New York City’s sheriff just got the boot, and his replacement is a cop who made his name by calling out the NYPD from the inside.
On Friday, Mayor Zohran Mamdani fired New York City Sheriff Anthony Miranda and named retired NYPD lieutenant Edwin Raymond as the city’s new sheriff. The move puts a high-profile police whistleblower in charge of the office that enforces civil judgments, carries out seizures and padlocks unlicensed businesses.
As reported by Crain's New York, Mamdani hailed Raymond as “the kind of public servant New Yorkers deserve” and framed the appointment as part of a broader push for accountability and restored trust. According to the mayor’s announcement, Raymond will serve as an officer of the court under the city’s Department of Finance and inherit the civil-enforcement portfolio previously overseen by Miranda.
Raymond’s record as a reformer
Raymond spent about 15 years with the NYPD before retiring in 2023 and later joining the New York State attorney general’s office as a social-justice liaison, according to NY1 and the mayor’s release.
He was part of a group of officers who sued the NYPD in 2015 over alleged quota-based enforcement practices and was later profiled in a 2016 New York Times Magazine feature on internal dissent within the department. The New York Times chronicled Raymond’s fight against those practices, while his memoir, An Inconvenient Cop, drew national attention in 2023 and was examined in detail by The Washington Post.
Why Miranda's removal matters
Miranda, appointed sheriff in 2022 by former Mayor Eric Adams, became the face of the city’s high-profile crackdown on unlicensed cannabis shops, known as “Operation Padlock.” The campaign drew sharp scrutiny over how raids were conducted and how money and merchandise were handled.
Reporting by Business Insider via AOL highlighted shop owners’ claims that documentation for seized cash was sometimes missing. Earlier local coverage of the Operation Padlock crackdown focused on how some owners struggled to recover their funds after raids. Those complaints helped spur a 2024 inquiry by the city’s Department of Investigation (DOI).
Legal questions and ongoing probes
The DOI inquiry and several civil lawsuits leave open the possibility of administrative discipline or criminal referrals for officials involved in the cannabis-shop crackdowns, although no criminal charges have been announced.
FOX 5 has reported on the contours of the DOI probe, while ABC7 has detailed related civil litigation and allegations tied to the sheriff’s office. Miranda has denied wrongdoing.
What comes next
In a statement to NY1, Raymond said he looks forward to “helping build a safer, fairer and more accountable city for all New Yorkers.”
City Hall and the Department of Finance have not offered further comment beyond the mayor’s announcement. Reporters note that DOI continues to review the matters it opened in 2024, meaning Raymond steps into the sheriff’s role with the office he now leads still under a lingering investigative cloud.
