An internal review of a little-known NYPD unit found that top police officials were driving around in souped-up vehicles meant to be used during undercover investigations, Police Commissioner Jessica Tisch said Wednesday.
“The result of it was galling,” Tisch testified at a City Council budget hearing at City Hall. “We had executives that had multiple, three, four, five…kitted-out vehicles assigned to them personally.”
Kitted-out vehicles sport a range of luxury upgrades and accessories.
“It was out of all control,” Tisch said.
There were also vehicles, she said, that had been assigned to units not involved in “confidential investigations,” which is the point of the unit, the Confidential Rental and Leasing Office, or CRALO.
The News reported last year that CRALO, created under former Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly, was designed to give investigators, such as detectives and undercover officers, use of various types of leased vehicles — everything from an ordinary sedan to a fancy sports car — that criminals don’t typically associate with standard, unmarked NYPD vehicles.
But in recent years, according to police sources, a number of CRALO vehicles have been assigned to higher-ups who are not involved with investigations and simply used the vehicles to drive to and from work.
The danger, sources noted at the time, was that an investigator who couldn’t get a CRALO car and had to use a typical unmarked car, such as those used by detectives, could be more easily recognized as a cop by drug dealers, gang members and other criminals.
Tisch, who ordered an accounting of CRALO as part of her department-wide review after she became Police commissioner in November 2024, testified that a series of new rules are now in place.
“We took the CRALO vehicles away from the executives,” she said. “We insured that executives were assigned a single car and not multiple cars, and we also made sure these vehicles were only being used in the investigative commands.”
The top cop also noted that no one found to have been wrongly using a CRALO vehicle was disciplined because the abuse “was sanctioned by the department.”
“It didn’t appear that they were doing it under the radar,” she added. “Their bosses had allowed them to do it. It was approved.”
Tisch did not say how many vehicles are currently in the CRALO fleet.
The News previously reported there were about 1,000 such vehicles being used by the NYPD and that the department spent about $1.2 million a year in federal funds to lease them from rental companies.
