari instructed THE CITY.
‘Dream Team’
The New York’s Most interesting: Retired & Unfiltered podcast launched in mid-2022 as a peek behind the scenes of policing and the NYPD, usually via interviews with retired members.
Dym, who retired within the face of plenty of complaints of improper use of pressure by the Civilian Criticism Evaluation Board, joined the present as co-host towards the top of that 12 months.
He has faulted the NYPD management for not standing up for his policing, which he mentioned conformed to the coaching he acquired and used the minimal pressure crucial in opposition to usually violent suspects.
Inside months, the podcast started providing extra opinion and evaluation on crime and policing, which grew extra pointed and demanding over time. Mayor Eric Adams’ atypical appointments to guide the police division, notably in 2023, gave them loads of fodder.
Adams’ deputy mayor for public security, Phil Banks, was positioned in that position regardless of having resigned from the division a decade earlier whereas he was an unindicted co-conspirator in a federal bribery case; his Chief of Division, Jeffrey Maddrey, was promoted to that place after almost dropping his job for getting in a bodily tussle with a feminine officer who mentioned the 2 have been having an affair.
Adams’ second police commissioner, Edward Caban, whom Dym usually calls “the most inconsequential” commissioner within the division’s historical past, was plucked by Adams from a dead-end project in Brooklyn North to grow to be the division’s quantity two. He rose to the highest job in 2023 and was pressured to resign after 15 months amid a federal safety racket probe additionally involving his similar twin brother.
Banks and Maddrey have additionally resigned after they, like Caban, have been the targets of FBI raids.
Daughtry, who Dym says was propelled by “rocket fuel,” hadn’t attained the rank of sergeant earlier than he was named assistant commissioner — prompting questions on the podcast about his management abilities.
NYPD Deputy Commissioner of Operations Kaz Daughtry speaks with Chief of Patrol John Chell throughout against the law stats replace at One Police Plaza, April 3, 2024. Credit score: Ben Fractenberg/THE CITY
And the hosts usually jabbed Chell over his early-career taking pictures of an unarmed man within the again following a car cease, a killing that Chell says was unintentional however {that a} Brooklyn jury present in 2017 had been intentional, yielding the sufferer’s household $1.5 million in a subsequent civil settlement with New York Metropolis.
The podcast grew to become a specific focus of the NYPD in 2023, when the hosts repeatedly denounced the division’s aggressive car pursuit coverage underneath Chell, and argued his stance of not letting the “bad guys” get away contributed to an NYPD sergeant’s choice to throw a cooler at a suspected drug supplier fleeing on a scooter who crashed and later died.
That November, the hosts upped their criticism of Daughtry’s meteoric rise in an episode titled “Nepotism in the NYPD and its Impact on Morale,” which highlighted his shut relationship to Maddrey, for whom he’d labored as a driver for a few years.
Round that point Macari heard that Chell was asking members of the division about him, and he noticed one evening in late November 2023 that Chell had seemed up his profile on the location LinkedIn. He took a screenshot of the notification and invited Chell onto the podcast in a submit on Instagram.
The submit launched a flurry of adverse responses from rating members of a unit generally known as the Neighborhood Response Workforce (CRT) run by Chell and Daughtry, which had a repute for aggressive ways, together with in car pursuits.
A variety of posts referred to as Macari a rat for having labored for 2 years on the Inner Affairs Bureau, which investigates police wrongdoing. In addition they ridiculed his time assigned to constructing upkeep.
A submit by a lieutenant within the CRT recommended that he had talked to Chell about Macari, whereas different posts accused Macari of getting beforehand filed complaints in opposition to fellow officers, which Macari denied.
NYPD Chief of Division John Chell oversees the arrest of protesters in Trump Tower, March 13, 2025. Credit score: Ben Fractenberg/THE CITY
The feedback continued previous the weekend, when Daughtry appeared at an NYPD fraternal group occasion on December 4 to obtain an award.
“There’s a handful of retired officers that don’t live in the state that have a lot to say about the ‘dream team’ as I like to call it,” he mentioned that evening, in keeping with a video Macari posted to Instagram. “All of a sudden they retire and have a massive plan on how to fight crime, but nothing to contribute when they were here.”
In his submit of the video, Macari chided Daughtry and the NYPD for sending “paid goons” to go after the podcast. A division legal professional assigned to the CRT responded by calling Macari a “clown” and an “Instagram warrior that hides in Florida spewing hate.”
The legal professional later softened his tone after saying he spoke to Daughtry “regarding your posts and attacks on him and the men and women of the NYPD.”
“The rank and file that know the men and women who you attack… have come to their defense because we believe in his and the other executives leadership,” wrote the legal professional, underneath the deal with kevin__ram.
