What to Know
- A deputy director in Mayor de Blasio’s Office of Criminal Justice was arrested along with two men on gun charges
- Police said Reagan Stevens, 42, was in a vehicle parked near the scene of a shooting; officers allegedly found a loaded gun in the vehicle
- In a statement, a spokesman said Stevens was suspended without pay pending an investigation
A high-level deputy director in Mayor de Blasio’s Office of Criminal Justice was arrested on gun charges this weekend, police say.
Reagan Stevens, the deputy director of Youth and Strategic Initiatives, was charged along with two men after officers found the trio in a vehicle with a loaded handgun late Saturday night, according to police.
Officers were responding to ShotSpotter, the NYPD's bullet-detection system, near the corner of 177th Street and 106th Avenue in Jamaica when police say they found the “suspicious” vehicle double-parked nearby.
The officers found the loaded 9mm handgun in a glove compartment, according to police, who said the weapon holds an eight-round clip but that only three rounds were remaining. Police said it wasn’t immediately clear if the gun had been recently fired.
Stevens, 42, was charged with criminal possession of a loaded firearm and criminal possession of a defaced weapon, as were the two men, identified by police as 24-year-old Montell Hughes and 25-year-old Caesar Forbes.
Hughes and Forbes were allegedly carrying knives at the time.
Local
Police haven't said who the gun or vehicle are registered to.
Patrick Gallahue, a spokesman for the Mayor's Office of Criminal Justice, said in a statement to News 4 that Stevens was suspended immediately without pay pending an investigation. “We take these allegations very seriously,” Gallahue wrote in the statement.
An attorney for Stevens said she didn't know the gun was in the glove compartment nor does she own the gun. It wasn’t immediately known if Hughes or Forbes had attorneys.
A biography on the City's website says "Ms. Stevens spent 15 years implementing crime prevention, adolescent diversion programs, and alternatives to incarceration at the Kings County District Attorney's office."
