NYPD’s Keechant Sewell launches ‘Ask the PC’ initiative — then dodges questions at next public gig

NYPD Commissioner Keechant Sewell announced Thursday that she’ll be taking questions from New Yorkers on Instagram — then turned her back on a Post reporter just hours later.

Sewell launched the “Ask the PC” initiative as a supposed attempt at transparency amid a surge in most major crimes, the department announced in an email shortly after 8 a.m.

At 11 a.m., the commissioner presided over the NYPD’s “Graduation and Horse Naming Ceremony for the Remount School of Horsemanship” at Pelham Bay Park in the Bronx — where she dodged questions from a reporter.

“We’re not doing this,” department spokesman Carlos Nieves said after the event, while physically blocking his boss from the press.

Adding insult to injury, one of the 10 newly anointed saddle-top cops fell off his mount during a demonstration of horseback prowess.

Sewell nonetheless quipped that she wished she could get one of the mounted cops onto city subway trains, where crime has been spiking. The reporter had been trying to ask her about the joke.

The Big Apple notched its ninth homicide underground earlier this week, in the highest yearly tally since the mid-1990s.

In response, Sewell took a one-stop tour underground on Oct. 11 with a few cameras in tow in a bid to convince the riding public that they were safe.

According to the NYPD, New Yorkers will now be able to submit questions to the department’s top cop, who will then release taped responses under the “landmark” Ask the PC program.

Each week, beginning immediately, readers will allegedly be able to submit questions for the commissioner on the NYPD’s Instagram page, @NYPD, the department said.

“The first woman to lead the nation’s largest police department looks forward to producing candid video responses to questions from community members.” 

The NYPD says in the release that the program will “create a regular channel for thoughtful communications designed to deepen the understanding between the public and the police at a pivotal moment for New York City.”

The initiative comes after weeks of Sewell rarely taking off-topic questions at press conferences.

Sewell was appointed to her position by Mayor Eric Adams in 2021 and has been less and less available as major crime has swelled.  

New York has seen a more than 30% increase in all major felonies compared to 2017, the most recent NYPD data show. And while shootings have seen a double-digit percent drop compared to the last two years, gun violence remains at markedly higher levels than before the pandemic surge.

Meanwhile, the department’s move to go directly to the public with Ask the PC isn’t unprecedented. 

Sewell’s predecessor, Dermot Shea, launched the same initiative after less than four months in the role.

In Shea’s case, his team fielded questions live from social media as the top cop responded.

For Sewell, who rarely deviates from her script in press appearances, the answers appear to be taped “candid” responses released over time.

The former police commissioner held three of these online forums over the first six months of his tenure.

Sewell’s tenure so far has been punctuated by rumors that she’s leaving the job because of dissatisfaction with the balance of power between herself and Deputy Mayor for Public Safety Philip Banks. 

Scandal-scarred Banks, who has been dogged by his ties to a corruption scandal, and Adams came up together in the NYPD before the mayor decided to leave to pursue politics.

Additional reporting by Craig McCarthy