NEW YORK — Former New York City Deputy Mayor for Public Safety Kaz Daughtry handed out more than a dozen NYPD parking placards to people not authorized to have them, police sources said Tuesday.

Daughtry, now a civilian liaison with the U.S. Department if Homeland Security, adamantly denies any wrongdoing.

“It’s not true,” he told the New York Daily News. “I haven’t done anything wrong.”

The discovery was made as Daughtry in December filed for retirement from the NYPD, where he skyrocketed up the ranks, from detective to assistant commissioner, as a favorite of then-Mayor Eric Adams, before moving to City Hall, sources said.

It came as part of a larger review by NYPD Commissioner Jessica Tisch, who following her appointment a year earlier, sought to clean up the department’s image, which at the time was reeling from a sex-for-overtime scandal and was also known for an aggressive social media posture by several NYPD executives, Daughtry included.

A number of cellphones and laptops assigned to Daughtry were thought to be missing when he filed for retirement, sources said, though they were later located. The devices had been given to officers but had been listed under Daughtry’s name because he had requested them, the sources said.

At the same time, however,it was learned that, as one source put it, Daughtry “had just given placards away to whoever asked.”

Tisch ordered those invalidated, sources said, with the number assigned to each placard then relayed to members of the department in a directive that ordered any vehicle with such a placard in the windshield be written a summons, with the placard seized if possible.

Sources said unauthorized placards linked to other members of the NYPD were also invalidated.

​The issuance of NYPD parking placards has been a source of controversy for years, with police watchdogs contending they are easy to get if you have a friend in the department. It is also not uncommon to see self-made placards printed out and placed in windshields, often by people pretending they are in law enforcement.

The Department of Investigation in an April 2024 report found fault with how the NYPD, the Department of Transportation and Department of Education issues and revokes parking permits.

The DOI also found that “the NYPD’s enforcement of parking permit misuse at the street level has been uneven and inadequate in that traffic enforcement agents and NYPD officers frequently choose not to issue summonses to illegally parked vehicles displaying parking permits.”

That year, the NYPD issued 26,076 what it calls restricted permits. Last year, Tisch’s first full year as commissioner, it issued 24,910.

The Daily News also reported in January 2025 that Tisch had ordered a review of a little-known vehicle unit amid concerns that some NYPD executives were using cars earmarked for investigators.

CRALO, or Confidential Rental and Leasing Office, was formed under former NYPD Commissioner Raymond Kelly and is designed to give investigators, such as detectives and undercovers, use of various types of vehicles — everything from a Honda to a Jeep — that criminals don’t typically associate with unmarked NYPD vehicles.

The review was ordered when it became apparent that it was being abused, sources said.

It’s not clear if the review has been completed.

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