FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Leaked Department Interview of Former Deputy Chief Paul J. Saraceno and Corey’s Corner Interview of Former Chief of Internal Affairs Miguel A. Iglesias Place Tisch at the Center of the Timeline Before Epps’s Retirement and Before the Department’s “Illegal” Clawback

New York, NY — June 30, 2026 — The developing record in the retired Lieutenant Quathisha Epps matter now places NYPD Police Commissioner Jessica S. Tisch at the center of a serious accountability question: what did Tisch know about evidence supporting Epps’s overtime, when did she know it, and why did the Department continue advancing a public overtime narrative while the federal investigation into Epps’s allegations against former Chief of Department Jeffrey B. Maddrey was pending?

This is no longer a narrow payroll dispute. It is a chronology problem, a missing-records problem, and a retaliation problem.

Within approximately two weeks of Epps’s suspension, former NYPD Deputy Chief Paul J. Saraceno had already testified during a Department interview handled by the Internal Affairs Bureau that Epps worked. That Department interview, later released in part by The Sal Greco Show, was not gossip, speculation, or media spin. It was Department-level evidence from a senior NYPD executive generated before Epps’s retirement date, before the Department’s illegal clawback, and while the federal investigation into Epps’s allegations against Maddrey remained pending.

According to reporting by Salvatore J. Greco of The Sal Greco Show, Saraceno repeatedly explained that Epps reported directly to Maddrey, that Maddrey authorized her work, and that Saraceno was not directing Epps’s daily activities or personally authorizing her overtime. Greco’s reporting also identified a separate overtime-processing structure involving a designated timekeeper operating out of the 45th Precinct for Maddrey, Epps, Kaz Daughtry, and the Chief’s advanced teams.

Those facts strike at the heart of the Department’s public narrative. If Epps’s work was authorized by Maddrey, processed through a separate command-level timekeeping structure, and supported by testimony from a senior NYPD executive, then the Department’s attempt to isolate Epps as the face of an overtime scandal was not merely incomplete. It was selective, misleading, and retaliatory.

“The central question is now unavoidable,” said Eric Sanders, Esq., counsel for retired Lieutenant Epps. “What did Police Commissioner Jessica S. Tisch know, when did she know it, and why did the NYPD continue smearing Epps if the Department already had evidence supporting that she worked the overtime? That question goes directly to Tisch’s fitness to lead the Department.”

The missing-records issue makes the matter even more serious. According to source information reported by Greco, original overtime slips were allegedly submitted through normal channels and maintained by the designated timekeeper at the 45th Precinct. Those original slips were allegedly retrieved at Maddrey’s direction, arrived in a manila evidence envelope, and were placed on Maddrey’s desk. They were allegedly never seen again.

That allegation requires sworn testimony, document demands, and independent verification. But if accurate, it raises a basic and damaging question: what happened to the original overtime slips?

The Department cannot credibly accuse Epps of an overtime scheme while failing to account for the original records allegedly demanded by Maddrey, retrieved from the timekeeper, delivered in an evidence envelope, and placed on his desk. If those records disappeared, then the missing documents are not a side issue. They are central. They go directly to the integrity of the investigation, the accuracy of the Department’s public narrative, and the legality of the later clawback.

The Corey’s Corner interview of former NYPD Chief of Internal Affairs Miguel A. Iglesias further sharpens the chronology. According to the allegations made by Iglesias, he indicated that when he met with Commissioner Tisch on December 21, 2024, after the New York Post article was published, there was no pending Internal Affairs Bureau investigation under IAB jurisdiction into the alleged overtime scandal. In substance, Iglesias’s response was: what investigation?

That point is explosive. If no pending IAB investigation existed under Internal Affairs jurisdiction when the overtime allegations were already being pushed publicly, then the public narrative may have preceded the investigation. That is not how a legitimate integrity inquiry is supposed to work. A real investigation follows evidence, jurisdiction, records, process, and sworn review. A retaliatory smear campaign follows leaks, timing, selective framing, and institutional self-protection.

The timing places Tisch directly in the center of the matter. By December 21, 2024, Tisch had met with Iglesias. Less than two weeks later, Saraceno provided Department-level testimony that Epps worked. The federal investigation into Epps’s allegations against Maddrey was pending. Epps had not reached her retirement date. The later retired-credential obstruction, certification attack, and overtime clawback had not yet fully unfolded.

If Tisch knew at that stage that Saraceno had provided testimony supporting Epps’s work, or knew that the alleged overtime scandal was not yet within a pending IAB investigation, then every later action against Epps becomes harder to defend. The suspension, credential blocking, Good Guy Letter obstruction, certification attack, media leaks, and $231,896.75 clawback must all be examined through what Tisch knew before those consequences fully materialized.

“The public was fed a story,” Sanders said. “They were told Epps was the overtime problem. That was bullshit. The evidence now points to a far more serious issue: the Department had information supporting that she worked, had questions surrounding missing original overtime slips, and still allowed her to be publicly smeared while the real scandal involved allegations of sexual exploitation by Maddrey.”

