NYPD Commissioner Caban allows cop who lied about getting COVID vaccine to keep her job

NEW YORK — A Brooklyn cop who admitted to submitting a phony COVID vaccine card and then lying about it was allowed to keep her job by NYPD Commissioner Edward Caban despite a Police Department review recommending she be fired.

Internal NYPD documents obtained Friday by the Daily News show that instead of having her employment terminated, Police Officer Kimberly Lucas was docked 85 vacation days and hit with a yearlong probationary period — thanks in large part to the intercession of Caban.

“This shocks the conscience. They’re basically letting a fraudster stay on the job,” said an outraged fellow cop, who noted that the circumstances around the case effectively disqualify Lucas from testifying under oath. “She can never testify in court again.”

Caban’s lenience in the Lucas matter isn’t the first time the commissioner has let bad behavior slide.

As first reported in The News earlier this year, Caban declined to discipline a high-ranking deputy chief who wrenched a female protester’s hair and shoved her face into the ground. Since becoming commissioner last July, he’s blocked disciplinary cases involving 54 officers from going to trial, the news outlet ProPublica reported.

Some cops who’ve landed in hot water also later saw their fortunes improve — like Lt. Brandi Sanchez, who was placed on modified duty in 2020 after being caught having drunken sex in a bathroom with fellow cop Sgt. Lambros Gavalas. According to a police source, despite that, Sanchez got a plum gig about a year ago working for First Deputy Commissioner Tania Kinsella.

Lucas, who’s worked out of Brooklyn’s 70th Precinct for nearly 10 years, was facing termination for her COVID-related misdeeds.

Other cops who told the truth about their refusal to take the vaccine after it was mandated were fired as a result. The so-called vaccine mandate prompted the Police Benevolent Association to sue the city — a case it won in September 2022. As a result, a judge ordered the department to reinstate officers who were fired for refusing the mandate.

But Lucas’ case was different from those in that she claimed she’d been vaccinated. As part of her departmental trial, Lucas testified that she went to get a vaccine in 2021 after speaking with a commanding officer about whether she’d comply with the city mandate requiring all municipal employees be vaccinated for COVID.

At an urgent care facility in Brooklyn, a receptionist inquired whether she wanted a vaccine while “smirking,” which Lucas correctly interpreted to mean that “she was going to be given a vaccine card without receiving the COVID-19 vaccine,” internal NYPD records show.

Lucas pursued that phony vaccine card path after the receptionist gave her a phone number to contact to obtain it. Records show that she ultimately did just that on Staten Island and later uploaded the fake card to the NYPD’s Centralized Personnel Resource system.

Later that year, in December 2021, the department’s Internal Affairs Bureau began a review of the situation and requested that Lucas bring her proof of vaccination to her interview.

During the sitdown, she gave a “second fraudulent card to the IAB investigators” after losing the first one and lied to them, saying that she “was given the COVID-19 vaccine shot and then waited in the lobby for 15 minutes to ensure that there were no side effects.”

About a year later, in a second official interview that took place in October 2022, she confessed to the falsehood. During that interview and in trial testimony, she said she feared the vaccine because her mother suffered a stroke within two days of getting it and that she couldn’t afford to lose her job because she’s the sole supporter of her child.

Taking all of that into consideration, Anne Stone, an NYPD assistant deputy commissioner of trials, determined in October that Lucas should be terminated, but allowed to “file for vested-interest retirement.”

Caban overruled her in May, though.

While writing that he agreed with Stone’s findings that Lucas lied, he noted that Lucas “had fulfilled nine years of exemplary service in the rank of police officer.” Caban ultimately concluded Lucas should only be docked 85 vacation days and hit with a year of “dismissal probation,” which allows her to retain her full salary during that time.

A spokesman for the NYPD declined to elaborate more on what went into Caban’s decision-making process.

PBA President Patrick Hendry suggested that his move was justified.

“The NYPD’s disciplinary matrix does not limit the police commissioner to a ‘one-size-fits-all’ set of penalties,” Hendry said. “He is still granted the discretion to go beyond the recommended penalties to make a fair final determination based on a police officer’s past record and other considerations. That is what occurred in this case.”