Keechant Sewell, unknown to the general public, will soon make history.
This 49-year-old woman has just been chosen, after a recruitment campaign across the United States, to lead the New York police, the legendary NYPD.
This is the first time that a woman, and a black woman, has been chosen to lead the city's 35,000 police officers.
It's a small revolution in a department whose leadership positions have always been notoriously white and male.
Not an easy task, especially at a time when the city has experienced an upsurge in violence since the Covid crisis.
In 2020, New York recorded a level of violence that had been gone for decades.
In June and July 2020, for example, the police recorded no less than 448 cases of gun violence.
And this year, during the same period, the police counted 67 homicides.
Appease violence
It's also a quantum leap for the new “Chief Sewell”. Before being appointed to this post, this Wednesday, December 15, she was the head of the modest department of 2,400 agents in Nassau County, a district in the suburbs of New York. It was New York City's new mayor, Eric Adams, himself a former city police captain, who chose Keechant Sewell. With this choice, Eric Adams hopes to have found the right person to embody the subtle balance between the fight against crime and the control of a police force which, in recent years, has sometimes stood out for its excess of violence. "Chief Sewell has demonstrated his ability to fight crime with experience and emotional intelligence to both provide the safety New Yorkers need and the justice they deserve,"explained the mayor. “I grew up in the Queens neighborhood,” said Keechant Sewell. This is my city and now it is my department. I have the feeling that I have completed the entire tour ”.
In video, what are the real figures of violence against women?
The new "Police commissioner" will take office in January at a time of national crisis, since the murder of George Floyd by a police officer in Minneapolis. This death, in May 2020, was the trigger for protests across the United States and the Black Lives Matter movement. During his campaign, the new mayor pledged to fight violence in his police ranks and eliminate officers whose conduct is not blameless. He also pledged to bring more ethnic diversity into the ranks of the NYPD and to speed up disciplinary proceedings against bad cops. “We welcome Chief Sewell to America's second toughest job,” the New York Police Union boss greeted him. "The hardest part, of course,is that of being an NYPD cop in the field ”.
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