Fidel Del Valle, chief judge and commissioner of the Office of Administrative Trials and Hearings, was caught on video berating a NYPD officer with obscene language. (Susan Watts / New York Daily News)
City Hall’s top administrative law judge has a dirty mouth — and a friend willing to clean up his mess.
Fidel Del Valle, chief judge and commissioner of the Office of Administrative Trials and Hearings, was caught on video dropping dozens of obscenities on a uniformed cop working City Hall’s West Gate security booth on Nov. 13.
His f-bomb barrage was followed by a failed attempt to keep the cop from complaining about his less-than-judicial behavior, the Daily News has learned.
“Listen babe, I don’t give a f---! Do you know who I am?” the 69-year-old Del Valle howled at the female officer at the start of his expletive-laden explosion. “Who the f--- do you think you are?”
When the offended officer complained to her supervisors, Inspector Howard Redmond — who heads the mayor’s security detail — encouraged her to drop the complaint in a botched cover-up, The News was told.
“That was wrong,” a source said. “He’s part of the Police Department. He’s not there to fix the mayor’s public relations problems.”
Three weeks have passed since the incident before a Puerto Rico heritage event, yet OATH commissioner Del Valle remains on the job and has yet to face any consequences. A police spokesman said in a statement that “the NYPD is aware of an incident and is looking into it.”
The gutter diatribe began when the 20-year veteran officer routinely asked Del Valle, who arrived with guests in tow, about his business at City Hall. When the officer failed to recognize Del Valle — who is hardly a household name — he erupted in obscenities rather than identify himself.
The News got details of the incident from several sources, including a letter sent Wednesday by the Patrolmen’s Benevolent Association to Mayor de Blasio.
“I come here every f------ day!” he bellowed at one point, according to the PBA letter. “Do you want to keep your job?”
He tried to stride past the officer until other cops convinced him to stop — even as his tirade continued.
Things turned so ugly that a rookie cop stepped in, ordering Del Valle to back up and announcing that his body camera was recording the whole incident.
“I don’t give a f----!” Del Valle allegedly roared.
The young officer summoned a supervisor to the scene and told Del Valle to wait. The city official continued cursing and shouting at the cops, identifying himself as a commissioner and calling them “f-----g a--holes!” the PBA letter says.
City Councilman Kalman Yager showed up and offered to escort Del Valle inside as his guest. Del Valle agreed — but continued to unleash his vitriol on the officers.
The offended female officer filed several complaints with her commander and her lieutenant over Del Valle’s behavior. That’s when Redmond tried to her get to withdraw the complaint, sources said.
She also filed a complaint with the PBA, which is calling for de Blasio to fire Del Valle.
“Mr. Del Valle behaved in an outrageously aggressive and abusive manner, subjecting police officers at the scene to profane and threatening language,” wrote PBA President Patrick Lynch. “… He clearly lacks the temperament and integrity to sit in judgment over any city employee.”
Lynch noted his own cops are often subject to verbal abuse from regular New Yorkers. “If similar behavior by a senior city official goes unaddressed, it will send a profoundly negative message to the women and men who put their lives on the line every day to protect all New Yorkers,” he wrote.
Through his agency’s spokeswoman, Del Valle — who makes an annual salary of $211,463 — implied that the whole thing was the police department’s fault.
Del Valle showed his badge and ID — but the officers still wouldn’t let him pass, said Marisa Senigo, OATH’s Deputy Commissioner of Public Affairs and Communications.
“They literally wouldn’t let the only Hispanic commissioner invited by the council speaker into the event. He had reserved seating and everything,” said Senigo, who was not present for the incident.
The police officer’s supervisor offered a “formal apology,” Senigo said. “We had a good laugh about it the day after,” she stated.
Del Valle, appointed by de Blasio in October 2014, previously worked as a lawyer and was chair of the Taxi and Limousine Commission from 1991 to 1995. OATH handles 400,000 disciplinary hearings a year.
“I am committed to upholding the highest standards of law and ethics at my new post,” he declared the day he was appointed.
The timing of the incident is terrible for de Blasio because the city is moving toward shifting police disciplinary cases being prosecuted by the CCRB to OATH judges, rather than NYPD judges.
That move would be historic, but the embarrassment of the incident may hold it up.