Top NYPD, Mayor Adams officials attend Dubai summit with few details on funding, activity for trip

NEW YORK — Senior officials in Mayor Eric Adams’ administration, including NYPD Commissioner Edward Caban and International Affairs czar Edward Mermelstein, traveled to the United Arab Emirates earlier this week for a global summit — and City Hall is declining to say how their trip was paid for or who they met with.

Caban’s attendance at the Global Governments Summit in Dubai was first disclosed Monday in a memo issued by the Emirates News Agency that also revealed Joel Eisdorfer, a senior adviser to Adams at City Hall, tagged along with the commissioner.

The memo, first reported by Politico on Wednesday, said Caban and Eisdorfer met at the summit with United Arab Emirates Deputy Prime Minister Sheikh Saif bin Zayed Al Nahyan to discuss “existing bilateral relations between the two nations, emphasizing avenues to enhance cooperation, particularly in security and law enforcement.” The memo also included photos showing Caban presented the Emirati official with a New York Police Department plaque during the sit-down.

In addition to Caban and Eisdorfer, Mermelstein, commissioner of the mayor’s Office of International Affairs, attended the summit, which ran from Monday through Wednesday, a source directly familiar with the matter told The New York Daily News.

Adams spokesman Charles Lutvak confirmed Eisdorfer and Mermelstein’s attendance, but wouldn’t share information on who they met with during the summit, how their travel was paid for or how long they were overseas. Lutvak did say “no taxpayer dollars” were spent on their trips.

The NYPD’s media office declined to provide any details about the itinerary of Caban’s trip, saying it could not do so “due to security concerns.” The press office also wouldn’t say how his trip was funded.

“The Police Commissioner was on official Department business in Dubai,” the media office said in an email.

Mermelstein, who makes nearly $230,000 per year in his City Hall job, serves as the Adams administration’s “primary liaison” to the United Nations and other diplomatic communities, per his office’s website. Eisdorfer, who makes $185,000 per year, serves as the administration’s unofficial liaison to the city’s Orthodox Jewish community.

Speakers at this year’s Global Governments Summit, which was hosted by the United Arab Emirates’ government, included Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi and ex-Fox News host Tucker Carlson, who recently stoked controversy for interviewing Russian President Vladimir Putin.

The Dubai visit comes on the heels of Caban traveling to Qatar in October for a security conference. That Caban trip, which came just after Hamas’ terror attack on Israel, was paid for by the Qatari government, which has allowed senior Hamas leaders to reside in its country.

Late last week, members of the NYPD’s Emergency Service Unit participated in a SWAT team competition in the United Arab Emirates that featured fighters from the Akhmat Kadyrov special police regiment, a notorious Chechen militia aligned with Putin that Ukrainian officials say has committed crimes against humanity during the war in Ukraine.

The NYPD media office wouldn’t say whether Caban was on hand for the SWAT team games.

Caban has made frequent visits overseas since he became the city’s top cop in July 2023. In addition to his trips to Qatar and Dubai, he went on an official trip to the Dominican Republic in December.

(Thomas Tracy and Rocco Parascandola contributed to this report.)