EXCLUSIVE: NYC Sheriff Anthony Miranda Fired
JUDGE ST — The mood at the Starr Avenue office is ecstatic this evening, as Sheriff deputies gleefully exchanged memes mocking their former boss.
After four years of workplace abuse allegations, federal and municipal corruption probes, and a public demand from his own union to resign, New York City Sheriff Anthony Miranda learned today that he’s been fired, according to an employee with the Department of Finance who was granted anonymity to speak candidly.
A spokesperson for City Hall confirmed the news to the Judge Street Journal.
With Eric Adams’ support, Miranda led a sweeping crackdown called “Operation Padlock to Protect” on thousands of stores that he suspected of selling cannabis products without a license. With K-9 units, SWAT vehicles, and tactical gear, officers swarmed delis and smoke shops across the city and shuttered them for business until they appeared before a judge in a hearing with the Office of Administrative Trials and Hearings.
During the raids, Miranda “forced” his officers to remove the safes from the businesses, according to union President Ingrid Siminovic.
Nadia Kahnauth, a lawyer who represented merchants caught in Miranda’s net, told the Journal that more than 100 of her clients had large sums of cash removed from backrooms and safes in their stores.
Miranda found himself at the center of a Department of Investigation probe in Fall 2024 over allegations that representatives from his organization, the National Latino Officers Association, sought donations in exchange for protection from raids on smoke shops. At least ten of Kahnauth’s clients were offered the chance to donate to the NLOA.
When one of them missed a payment, she said, his shop was raided. Another client “paid $12,000 in cash to the sheriff’s office a few months before the new law was passed and was afforded protection in that he was not inspected during this time,” she said, referring to Operation Padlock to Protect.
When Miranda first began the raids in 2022, it was before Governor Kathy Hochul modified New York law to empower local municipalities to enforce cannabis licensing. At least eleven deputies raised concerns about whether they even had the legal authority to conduct the raids. They were then suspended on outdated allegations of stealing alcohol that had been seized from bars during the pandemic.
“You’re a soldier and your job is to follow orders,” Miranda told Deputy Sheriff Fernie Canteen after he expressed concern about the raids, according to a lawsuit.
Canteen told his boss his job was to follow “legal” orders.
“I’ll check on that and get back to you,” Miranda said, according to the suit.
In April 2024, as Miranda struggled to keep control of the smoke shops metastasizing across the city, Hochul gave Adams more discretion to crack down on the thousands of merchants who had started selling THC-products in the wake of the pandemic—and the authority to extrajudicially padlock any business deemed a threat to New Yorkers under the guise of cannabis enforcement.
Merchants who had been padlocked went to OATH hearings with judges, many of whom ruled that they could reopen their stores. But the law empowering Miranda’s raids also gave him the authority to overrule the judge’s decision. For a year-and-a-half in New York City, Miranda was effectively the judge, jury, and executioner of the entire operation—deciding who was raided and when they could reopen.
News of the allegations went largely unnoticed beyond the New York City press corps. Discontent among his employees was rampant. As federal investigators from New York’s Southern District seized the phones of several of Eric Adams’ closest aides—all in a build-up to his own indictment—questions about Miranda’s character and leadership simmered in the background.
On September 17, 2024, just one week before Adams’ indictment, Miranda invented a new position—Chief of Investigators—and tapped one of his buddies from the NLOA to fill it. Earning a salary of $180,000, Wilfredo Perez monitored several operations, including the evidence collection unit. Any complaints or concerns from employees now went to one of Miranda’s closest allies.
The same day, Miranda was set to testify before New York City Council about Operation Padlock to Protect.
Miranda sent the city council a letter ahead of his testimony in which he said “the Office of the Sheriff does not seize cash from any of the locations. NYPD seizes cash for safekeeping and investigative review when necessary.” Once before the council, when asked if his office was confiscating cash, Miranda told Councilman Justin Brannan, “I don’t believe so.”
Several witnesses who testified after Miranda undercut what he had just said. Siminovic talked about the draconian culture of fear and retaliation Miranda had fostered in the office, and Kahnauth told of countless clients who had cash taken from their stores by sheriff deputies.
At the end of the week, in a Friday evening newsdump, Politico broke that DOI was probing Miranda. The following Monday,The New York Post revealed the probe involved a “pay-to-play” scheme in which Miranda allegedly sought donations for the NLOA. The Daily News followed a day later with a report that DOI was specifically investigating cash seizures from raided smoke shops.
When reporters asked Adams on Wednesday if he still had confidence in Miranda, he was unfazed—“The guy has closed down 1,100 smoke shops,” Adams bragged. Later that night, every New York reporter’s focus shifted to Gracie Mansion, after the New York Times reported that the SDNY planned to indict the sitting mayor of New York City for bribery.
Thursday was a media circus outside the mayor’s residence. Every outlet had a correspondent along the police barricades that lined the driveway to Gracie Mansion. And every editor seemed focused on figuring out a new angle to what seemed then like the story of a lifetime.
On the same day, with the entire press corps distracted, Miranda claimed to have mysteriously found $70,000 in cash in two safes at the Sheriff’s Office facility in Long Island City.
“Sheriff Miranda learned of seemingly unvouchered cash held in safe boxes and self-reported the incident to his supervisors,” City Hall spokeswoman Liz Garcia said at the time. “His supervisors then reported this to the Department of Investigation. We expect every city employee to follow proper procedures.”
But when investigators showed up, they found more than $100,000 in cash. After the raid, the Daily News reported, deputies received an email saying they, “should never make statements to the press.”
The story faded into the background as Adams escaped his own charges and stood by one of his last cronies in city government.
Miranda joined the group trip to Puerto Rico for Somos 2025, where New York politicos made plans for the incoming mayor. Some suspected he was there to lobby the new administration to keep his job.
As Zohran Mamdani’s mayoral victory loomed inevitable last year, questions about the future of Miranda’s employment began to percolate. When asked about Miranda at an event to receive an endorsement of the United Bodegas of America, he told reporters that he and his colleagues in the assembly “have had concerns around the ways in which so much of this has been enforced, or the lack thereof.”
“I think there have been a number of news reports that have raised a number of troubling things about the way the Sheriff’s Office has been conducting itself,” Mamdani said. “I haven’t made any personnel commitments, but I can tell you that the commitments I’m going to make are going to be based upon an assessment of excellence and fulfillment of the job at-hand.”
Miranda did not respond to a request for comment.
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Author’s note: I have been following Miranda since Fall 2024—his phone is set to send my calls directly to voicemail—and I’m working on a much longer piece that properly takes stock of his tenure. Make sure you’re subscribed.