Mayor Zohran Mamdani fired New York City Sheriff Anthony Miranda on Thursday and named former NYPD officer Edwin Raymond as his replacement, a swift leadership change at an office already weighed down by scrutiny. Mamdani said Raymond is the kind of public servant New Yorkers deserve, and that he has spent his career trying to build a public safety system rooted in effectiveness, accountability and public trust.
The move puts Raymond, who spent over a decade on the force before retiring early, at the center of one of City Hall’s most sensitive public safety jobs. Raymond filed a lawsuit in August 2015 with 11 other police officers, arguing that NYPD arrest and summons quotas violated state law and the 14th Amendment’s ban on racial discrimination. He later published An Inconvenient Cop: My Fight to Change Policing in America in 2023 and ran unsuccessfully for City Council in 2021.
Mamadi’s decision also lands just as readers are looking for an answer to what happens inside the Sheriff’s Office next. Miranda’s tenure had been marked by controversy over illegal cannabis enforcement during the Adams administration, and in 2024 city investigators began probing reports that the office improperly seized evidence from unlicensed pot shops. During that probe, investigators found more than $100,000 in cash inside safes at the sheriff’s headquarters in Queens, and a source in the office said the safes had been taken in a pot shop raid and were found with a ledger that had pages torn out.
The office has faced pressure on another front too. In July 2025, training for dozens of recruits hoping to become deputy sheriffs was thrown into chaos after the Department of Investigation determined the academy instructors handling investigation and firearms training were not certified by the state. More than three weeks later, more than 80 sheriff cadets were finally allowed to graduate in what was described as the largest academy class in the agency’s history, while the union has also called on Miranda to resign over what it described as a hostile work environment.
Miranda declined to expand on his removal, saying, “I don’t have anything to say at this point.” Raymond, meanwhile, signaled he is ready to take on the post, saying he looks forward to helping build a safer, fairer and more accountable city for all New Yorkers. For Mamdani, the firing closes one era at the Sheriff’s Office and opens another built around a figure who has spent years challenging the policing culture that office now sits inside of.
