The person “literally running” the NYPD is a brash Brooklyn cop who hams it up in the department’s true-crime YouTube show, pals around with top chiefs — and has a direct line to Mayor Adams.
For nearly the past six months, when bosses wanted to make a promotion or transfer, they’d call first-grade Detective Kaz Daughtry — not Police Commissioner Keechant Sewell, who on Monday announced she was leaving the job.
“He calls and everybody jumps,” one police source said. “He’s literally running the department.”
Daughtry is a 17-year veteran who now works in the office of Chief of Department Jeffrey Maddrey.
He is the highest rank of detective and makes appearances on episodes of “True Blue: NYPD’s Finest,” the department’s YouTube series — usually right next to Maddrey or Chief of Patrol John Chell.
“He’s a cowboy,” the source said.
Sewell, a popular commissioner with the rank and file, announced her surprise resignation in a letter to the department’s 33,000 police officers on Monday.
She didn’t give a reason.
The announcement came a day after The Post published a story in which police sources said former cop Adams, Maddrey, and Deputy Mayor Philip Banks were calling the shots at the NYPD.
Adams has been close to Banks and Maddrey for years.
Daughtry, who made $195,000 in 2022, has been working in Maddrey’s office at One Police Plaza since December 2022.
Daughtry’s elevated role in Maddrey’s office prompted department brass to circumvent Commissioner Sewell and go directly to Daughtry when they needed something done.
“In the past, the people below the police commissioner didn’t have more juice than the police commissioner,” the source said. “Everyone went to the police commissioner, who went to the mayor.”
Daughtry drives a new department-issued Jeep Wagoneer, police sources said.
He previously worked under Maddrey in the 73rd and 75th Precincts in Brownsville and East New York and in Patrol Borough Brooklyn North, records show.
A third source said the authority he’s been given has gone to Daughtry’s head.
“He’s just a knucklehead detective and Maddrey’s empowered him,” the source said. “He calls around as if he’s a three-star chief.”
“He tells chiefs what to do,” the source said.
Daughtry takes on roles that are traditionally served by supervisors, such as going to a squad to send out officers on specific orders, like crackdowns on illegal dirt bikes or paper license plates, one source said.
“It’s crazy,” the source said. “They’ll never say that because he’s just a detective, but he’s the one that goes to the roll call, does the turnout.”
Daughtry also relishes the limelight.
He has a leading role in True Blue: NYPD’s Finest, which shows real-life police work, like delivering a baby in trying circumstances, taking a law-breaking driver’s car off the street, or setting up a manhunt for a killer
In the show’s first episode, police officers look for a car seen in a social-media video doing donuts on MaCombs Dam Bridge in the Bronx on Oct. 9, 2022.
The stunt closed down traffic.
In the episode, police find the vehicle three days later in East New York, Brooklyn, and impound it.
“We’re not giving warnings,” Daughtry says after watching a cell phone video of the car doing donuts with the driver hanging out the window. “We’re not going to chase you. We’re just going to … find the car and just take your vehicle.
“So, let him put that on Instagram,” Daughtry says with a smirk.
Daughtry has a checkered past as a police officer.
He pleaded guilty to making misleading and inaccurate statements in a use of force case and lost 20 vacation days in 2021.
The use of force allegations was found to be unsubstantiated.
He’s had substantiated complaints for pointing a gun at someone, abuse of authority, and threat of force, records show.
“People get in trouble,” the second law enforcement source said. “But he was in a lot of trouble. They took him off the street so he couldn’t make arrests.”
In another case, a federal judge in 2008 tossed out a gun arrest made by Daughtry, calling the logic behind the bust “guesswork.”
As part of his Police Academy training, Daughtry said he was given a newspaper article about a cop who made gun seizures by observing how other cops carried concealed weapons and then stopped suspects who were acting the same way.
Daughtry told a judge that he stopped 30 to 50 suspicious suspects over three days using the technique, and came up with one gun.
The judge called the cop’s results “dismal” and concluded the search was unconstitutional, leading prosecutors to drop the charges.
Daughtry is “one of the detectives designated as a NYPD City Hall Liaison,” the NYPD said.
“This team was created to better facilitate direct and immediate communication between City Hall and the NYPD,” according to the department.
