Ex-NYPD Union President Ed Mullins Surrendering To Criminal Charges

Former New York City police union pres­i­dent who’s clashed with city offi­cials over his bom­bas­tic tweets and hard­line tac­tics is expect­ed to sur­ren­der Wednesday to face crim­i­nal charges con­nect­ed to a raid last year on his home and union office, two law enforce­ment offi­cials said.
Ed Mullins resigned in October as head of the Sergeants Benevolent Association after the FBI searched the union’s Manhattan office and his Long Island home. He retired from the NYPD in November.
Information on charges against Mullins was not imme­di­ate­ly avail­able. He is expect­ed to be in fed­er­al court lat­er on Wednesday. The offi­cials con­firm­ing his arrest were not autho­rized to speak pub­licly about an inves­ti­ga­tion and did so on con­di­tion of anonymity.
Messages seek­ing com­ment were left with the NYPD, the union, and a lawyer who’s rep­re­sent­ed Mullins in the past. The FBI declined to comment.
The Sergeants Benevolent Association rep­re­sents about 13,000 active and retired NYPD sergeants and con­trols a $264 mil­lion retire­ment fund.
Mullins, a police sergeant detached to full-time union work, was sub­ject to depart­ment dis­ci­pli­nary pro­ceed­ings last year for tweet­ing NYPD paper­work in 2020 regard­ing the arrest of Mayor Bill de Blasio’s daugh­ter dur­ing protests over the Minneapolis police killing of George Floyd.

Mullins, a police offi­cer since 1982, rose to sergeant, a rank above detec­tive but below cap­tain and lieu­tenant, in 1993 and was elect­ed pres­i­dent of the sergeants union in 2002. Under Mullins’ lead­er­ship, the union has fought for bet­ter pay — with con­tracts result­ing in pay increas­es of 40% — and staked a promi­nent posi­tion in the anti-reform movement.
Though he was a full-time union chief, city law allowed Mullins to retain his sergeant’s posi­tion and col­lect salaries from both the union and the police depart­ment. In 2020, Mullins made more than $220,000 between the two, accord­ing to pub­lic records: $88,757 from the union and $133,195 from the NYPD. Along with Mullins’ peri­od­ic appear­ances on cable net­works like Fox News and Newsmax — includ­ing one in which he was pic­tured in front of a QAnon mug — per­haps the union’s most pow­er­ful mega­phone is its 45,000-follower Twitter account, which Mullins runs him­self, often to fiery effect
In 2018, amid a rash of inci­dents in which police offi­cers were doused with water, Mullins sug­gest­ed it was time for then-Commissioner James O’Neill and Chief of Department Terence Monahan to “con­sid­er anoth­er pro­fes­sion” and tweet­ed that “O’KNEEL must go!”