Disgraced ex-NYPD sergeants’ union boss Ed Mullins asks judge not to throw him in prison for stealing from members
Ex-NYPD sergeants’ union head Ed Mullins on Friday asked a judge not to throw him in prison for stealing from his members.
The 61-year-old Mullins is expected to face around 2½ to 3½ years per the terms of his January plea agreement with the Manhattan U.S. Attorney’s office when he admitted to stealing $600,000 from the Sergeants Benevolent Association through bogus expense reports. He also faces steep financial penalties.
Ahead of his Aug. 3 sentencing, lawyers for the incendiary ex-labor boss cited his 39 years of service, describing a precipitous fall from grace. Rather than enjoying a “wealth of well-paying opportunities” that usually comes with a long career in law enforcement, Mullins’ lawyer Thomas Kenniff said his client now works as a used car deliveryman who stands to lose his home and retirement savings.
“While he hopes to utilize his education and increase his earnings upon concluding his sentence, he will never again work in law enforcement or be able to pursue the array of opportunities that would otherwise have been available to him absent this conviction,” Kenniff wrote.
According to his plea, between 2017 and October 2020 Mullins billed the SBA for meals at high-end restaurants, designer clothing, jewelry, home appliances, and even a relative’s college tuition through fake or inflated expense reports.
“While the stain of this conviction will forever tarnish Mr. Mullins’ SBA tenure, it does not define it,” Kenniff wrote.
“He is ashamed of his actions and has accepted responsibility for his conduct. Yet, Mr. Mullins has otherwise led a law-abiding life aside from this incident, one devoted to public service.”
Mullins’ lawyers included several letters of recommendation, including a former SBA member who wrote the judge saying he was “touched” by how Mullins used to contact relatives of officers slain in the line of duty.
“It is these quiet acts of compassion, absent from any plaque or press release, that I believe are most indicative of my client’s true character,” Kenniff wrote.
Mullins, who joined the NYPD at age 20 and rose to detective and then sergeant, became president of the fifth-largest police union in the country in 2002, where he remained for almost two decades. He was stripped of his gun and shield in 2021 and filed for retirement a day after the FBI raided the union’s headquarters and his Long Island home. The feds indicted him for plundering his union’s bank accounts in February 2022.
Toward the end of his time as union chief, Mullins was embroiled in several controversies, establishing a reputation for racist and misogynistic tweets slamming political leaders, like calling Bronx Democratic Rep. Ritchie Torres “a first-class whore” and former city Health Commissioner Oxiris Barbot “a b---h.”
Manhattan U.S. Attorney spokesman Nick Biase declined to comment.
