The former commanding officer of the New York Police Department’s School Safety Division was charged by federal prosecutors on Thursday with using his position to solicit and demand bribes.
The former official, Kevin Taylor, promised to leverage his role to pressure and advise others in city government to award contracts to a Florida businessman’s company, prosecutors said. In exchange, Mr. Taylor received bribes including tens of thousands of dollars in cash and gifts, luxury hotel lodging, a helicopter tour and Broadway tickets, they said.
Mr. Taylor, 52, of Yonkers, N.Y., was charged with a series of crimes, including one count of conspiracy to commit honest services wire fraud and one count of honest services wire fraud, each of which carries a maximum sentence of 20 years in prison.
The U.S. attorney’s office in Manhattan also charged the Florida businessman, Geno Roefaro, 39, with using his relationship with Mr. Taylor to secure government contracts. He faces several counts and, if convicted on the highest charges, could be sentenced to up to 20 years in prison.
The two men were arraigned in U.S. District Court in Manhattan. Their lawyers did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
The investigation into Mr. Taylor was an outgrowth of the office’s efforts to prosecute Eric Adams, who was charged with federal corruption in 2024. While a judge dropped the charges against Mr. Adams last year after a request from the Justice Department, others in his sphere were not as lucky.
Mr. Taylor’s name initially arose in the Adams administration investigations in the fall of 2024, when federal agents searched the offices of the Police Department’s School Safety Division. Agents seized Mr. Taylor’s cellphone while looking into his actions with SaferWatch, the company owned by Mr. Roefaro, which sells panic button systems to schools and police departments across the country.
SaferWatch was listed as a client of a consulting company owned by the brother of two top officials in the Adams administration, who both resigned in the weeks after the mayor was indicted.
The scheme with Mr. Roefaro was one of two that Mr. Taylor was running simultaneously for about a year, prosecutors said.
Between July 2023 and February 2024, Mr. Taylor also tried to extort as much as $75,000 from two other businessmen, prosecutors said. The men, who were not named, were connected to a second company that had a contract with the Police Department to outfit the School Safety Division with ballistic vests, according to prosecutors. The businessmen “never made the bribe payments,” prosecutors said.
When the Police Department’s investment in Mr. Roefaro’s company did not go beyond a pilot, the businessman expressed frustration that he had “made a MAJOR investment and zero return,” prosecutors said.
At one point, Mr. Roefaro texted Mr. Taylor that “it’s been fun, but it’s not fun or funny anymore,” saying that he needed to report a significant deal for his company.
In September 2024, Mr. Taylor began to express concerns that their scheme would be exposed as the investigations surrounding Mr. Adams intensified, prosecutors said.
He began to worry that Mr. Roefaro could incriminate him if approached by law enforcement, they said.
Hurubie Meko is a Times reporter covering criminal justice in New York, with a focus on the Manhattan district attorney’s office and state courts.
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