A deputy police commissioner in Mount Vernon, New York, faces attempted murder charges after police say she drove the getaway car for her 20-year-old son following a gang-related shooting near Bronx Criminal Court, and her department fired her within hours.
Jennifer Lackard and her son Chase Lackard were arrested Tuesday morning at their home. Both face five charges: attempted murder, attempted assault, criminal possession of a firearm, conspiracy, and reckless endangerment. The charges stem from a late-June incident in which Chase Lackard allegedly opened fire on rival gang members near the Bronx Criminal Court in New York City. No one was hit.
Police sources told the New York Post that Jennifer Lackard did not simply happen to be nearby. She allegedly drove her son to the scene and coordinated the attack through text messages beforehand. After Chase fired at the rival group, he ran to his mother's car, and she sped away.
The Mount Vernon Police Department terminated Lackard, who held the rank of deputy police commissioner, effective immediately. Her salary: $138,219 a year.
The department moved fast to distance itself. In a social media statement posted Tuesday, Mount Vernon police said the charges had nothing to do with Lackard's official duties:
"The allegations are unrelated to her duties with the Mount Vernon Police Department and do not stem from any conduct associated with the Department or the performance of her official responsibilities."
That statement is technically true and entirely beside the point. The issue is not whether Lackard misused her badge on the job. The issue is that a senior law enforcement official allegedly helped plan and execute a drive-by shooting for her own son, a young man police sources say belongs to a street gang called the "Slutty Gang." A person entrusted with public safety allegedly became an active participant in the kind of violence her department exists to stop.
Damon Jones, a law enforcement activist and 33-year corrections veteran, framed the appointment itself as the problem. As Fox News Digital reported, Jones pointed to a broader pattern in how some officials end up in positions they have no business holding:
"Unfortunately, we see this with Democrats that they put people in positions, especially in law enforcement positions, that they shouldn't be there."
Neither Jennifer nor Chase Lackard has made a public statement, and no plea has been reported. The prosecutorial office handling the case and the specific court where the charges were filed have not been identified in available reporting.
The late-June incident was not Chase Lackard's first brush with gun violence, not even close. His history reads like a case study in a system that failed to intervene before a pattern became irreversible.
In 2023, Chase was shot in the chest by three other youths during a dispute on a Bronx bus. He had allegedly demanded to know what gang the other teens belonged to and tried to drag one of them off the bus before they opened fire on him.
Then on November 22, 2024, police shot and wounded Chase, then 19, on White Plains Road near Lafayette Avenue in the Bronx after he allegedly brandished a gun during an argument. The status of that case remains unclear.
So by the time he allegedly fired at rival gang members outside a courthouse this past June, Chase Lackard had already been involved in at least two separate shooting incidents. His mother, meanwhile, held one of the most senior positions in the Mount Vernon Police Department. The contrast between her professional title and her alleged personal conduct is difficult to overstate.
Cases of public officials caught in serious misconduct are not rare. Washington, D.C., faced its own reckoning when 13 officers were accused of falsifying crime reports, raising questions about who is actually policing the police. The Lackard case pushes that question further: what happens when the person in charge is allegedly committing the crimes?
Jennifer Lackard's husband, James Lackard, previously served a decade in federal prison for conspiracy to distribute heroin. That detail, reported by the Post, raises an obvious question about the vetting process that placed Jennifer Lackard in a deputy commissioner role. No reporting has addressed whether her husband's conviction was known to those who appointed her, or whether it factored into any background review.
Mount Vernon, a city of roughly 75,000 just north of the Bronx, has struggled with violent crime and political dysfunction for years. Placing someone with these family entanglements in a senior law enforcement role invites scrutiny, scrutiny that Jones, the corrections veteran, suggested should have come much earlier.
The broader pattern of people in positions of public trust being exposed for serious misconduct extends well beyond policing. Federal authorities have pursued cases ranging from a Pennsylvania woman indicted for faking brain cancer to defraud her own family to the massive Feeding Our Future fraud scheme, where a fugitive was caught in Somalia after nearly four years on the run. What connects these cases is the gap between the trust granted and the conduct delivered.
Several critical questions remain unanswered. Which law enforcement agency made Tuesday's arrests? Was it the NYPD, given that the alleged shooting occurred in the Bronx? The reporting does not say. Nor has any outlet identified the specific prosecutor handling the case.
It is also unclear whether Jennifer Lackard had any prior disciplinary history with Mount Vernon police, or whether the department conducted any internal review of her son's escalating criminal involvement before the latest arrest forced its hand. The department's statement focused narrowly on separating the allegations from Lackard's official duties, a framing that sidesteps the deeper institutional failure.
And the alleged victims, the rival gang members Chase Lackard reportedly targeted, have not been publicly identified. Whether any of them have been charged or cooperated with investigators remains unknown. High-profile figures in law enforcement and government regularly face accusations and public scrutiny, but few face allegations this stark: active participation in the very violence they were hired to prevent.
When a deputy police commissioner allegedly texts her son through a shooting and then drives him away from the scene, the department's statement that the conduct was "unrelated to her duties" misses the point entirely. Her duty was public safety. If these charges hold, she made the public less safe, and collected a six-figure salary while doing it.