He then addressed those that have been responding to the podcast hosts in assist of Daughtry and Chell, writing that “your words are appreciated, but not necessary — Commissioner Daughtry wants to stop the back and forth and have us refocus our energy on making the job better for all.”
Issues died down till January 2024, when the podcast hosts aired an episode with former NYPD Officer Sal Greco discussing a Bronx restaurant with a checkered historical past that was frequented by high NYPD officers and co-owned by Edward Caban’s brother, Richard.
It prompted backlash from a determine related to the restaurant, in addition to from the AllCopsAreWoke (ACAW) account, which Macari and Dym believed was run by a number of members of the NYPD. It was round then that Dym began getting nameless calls and texts that he felt mimicked the ACAW account.
Days later, on January 21, Macari and Dym filed a prolonged grievance with IAB about their suspicion that Chell and Daughtry had been organizing their troops in opposition to the podcast as a way to intimidate them into silence. The grievance additionally talked about ACAW however didn’t draw a direct connection between that account and the higher-ups.
Inside a day of the grievance, nevertheless, the threats from ACAW escalated significantly, together with an Instagram submit with a inventory picture that learn, “Hopefully nothing happens to your family. Kids are a precious thing.” One other submit, displaying a person’s arm clutching a firearm, mentioned “ACAW is after your home now. #StayViligant [sic].”
On January 22, Macari and Dym added these threats to the unique grievance, which they didn’t tie to Chell or Daughtry. Their perception that ACAW was a member of service was primarily based on the account’s interactions with different present members, and so they say they have been troubled by how a few of them dismissed ACAW’s posts as being of no concern — at instances referring to the account holder as a teenage lady dwelling in Nebraska.
Two months after their grievance, Macari and Dym obtained a name from the sergeant at IAB they’d been coping with. He knowledgeable them that the member is not employed by New York Metropolis, in keeping with Macari.
After they requested if it was because of the probe, the sergeant mentioned he couldn’t say, Macari instructed THE CITY. After they requested for the title, they obtained the identical reply.
In response to questions, the NYPD declined to say if any members of service have been disciplined because of the investigation, or how.
“The NYPD took these allegations seriously and initiated an investigation. The creation and dissemination of these photos was inappropriate,” mentioned the spokesperson. “We investigated this carefully, and appropriate disciplinary action was taken.”
Macari and Dym mentioned they want the title of the previous NYPD member as a way to safe orders of safety for his or her households, however that it must be made public for different causes as nicely.
“Maybe this unhinged character is a cop somewhere in another law enforcement agency in the country,” Dym mentioned on a podcast episode that aired Monday, the place they mentioned the house go to by the sheriffs. “That’s a major problem.”
Pushing Again
Within the spring of 2024, just a few months after they filed the grievance with IAB, the X accounts related to Chell and Daughtry started to tackle a strident tone, providing pointed pushback on the media, elected officers and even judges who they condemned as dangerous for public security or anti-police. (One of many targets was an editor at THE CITY, whom the NYPD’s official X account referred to as “deceitful.”)
Adams defended the management, saying they’d a proper to precise their opinions. Macari and Dym famous on their podcast that they’d been the primary members of the media attacked, though much less publicly.
NYPD Deputy Commissioner Kaz Daughtry speaks alongside Mayor Eric Adams and border czar Tom Homan at a Manhattan federal constructing a few joint gang-takedown operation, April 22, 2025. Credit score: Ben Fractenberg/THE CITY
In January 2025, the town’s Division of Investigation, responding to a grievance by the Metropolis Council speaker, launched a report on the NYPD management’s social media postings, calling them irresponsible and unprofessional.
However they have been instructed repeatedly they needed to file a grievance with their native police departments, one thing the unnamed DCPI spokesperson confirmed.
“Over the past year, the complainants were informed numerous times to file the complaint with their local police department, as that is the appropriate jurisdiction,” the spokesperson mentioned.
Dym famous that he hasn’t stepped foot in Florida in over a 12 months, and that he was dwelling in Asia on the time the threats got here in. He instructed THE CITY the entire expertise had led him to lose “‘all trust and credibility for the NYPD Internal Affairs and upper echelon.”
Macari said if the NYPD already conducted a probe and knows where the threats originated, it makes no sense for the St. John’s County sheriff to launch a brand new investigation.
The NYPD spokesperson didn’t reply when requested whether or not the IAB probe remains to be open, and wouldn’t say whether or not the grievance of Chell’s and Daughtry’s alleged involvement within the CRT members’ posts was investigated.
Nevertheless, the NYPD did relay a suspect’s title — of a former NYPD sergeant — to the sheriff’s workplace, data of the communications present. When requested concerning the sergeant’s departure, the NYPD mentioned he retired in March 2024.
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