Former New York City police commissioner Howard Safir dies

Howard Safir, the former New York City police commissioner whose four-year tenure in the late 1990s included sharp declines in the city's murder tolls but also some of its most notorious episodes of police killings of Black men, has died. Safir's son told The New York Times his father had died Monday at a hospital in Annapolis, Maryland, from a sepsis infection. Current New York Police Department Commissioner Edward Caban issued a statement extending the department’s condolences and saying that Safir, who held the role from 1996 to 2000, “was a devoted, dynamic leader.”