A Muslim cop on Mayor Bill de Blasio’s security detail filed a $7 million federal suit against the city Friday, claiming he’s being discriminated against for his religion.
Detective Abdelim “Abe” Azab says he’s been denied a deserved promotion and prestigious gigs like protecting Hizzoner during his daily workouts at the Park Slope Y because of his faith and Middle Eastern heritage — while his bosses smear him as a “misfit” who is “too intimidating.”
“Mr. Azab, a detective who went undercover after 9/11, has been regularly passed over for promotion, and has been given insulting assignments within his unit,” his attorney Marshall Bellovin, of the firm Ballon, Stoll, Bader & Nadler, told The Post.
The Egypt-born Staten Islander was previously assigned to the NYPD’s now-disbanded Demographics Unit, which put plainclothes investigators in predominantly Muslim neighborhoods, and has been a detective second grade since 2008 — earning base pay of $103,585 last year plus another $60,000 on top of that, public records show.
But he says he should’ve been promoted to first grade by now — where he’d be earning $20,000 more a year and get $15,000 more toward his pension, the just-filed Manhattan federal suit says.
Azab alleges his bosses have made “vulgar” and “derogatory” comments about him — including that he’s “useless” and a “misfit,” and have directed sergeants to keep “Abe away from [de Blasio].”
As a result, he spent most of 2015 through 2017 protecting City Hall instead of the mayor in an effort “to isolate him from the rest of the EPU team,” he alleges.
He says he’s been repeatedly pulled off driving duty and replaced by a non-Muslim, non-Middle Eastern officer — on at least four occasions, he claims he was told to pull over and vacate the car when the top cops realized he was behind the wheel.
He also claims he’s been denied training opportunities that would help advance his career, and wasn’t included on the mayor’s 2015 trip to Israel, despite being the only Arabic speaker in the unit.
When Azab asked the unit’s commanding officer, Inspector Howard Redmond, about the treatment, he says he was told he is “too intimidating.”
“It is clear that Inspector Redmond used this as an excuse as there are other officers in the EPU who Inspector Redmond has stated ‘I love this guy he is so intimidating,’” the suit charges.
Azab’s suit notes that numerous other officers in de Blasio’s unit have filed discrimination complaints, and yet the mayor has not spoken out publicly or “taken any affirmative steps to date to curb preferential assignments and preferential promotions that result in discriminatory practices.”
Among them is 51-year-old Russian-born Detective Alex Pelepelin, who was moved from guarding the mayor to guarding City Hall after he was also labeled “too intimidating.” He filed a discrimination suit based on his age and country of origin in May.
The NYPD did not immediately return a request for comment.
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