A top operative for Mayor Eric Adams now under investigation over allegations that he assaulted a migrant shelter security guard was once convicted by the NYPD of impeding an internal investigation of a domestic incident and placed on a list of cops with credibility issues, THE CITY has learned.
Timothy Pearson, a longtime friend of Adams the mayor put in charge of monitoring shelter costs and security, is the subject of a probe by the city Department of Investigation into his actions during a confrontation inside a Manhattan shelter last week, an incident first reported by THE CITY.
Pearson, a retired cop now on the payroll of the city Economic Development Corporation, showed up demanding to be let into the West 31st Street shelter for an unannounced inspection — leading to a confrontation that culminated in police criminally charging two guards, after Pearson claims one assaulted him. Both guards and numerous other witnesses dispute Pearson’s account.
Earlier questions about Pearson’s credibility arise from an internal NYPD investigation of Pearson that resulted in a finding of guilt in 2000 by a NYPD trial judge.
The case stemmed from a complaint of alleged domestic abuse lodged against Pearson followed by a police visit to his family’s Long Island home. The NYPD Internal Affairs Bureau (IAB) later opened an investigation and questioned Pearson about the call.
At the time, Pearson was a captain in the police department and a longtime friend of Adams, who was also still on the force at that time. (Adams retired from the NYPD in 2006.)
The NYPD judge’s finding did not address the underlying domestic incident, only Pearson’s conduct in the subsequent police investigation. The judge found Pearson not guilty of making false statements but guilty of impeding an investigation, according to NYPD personnel order documents kept in the municipal Archives and reviewed by THE CITY.
As a result of that finding, Pearson was placed for a time on a special list of “notified officers” kept by the Bronx District Attorney red-flagging him as having an officer with integrity issues whose testimony in a case could be called into question by defense counsel, documents provided by the Legal Aid Society show.
Pearson retired from the department in 2011, and a spokesperson for the Bronx DA said the office no longer maintains a notified officer list because discovery reform laws require them to provide that type of information to defense counsel automatically.
The NYPD did not respond to THE CITY’s repeated request for records regarding the trial judge’s finding, and a spokesperson for the mayor did not respond to THE CITY’s request to interview Pearson about it.
The investigation Pearson was convicted of impeding stems from a December 1996 incident at Pearson’s home in Hempstead, L.I.
According to NYPDConfidential, a blog written by the late Newsday reporter Leonard Levitt, Hempstead police were summoned via 911 to the house responding to an allegation of domestic abuse. The caller alleged Pearson was abusing his stepson, Levitt reported, eventually leading to the IAB probe.
(Hempstead police told THE CITY they could not produce a record of the call and resulting investigation because they do not keep records more than seven years old.)
Levitt reported that Pearson told IAB investigators that he could not recall whether the Hempstead police had come to his house, and in July 1997 IAB filed internal disciplinary charges against him.
The charges ultimately resulted in a trial and a ruling by assistant deputy commissioner of trials Robert Vinal, who recommended Pearson forfeit 10 vacation days.
‘He’s a Professional’
On Tuesday, during his now once-a-week availability to take unrestricted questions from journalists, Adams defended his longtime pal. “I’ve known Tim Pearson for over 30-something years and I’ve never witnessed him displaying violent action,” Adams said. “He’s a professional and the review will determine if we have to do something different in how the procedure is done.”
The mayor’s deputy mayor for communications, Fabien Levy, declined to discuss the finding by the NYPD trial judge, stating he was “not aware of an alleged ‘internal trial’ of the NYPD’s from 25 years ago.”
Pearson is described as a senior advisor to Adams for public safety, although he is on the payroll of a quasi-city agency, the Economic Development Corporation. That allows him to collect a salary of $242,600 plus a $124,000 pension that he would have had to forfeit if he had gone onto the city’s payroll.
Pearson’s responsibilities are ill-defined and have nothing to do with the agency that pays him. When THE CITY recently requested his official schedule, the EDC responded, “NYCEDC has diligently searched its files and has located no responsive record.”
The mayor said that once the migrant crisis began to accelerate in mid-2022, he assigned Pearson the task of monitoring security conditions at the temporary shelters the city opened up to lodge asylum seekers, and that one of his tactics was surprise inspections.
In his account to police and prosecutors about the incident at the West 31st Street shelter, Pearson claims a female guard assaulted him, but the guard alleges Pearson grabbed her by the neck and threw her to the ground when she requested that he produce identification. A dozen witnesses have made statements alleging Pearson assaulted the female guard.
Nevertheless, police who showed up on the scene issued a summons to the guard Pearson claimed pushed him, while a second guard who demanded Pearson show his ID was arrested on charges of resisting arrest. Asked about the incident at the shelter, a spokesperson for Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg says the office’s investigation is ongoing.
On Thursday Jason Steinberger, an attorney representing both security guards arrested in the aftermath of the melee, confirmed he’d filed notices of claim on behalf of the two, indicating their intent to sue the city. One of those notices of claim, obtained by THE CITY from the comptroller’s office, laid out allegations that guard Terrance Rosenthal had been falsely arrested, falsely imprisoned and maliciously prosecuted. The notice names Mayor Eric Adams, Pearson, the NYPD, and specific officers who responded to the incident.
“I have every confidence that they’ll investigate it and that the DA’s office and the city itself will find that there were abuses by Tim Pearson and as a result my clients were falsely arrested,” Steinberger said.
A few hours before the confrontation with the security guards at the West 31st Street shelter, Pearson showed up with an army of cops at another big shelter housing migrants on Randall’s Island looking for men he said had earlier assaulted an officer.
In that interaction he allegedly got into an argument with shelter security who had demanded he show an arrest warrant before entering the facility. He entered the compound anyway but did not find the men he was looking for.