A year after NYPD brass transferred him for helping disqualified applicants move through the hiring pipeline, Inspector Terrell Anderson is headed for a deputy-chief promotion and a top Brooklyn command. The move puts the supervisor associated with a major hiring breakdown back near the center of NYPD leadership.
According to New York Daily News, Anderson, a 22-year veteran, greenlit about 80 applicants who had failed the department’s psychological exam or background check. The report says he told internal investigators there was pressure to approve more candidates to keep academy classes full, while a police source said he had warned that the psychological exam was racially biased.
The fallout reached 31 officers who the NYPD believed had been wrongly hired and sought to remove from the force. Those officers were later reinstated under an agreement with the Police Benevolent Association, after a court fight that Hoodline previously covered blocked the department’s initial push to force resignations or terminations.
Anderson Was Transferred, Disciplined And Then Elevated
Anderson was transferred to the Housing Bureau in May 2025 after the hiring decisions came under scrutiny, according to the New York Daily News. The latest personnel plan names him executive officer of Brooklyn North, the command’s second-in-command, and calls for him to be promoted to deputy chief.
The department’s account is not the only one in circulation. City & State New York reported that Anderson’s reversals involved about 80 of roughly 6,200 psychological assessments and quoted an advocate who said the approvals had been authorized by higher-ups, a detail that shifts some of the focus from one supervisor to the system around him.
The Court Fight Put The Recruits Back On The Job
The Police Benevolent Association won a temporary restraining order in July 2025 blocking the NYPD from immediately firing the officers. The union argued that the recruits should not bear the consequences of a hiring process it described as the department’s management failure, and the eventual agreement returned all 31 to the job.
Anderson’s promotion does not erase the questions raised by the episode: who approved the overrides, how psychological disqualifications were reviewed, and whether the department’s safeguards can withstand pressure to fill larger academy classes. For New Yorkers, the strange arc—from transfer, to discipline, to deputy-chief promotion—turns an old hiring scandal into a fresh test of NYPD accountability.
