New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio “misused” NYPD resources for personal benefit when he ordered members of his security detail to move his daughter, Chiara de Blasio, from her Brooklyn apartment to Gracie Mansion, a new report from the city’s Depart of Investigation found.

The same investigation also determined the city spent $319,794 for the members of Mayor de Blasio’s security detail to travel on his presidential campaign trips. The mayor has not reimbursed the city for these expenses, either personally or through his campaign, reflecting what the repot called “a use of NYPD resources for political purposes.”

DOI also found that, during these campaign trips, members of the security detail occasionally transported de Blasio’s campaign staffers while driving the mayor.

DOI has been examining the cost to taxpayers of the mayor’s use of his NYPD security detail during his unsuccessful five-month campaign for president.

The mayor’s spokesperson says the “unprofessional…inaccurate report, based on illegitimate assumptions and a nave view of the complex security challenges facing elected officials today.”

The report concluded there were numerous instances where the mayor’s security detail, from the NYPD Intelligence Bureau’s Executive Protection Unit (EPU), was misused for either the personal benefit of his children, or for political purposes during his presidential campaign.

Among those:

• “numerous instances when EPU members transported mayoral staffers to various locations, including to their homes, and assisted them in running errands for the Mayor”
• “several instances when the security detail was asked to transport guests of the Mayor, at his direction, without him present in the vehicle”
• $319,794 in city expenses for the security detail to travel with the mayor during his presidential campaign, none of which has been reimbursed
• “EPU members occasionally transported Mayor de Blasio’s campaign staffers while driving the Mayor. Both reflect a use of NYPD resources for political purposes”
• “The security detail has been conducting frequent security checks at houses owned by the Mayor in Brooklyn, where neither he nor his family members currently reside”
• “In addition to the misuse of EPU staff and resources, DOI’s investigation
  identified several vulnerabilities in the EPU’s policies and procedures,” the city’s Department of Investigation concluded.

But the report took even stronger aim at the NYPD, saying the official in charge of the mayor’s detail, Inspector Howard Redmond, “actively obstructed and sought to thwart” the investigation.

“Inspector Redmond sought to obstruct this investigation by refusing to provide his City-Hall-issued phone for production, deliberately seeking to destroy his NYPD-issued phone after he was informed that he must surrender it for production to DOI, and deleting all communications from both phones before they could be provided to DOI. These actions are a continuation of his conduct during his sworn DOI interview, in which he demonstrated a lack of candor, repeatedly claimed he could not recall the facts around matters under his direct supervision, and gave multiple answers that were not credible in light of the objective evidence and the sworn statements of other witnesses,” the report concluded.

(AP)