NYPD Chief of Department Ken Corey to retire after less than a year in top post

NYPD Chief of Department Ken Corey will step away after less than a year as the department’s high-ranking uniformed officer, police officials announced Thursday.

Corey, who was promoted from Chief of Training with the incoming Adams administration in January, told close colleagues at a party in police headquarters Thursday that he was retiring from the NYPD, police sources said.

He will step down at the end of November.

“Policing is among the great passions in my life,” Corey said in a statement. “I have now been presented with an opportunity to improve policing on a national – and even international – level. It was an opportunity I simply could not allow to pass.”

He did not expand on his new job.

As chief of department, Corey — who joined the force in 1990 — is one of the most visible members of the NYPD and oversees a department of 35,000 cops.

Under his leadership, the NYPD has seen some success in combating gun violence, recording a 12% downtick from last year. He played a key role in rolling out the NYPD’s revamped anti-crime teams to crack down on illegal guns.

But major crime in NYC continued to climb throughout the year.

The Big Apple has seen a more than 30% increase in 2022 in serious felonies from last year — as well as the prepandemic year of 2017, police data shows. The only major crime metric to see a decrease was murder, which experts have attributed to the reduction in shootings.

The department has also struggled to slow the violence in the subway system, with the city seeing its ninth homicide on the underground for the first time since the 1990s.

Sources suspect the move is the first domino to fall in a shake-up of police brass.

Rumors have swirled for weeks internally that Corey would soon be retiring, with sources saying believing his enthusiasm for the role had diminished, but the chief denied it as gossip.

He took over for Rodney Harrison, who left the NYPD in late 2021 to run the Suffolk County Police Department.

“Chief Corey has been a beacon of excellence for officers in every rank – at every station. The light of his leadership will remain a shining guide forward for all of us and his contributions to our profession will be everlasting,” Police Commissioner Keechant Sewell said in a statement.