(Photo: Paul Schmulbach/Globe Photos)

Has Ray Kelly gotten all Porter Goss on leaks to the press? The police commissioner’s wildly high approval ratings have politicos floating him as a candidate to succeed Mayor Bloomberg. But inside police headquarters, Kelly’s top-down control of the city’s 39,000 cops has ignited a war with reporters who cover the crime beat. The uproar started in early March: Looking to prevent media leaks during the Imette St. Guillen investigation, Kelly initiated a widespread internal probe in which more than a dozen detectives and their superior officers were quizzed by Internal Affairs and had their cell-phone call records checked for reporters’ phone numbers. The result, several journos say, has been a “chill” that has silenced long-cultivated sources. “He’s fucking with our livelihood,” one reporter says of Kelly. Michael Palladino, president of the detectives union, says Kelly’s probe “demoralized” detectives, who interrupted their work on the Imette case for in-house grillings. The internal investigation continues. NYPD deputy commissioner Paul Browne says: “The Police Department took appropriate steps to stop the unauthorized disclosure of sensitive information that was undermining an active homicide investigation.”

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• Archive: “Intelligencer”
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• Table of Contents: May 29, 2006 issue of New York | Subscribe!