BY SAL GRECO
Less than two weeks after the New York City Department of Investigation issued a report identifying significant vulnerabilities in the way the New York City Police Pension Fund administers accident-disability pensions, the Fund is facing a new and very different challenge — this time involving whether it can refuse to stop a police executive’s pending service retirement unless the NYPD approves the withdrawal.
The latest dispute involves Deputy Chief Winston M. Faison, who on September 25 attempted to stop a service retirement currently scheduled to take effect November 26, 2026.
According to a September 26 demand letter from attorney Eric Sanders, Faison first went to NYPD Headquarters and was advised that Personnel Orders would not permit him to stop the retirement process because of a negotiated disciplinary settlement. Faison then went to the Police Pension Fund, where, according to the letter, the Fund also refused to stop processing his retirement unless NYPD Personnel Orders approved the withdrawal.
Those allegations have not yet been adjudicated by a court, and the Pension Fund and NYPD should have the opportunity to explain their legal positions.
But the controversy raises another set of questions for an agency that was already under official scrutiny.
And this time those questions reach directly to the Fund’s executive leadership — and to Police Commissioner Jessica Tisch, who holds a significant role in the governance of the Pension Fund itself.
THE FAISON AGREEMENT CUTS BOTH WAYS
There is an important fact that cannot be ignored.
Faison did sign a negotiated disciplinary settlement in 2025. In that agreement, he acknowledged pleading guilty to three amended disciplinary specifications. The agreement provided for the forfeiture of 60 vacation days and explicitly stated that he agreed not to withdraw or rescind the service-retirement application he had voluntarily filed, with an effective retirement date of November 26, 2026. It also placed him on dismissal probation.
The executed agreement further states that Faison understood the settlement, discussed it with his attorney and entered into it voluntarily.
That is NYPD’s obvious argument: Faison made an agreement, and one provision of that agreement was that he would not withdraw the retirement application.
But Sanders is raising a different question.
He contends that even if NYPD believes Faison breached a disciplinary agreement by attempting to withdraw his retirement, that does not automatically answer whether the Police Pension Fund itself has legal authority to refuse to recognize a timely withdrawal simply because NYPD Personnel Orders objects.
The Sanders Firm argues that Administrative Code §13-216 expressly treats the Pension Fund as an entity separate from NYPD and that the Fund’s own published procedures contemplate withdrawal of a pending service-retirement application before its effective date.
“The issue is not complicated merely because two City entities have decided to make it complicated,” said Eric Sanders, counsel for Faison and president of The Sanders Firm, P.C. addressing the issue in an article on his own website. “The Police Commissioner has the powers the law gives her. The Police Pension Fund has the powers and duties the law assigns to it. Neither gets to manufacture additional governmental authority through internal practice, administrative convenience, or a contract.”
Faison’s demand letter makes the same argument more directly: it says the Fund must identify the statute, regulation, Board resolution or other authority that permits it to condition withdrawal on Personnel Orders’ approval.
That question could ultimately wind up before a judge. Faison has given the Department and Fund until 5 p.m. Monday, September 28, to stop the retirement process or identify the legal authority supporting their position; his attorney says judicial relief, including an Article 78 proceeding, may follow.
So this is not yet a finding that the Pension Fund acted unlawfully.
It is, however, another serious dispute over how the Fund exercises its authority, what rules govern its decisions and whether those rules are being applied independently and consistently.
And that matters because of what DOI just found.
DOI HAD ALREADY PUT THE PENSION FUND UNDER A MICROSCOPE
On September 15, DOI released its report, Issues in the Application of “Accident Disability” at the Police Pension Fund.
The findings were significant.
The Police Pension Fund makes payments to more than 50,000 retired NYPD officers, totaling approximately $3.59 billion in fiscal year 2025. DOI reported that approximately $935 million went to accident-disability retirees, with more than $100 million paid to disability retirees who had not otherwise reached the age or service requirements necessary for retirement.
DOI identified two major systemic concerns.
First, the Pension Fund’s Medical Board generally evaluates whether an applicant can perform generic “essential functions” of a police officer rather than examining the actual duties that individual was performing before retirement. DOI specifically noted the consequences of that standard for senior executives whose daily jobs may be substantially different from those of patrol officers.
Second — and perhaps even more striking — DOI found that since 2019 the Fund had required only one person to undergo medical re-examination under a statutory safeguard permitting disability retirees to be reviewed.
DOI called the Fund’s re-examination program “virtually non-existent” and concluded that its nearly complete failure to use the safeguard was not merely discretionary and “must be corrected.”
DOI issued five recommendations.
The Pension Fund accepted only two.
It rejected recommendations calling for disability determinations to consider an officer’s actual job duties, for regulations governing medical re-examinations and for certain disability retirees to periodically certify that their disabilities continue.
That does not mean DOI accused the Pension Fund’s leadership of corruption. It did not. In fact, DOI specifically thanked Executive Director Kevin Holloran and his staff for cooperating with the investigation, as well as Commissioner Tisch and her staff.
But cooperation with an investigation and responsibility for correcting problems identified by that investigation are two different subjects.
AND THIS WASN’T THE FIRST AUDIT TO FIND PROBLEMS
The DOI report also did not arrive in a vacuum.
