Mount Vernon police hiring is under sharp scrutiny after critics said the city’s Democratic leadership left a majority-black Westchester County community embarrassed and exposed. The uproar centers on Deputy Police Commissioner Jennifer Lackard, who was arrested after prosecutors alleged she helped her son in a Bronx drive-by shooting.
Locals and law enforcement critics said Mayor Shawyn Patterson-Howard has offered too many excuses and too few answers. The mayor blamed Lackard’s hiring on the late former Commissioner Glenn Scott and on police reform changes that followed George Floyd’s killing. Damon K. Jones, a representative for Blacks in Law Enforcement of America, said the city had an opportunity to show what accountable Black leadership and community policing could look like, but instead city hall and police leadership have embarrassed the department and overshadowed the work of other officers. Mount Vernon resident and grocer CB Griffin, 54, called the hiring favoritism and said problems like that are common in city government.
Lackard, 49, was hired in 2020 for the senior police post despite having no police experience. The criticism has also focused on her personal ties inside city and church circles. She is a sorority sister of Patterson-Howard, and sources said the mayor may have been urged to hire her by Democratic powerbroker Rev. Franklyn Richardson of Grace Baptist Church, where both women attended services. Lackard’s husband, James Lackard, was also arrested days later. He is an ex-convict who spent nearly a decade in prison for heroin dealing.
According to the indictment described by prosecutors, the June 29 shooting involved Lackard allegedly driving the getaway car while her son, Chase Lackard, 20, and a reputed member of the “Slutty Gang,” tried to shoot a rival or rivals outside a Bronx courthouse. The deputy commissioner was charged with attempted murder. Prosecutors also said the family coordinated the shooting through text messages, including one alleged message from the mother telling her son, “You can’t just sit directly outside,” while he waited near the courthouse.
