The leading candidate to be the city’s next top cop was passed over after balking at the idea of not answering directly to incoming Mayor Eric Adams, The Post has learned.
Former Seattle Police Chief Carmen Best was the odds-on favorite to replace outgoing NYPD Commissioner Dermot Shea until she voiced concerns that Adams might create a new job for a deputy mayor to oversee the department, law enforcement sources said Wednesday.
Instead of picking Best, Adams chose Nassau County Chief of Detective Keechant Sewell, whose selection was exclusively revealed Tuesday by The Post.
“I respect Eric Adams’ decision and I’m honored that he considered me as a finalist,” Best told The Post on Wednesday.
She declined to comment further.
Adams’ spokesman denied that there would be any break in the chain of command between the mayor and the police commissioner.
“That is unequivocally false,” spokesman Evan Thies said.
”Mayor-elect Adams said several times, including today, that the police commissioner will report to him directly.”
Sources have said that Adams is considering appointing controversial ex-cop Philip Banks his deputy mayor for public safety after last week picking Banks’ brother, charter school founder David Banks, to be the city’s next schools chancellor.
Philip Banks serves on Adams’ transition team as a senior adviser on criminal justice issues and has been working for the past several weeks out of a sixth-floor office at the NYPD’s Manhattan headquarters, One Police Plaza.
That move led one source to ask sarcastically whether he was “setting up shop over there ahead of his coronation as Master and Commander of Public Safety.”
A high-ranking police source with direct knowledge of Best’s thinking said that she knew she wasn’t “really going to run the department.”
“Other people were going to be running things,” the source added.
Another source said, “Everybody knows [Philip] Banks is going to be running the department.”
“Carmen Best would want to be a figurehead for Philip Banks? No,” the source said.
“Carmen Best is very popular with the police community because of what she did in Seattle. She didn’t want her department defunded, and she left. In cops’ eyes, she’s a hero.”
The other finalist for the job was former Newark Police Chief Ivonne Roman, sources said.
Roman, who tweeted out The Post’s report on Sewell’s selection, declined to comment.
All three finalists were interviewed twice by Adams’ transition team, with their final interviews last week, sources said.
Although Sewell’s name seemingly came out of nowhere on Tuesday, Adams’ camp began vetting her in October, and she met with his transition team before being interviewed by him, sources said.
In 2014, Philip Banks stunned the city when he abruptly rejected a promotion to be the NYPD’s first deputy commissioner and instead announced his retirement.
The Post later revealed that the move came one day after a federal judge approved a wiretap on Philip Banks’ cellphone amid a major investigation into police corruption.
The probe turned up evidence of about $300,000 in bank transactions that the FBI called “indicative” of money laundering but Banks was never charged and Adams has repeatedly suggested he could be a key player at City Hall.
“Here you have an African American that moved up through the ranks to become the chief of this department. He was amazing at CompStat. He understands policing,” Adams said Wednesday.
“I don’t know what he wants to do with his future but I think that this city is better served with his knowledge and experience.”
Mayor de Blasio on Wednesday also called Philip Banks “a very capable person” and “certainly someone who brings a lot of experience, a lot of knowledge.”
“Clearly, Eric Adams has a lot of faith in him and that’s important, choosing leaders that you feel you can work well with,” he added.
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