Who is Beth Correia? What does she do for the NYPD for her $175,000 consultant’s fee? And what is her relationship to Commissioner Bill Bratton?
Correia is a Los Angeles attorney whom Bratton met while he was chief of the LAPD (2002-09). That department was then under a federal monitor. Correia specialized in risk management, collaborating with the monitor and tracking problem officers.
Bratton became NYPD commissioner in 2014 when the department also was under a federal monitor after the overuse of stop-and-frisk. He set up a similar risk-management operation to deal with the monitor and resulting lawsuits.
In July 2014, the NYC Police Foundation paid Correia $70,000 as a six-month consultant under then-deputy commissioner of legal matters, Douglass Maynard. According to a foundation source, the order came from Bratton’s office.
Maynard is a former federal prosecutor who was appointed in January 2013. He resigned in August 2014, and returned to his former law firm. He did not respond to an email or phone call. His successor, Larry Byrne, said Maynard “ introduced me to Beth and never said anything negative about her.”
Although Correia works for the NYPD, she was not on its payroll after her foundation consultancy ended. Instead, said Byrne, she was placed on the city payroll with a salary not to exceed $175,000 over three years. He said he did not know who decided the arrangement. The setup bears the fingerprints of Robert Wasserman, a Bratton consultant who is paid by the foundation. He did not return phone calls or an email.
Meanwhile, Bratton moved the risk-management division to the office of First Deputy Commissioner Benjamin Tucker.
But Correia has no office. She comes to New York maybe one or two weeks a month. For the past month, she could not be found at 1 Police Plaza. She did not return phone messages left at the NYPD’s legal bureau and other risk-management offices.
Byrne said she “technically” reports to Assistant Chief Matthew Pontillo, the commanding officer of the first deputy’s office. “But it is not a formal relationship,” he added.
A call to Pontillo’s office was rerouted to the NYPD’s public information office, which did not respond.