The Department’s payroll theory is legally defective because it attempts to convert the NYPD’s own recordkeeping burden into a weapon against Epps. Under New York law, the employer—not the employee—must establish, maintain, and preserve accurate payroll records showing the hours worked daily and weekly. See 12 N.Y.C.R.R. § 142-2.6(a). Where an employer’s records are missing, incomplete, or unreliable, the law does not permit the employer to profit from that failure. Instead, the hours worked may be established through reasonable reconstruction, including sworn testimony, circumstantial evidence, available documents, payroll practices, approval history, and other competent proof. Anderson v. Mt. Clemens Pottery Co., 328 U.S. 680, 687–88 (1946), makes that principle clear: once an employee shows work performed as a matter of just and reasonable inference, the burden shifts to the employer to come forward with evidence of the precise amount of work performed or to negate the reasonableness of the employee’s proof. New York courts apply the same practical rule in wage-record disputes, allowing liability and reasonable approximations where the employer failed to maintain proper records. Matter of Mid-Hudson Pam Corp. v. Hartnett, 156 A.D.2d 818, 821 (3d Dep’t 1989). That framework is critical here because the NYPD controlled the overtime system, approved the work, processed the payments, maintained the records, and allegedly failed to account for the original overtime slips. The Department cannot lose, withhold, disregard, or fail to preserve the original records, then attack Epps for relying on reconstructed proof, Department approvals, and sworn command-level testimony showing that she worked.

The real issue was never merely overtime. The real issue was whether a high-ranking NYPD executive allegedly used power, overtime access, command influence, and career leverage to sexually exploit a subordinate, and whether the Department responded by attacking the complainant instead of preserving evidence, securing records, and following the facts. The Department wanted the public focused on payroll paperwork. The evidence points toward retaliation, sexual exploitation, missing records, command-level protection, and institutional damage control inside One Police Plaza.

The recent disclosures demand sworn answers. Commissioner Tisch and the NYPD must answer what Tisch knew about Saraceno’s Department interview; whether she knew there was evidence supporting Epps’s overtime; whether she knew on or about December 21, 2024 that there was no pending IAB investigation under Internal Affairs jurisdiction; who authorized the public framing of Epps as the overtime problem; who leaked confidential overtime information; what happened to the original overtime slips allegedly retrieved from the 45th Precinct timekeeper and placed on Maddrey’s desk; who processed, entered, approved, supervised, and maintained those records; and why the Department focused on Epps rather than the full overtime chain involving Maddrey, command personnel, timekeepers, and approving officials.

“These are not public-relations questions,” Sanders said. “These are litigation questions. These are discovery questions. These are sworn-testimony questions. Commissioner Tisch and the NYPD will have to answer them under oath.”

Epps’s legal claims include quid pro quo sexual harassment, hostile work environment, retaliation under the New York State and City Human Rights Laws, wage theft and unlawful clawback under the New York Labor Law, gender-motivated violence under the New York City Gender-Motivated Violence Act, and related claims arising from the Department’s alleged retaliatory conduct.

The issue now extends beyond the NYPD. Mayor Zohran K. Mamdani owns the question of Commissioner Tisch’s continued fitness to lead the Department. If Tisch knew early that the overtime narrative was contradicted, incomplete, or not supported by a pending IAB investigation, then City Hall must determine whether she misled the public, permitted a retaliatory narrative to proceed, or allowed the Department’s internal machinery to be used against a protected complainant. New York City cannot have a police commissioner who uses the language of integrity while presiding over retaliation, narrative manipulation, missing-records questions, credential obstruction, and an unlawful clawback effort against a woman who reported sexual misconduct inside of NYPD Headquarters.

If Commissioner Tisch knew there was evidence supporting that Epps worked the overtime, and if the alleged overtime scandal was publicly advanced before a legitimate IAB investigation existed under IAB jurisdiction, then the NYPD’s public narrative collapses. This was not a clean integrity investigation. It was institutional damage control. It was narrative warfare. It was retaliation.

“The receipts are coming,” Sanders said. “Documents survive leaks. Witnesses survive press narratives. And under oath, the truth has a way of cutting through institutional lies.”

About The Sanders Firm, P.C.

The Sanders Firm, P.C. is a New York-based law firm focused on civil rights, immigration, employment discrimination, police misconduct, and other high-stakes matters. Its founder and president, Eric Sanders, Esq., is a retired NYPD officer who brings a rare inside perspective to the intersection of government power, public institutions, enforcement discretion, and constitutional accountability.

For more than twenty years, Sanders has counseled thousands of clients and handled complex matters involving police use of force, sexual harassment, retaliation, systemic discrimination, immigration consequences, and related civil-rights violations. He is widely recognized as a leading New York civil-rights attorney and a prominent voice on evidence-based policing, institutional accountability, equal justice, and rights-based immigration advocacy.

Media Contact