The NYPD’s hot-headed Deputy Commissioner of Public Information — who once called a New York Post reporter a “f–king scumbag” — was demoted this week, police sources said.
Tarik Sheppard, a 21-year veteran of the NYPD, will be an assistant chief and commanding officer at the Interagency Operations Division as of Dec. 26, NYPD paperwork shows.
“That’s definitely a downward move but a soft landing,” a police source said of Sheppard, a friend of Mayor Adams.
It’s not clear exactly why he was booted from his post, but Sheppard, 48, got into a kerfuffle with then-acting Police Commissioner Tom Donlon at the NYC Marathon in November and has had run-ins with the media.
Sheppard, who was once commander of the 28th Precinct in Harlem, was appointed DCPI by former Police Commissioner Edward Caban in August 2023 and brought a cadre of his own people with him.
He expanded the office from about 40 employees to 86.
Some of them are now being transferred out of the office too, police sources said.
In one of his controversial moves, Sheppard moved reporters who cover the NYPD and worked for decades in a second-floor warren of offices nicknamed “The Shack” to a modular building outside police headquarters.
He claimed it was to make more room for “ethnic media,” but the space is usually utilized by the same handful of journalists who previously worked inside the main building.
Sheppard called a Post City Hall reporter a “f–king scumbag” after the reporter reached out to Chief of Patrol John Chell for comment about a federal investigation of city officials.
