Police Commissioner Ray Kelly abruptly canceled a new regimen of Friday street patrols for desk-duty officers, and then reprimanded the chief who ordered the reassignments behind his back, The Post has learned.
Kelly stripped Chief of Patrol Robert Gianelli, his former radio-car partner, of command of the Special Operations Division after Gianelli ordered hundreds of career paper-pushing cops to join beat cops on a weekly basis.
“Kelly was annoyed that he wasn’t told about it,” a source said. “It wasn’t going to work anyway, because the cops involved weren’t for it. It was just window dressing.”
The Post last month first reported on the patrol order, which had hundreds of desk jockeys and their commanders grumbling.
The third weekly patrol was supposed to have begun today.
For past two Fridays, approximately six to 10 administrative cops from each of the 76 police precincts were reassigned to foot patrols — sometimes in the roughest parts of the city.
Precinct commanders, however, had complained that they need their desk jockeys to keep the mundane operations of daily police work flowing smoothly.