A Mount Vernon police deputy commissioner allegedly drove the getaway car after her son's gang-related drive-by shooting — the kind of charge that would bury an ordinary citizen, but for a connected official, it came only after years of a taxpayer-funded salary and a reform portfolio she had no qualifications to hold.
Jennifer Lackard, 49, and her son Chase, 20, were both arrested by the NYPD on Tuesday in connection with a June 29 drive-by shooting targeting rival gang members near the Bronx Criminal Court, according to court records. Lackard held the title of deputy commissioner of wellness for the Mount Vernon Police Department — a post that put her in charge of police reform and the civilian complaint review board.
If you or I sat behind the wheel of a getaway car after a gang shooting, we'd be under the jail. Lackard collected a public paycheck while it allegedly happened.
Before her arrest, Lackard's qualifications for police leadership were thin. In a 2020 interview with Gothamist, she acknowledged the "leap of faith" the department took giving her the position, admitting she had "never worked for a police department" prior to landing the role. Her background was in prison re-entry advocacy — she served as president of the Station of Hope prison re-entry ministry at Grace Baptist Church and organized the Re-Entry Meetup for Westchester County.
She also held advisory roles on the Westchester County Probation Advisory Board and the NYC Mayor's Office of Criminal Justice Implementation Task Force.
Fox News reported that Lackard and Mount Vernon Mayor Shawyn Patterson-Howard are Delta Sigma Theta sorority sisters — a connection that raises obvious questions about how a person with no law enforcement background ended up overseeing police reform and officer wellness for a city of nearly 70,000 people. The mayor's office did not respond to a request for comment.
The City of Mount Vernon moved quickly to cut ties once the arrest became public. "Effective immediately, the City of Mount Vernon has terminated Jennifer Lackard's employment," the city said in a social media statement, adding that the allegations are "unrelated to her duties" and do not stem from conduct associated with the department.
Convenient. The city wants the public to believe the woman hired to reform police oversight — who allegedly served as a getaway driver in a gang shooting — was just a rogue actor whose alleged crimes had nothing to do with the system that elevated her. Attorneys for Jennifer and Chase Lackard did not respond to requests for comment.
The question isn't just what Lackard allegedly did. It's who hired her, why, and what the connections were that insulated her until the NYPD made the arrest that Mount Vernon apparently couldn't or wouldn't.