In June 2025, the New York City Comptroller’s Office issued an audit of the Police Pension Fund’s non-personnel expenditures. Auditors said expenditures were generally consistent with applicable requirements but identified several weaknesses in internal controls.
Among the findings: the Fund spent $69,814 on three leased vehicles used by senior executives without maintaining required documentation supporting business use; auditors questioned whether those vehicles were economical or necessary and noted that the other four City pension systems did not lease vehicles for their executives. The audit also found sales tax payments by the tax-exempt Fund, late vendor payments, accounting issues and missing documentation for $31,710 in out-of-town travel expenses.
Those findings concern very different issues from the DOI disability report and the Faison dispute.
But taken together, they provide legitimate grounds for asking what management changes, internal-control reforms and Board oversight have occurred.
THE KEVIN HOLLORAN QUESTION
First, a clarification.
The official’s name is Kevin Holloran, not Halloran, and City records identify him as the Executive Director of the New York City Police Pension Fund, not its “commanding officer.” The City’s current Green Book continues to list Holloran in that position.
That makes the obvious accountability question fair:
After multiple outside reviews and now a new dispute over the Fund’s handling of a member’s retirement application, what evaluation has been conducted of the Pension Fund’s executive management?
Holloran has been Executive Director for years. The Fund’s own FY2025 financial report identifies him in that position, and DOI’s September report identifies him as the Executive Director whose staff cooperated with investigators.
There is currently no public finding cited here establishing that Holloran personally violated the law in either the DOI matter or the Faison case.
But accountability does not require pretending that every systemic problem is necessarily personal misconduct.
It requires determining who was responsible for policies, who knew about deficiencies, who recommended that contested practices continue, who rejected proposed reforms, and what changes management intends to make now.
The public deserves to know whether Holloran recommended accepting or rejecting DOI’s recommendations.
Who decided the Pension Fund would reject three of DOI’s five proposed reforms?
What written policies have changed since DOI’s report?
Who made the decision in Faison’s case that the Fund would not process his attempted withdrawal without Personnel Orders’ approval?
Was Holloran informed?
Did the General Counsel approve that position?
Was the Board of Trustees consulted?
And what legal authority was relied upon?
Those are questions that records — not speculation — should answer.
JESSICA TISCH CANNOT BE LEFT OUT OF THE PENSION-FUND STORY
The Pension Fund is legally separate from NYPD.
But Jessica Tisch is not some unrelated observer.
The City’s official Green Book identifies the Police Commissioner as chair of the Police Pension Fund’s Board of Trustees and states that the Police Commissioner, acting as Board chair, appoints the Fund’s Executive Director. Tisch is currently listed as that chair.
That substantially raises the stakes of the question:
What is Commissioner Tisch doing about the problems DOI identified at the Pension Fund?
DOI expressly reported that the Fund rejected three recommendations that investigators believed were necessary to reduce the risk of improper disability payments.
Has Tisch asked the Board to reconsider them?
Does she support the Fund’s decision to reject them?
Has she requested a review of why the safeguard provision was used only once since 2019?
Has she asked for new written rules governing disability re-examinations?
Has she ordered or requested a review of the Faison matter and the apparent coordination between Personnel Orders and the Pension Fund?
Those are not questions about whether Tisch should personally determine Faison’s pension rights.
They are questions about governance.
And because Tisch chairs the Board, they are questions that reasonably belong on her desk.
ONE FUND, MULTIPLE ACCOUNTABILITY QUESTIONS
The significant point is not that every controversy involving the Pension Fund proves the same thing.
They do not.
The DOI report concerns accident-disability standards and post-retirement safeguards.
The Comptroller’s audit concerned expenditures and internal controls.
Faison’s dispute involves the legal authority governing withdrawal of a pending service retirement and the relationship between the Pension Fund and NYPD Personnel Orders.
Different facts. Different laws. Different issues.
But one institution.
And increasingly, one recurring question:
Are the rules inside the New York City Police Pension Fund sufficiently clear, independent, transparent and consistently enforced?
The Fund administers retirement benefits affecting more than 90,000 active members, retirees and beneficiaries, according to the Comptroller’s 2025 audit.
That makes this far bigger than Faison.
A police officer should know what rules govern a retirement application.
A disability retiree should know what standards determine eligibility.
A rank-and-file member should receive the same clearly defined process as someone who once occupied the highest levels of NYPD.
And taxpayers funding billions of dollars in benefits should know that the officials administering that system can explain the legal authority behind their decisions.
THE FUND AND NYPD SHOULD ANSWER
Faison’s challenge now creates an opportunity for both NYPD and the Police Pension Fund to put their positions on the record.
If Personnel Orders has the legal power to prevent withdrawal of his pending retirement because of the negotiated disciplinary agreement, identify the statute, regulation or controlling authority.
If the Police Pension Fund has legal authority to refuse a withdrawal until Personnel Orders approves it, identify that authority.
If DOI’s recommendations were rejected for sound legal, medical or administrative reasons, explain those reasons in detail.
And if Commissioner Tisch believes the Fund is being administered appropriately after the DOI findings, the public should hear why.
The Pension Fund does not need rhetoric right now.
It needs answers.
Because after an official watchdog found significant vulnerabilities in a system paying nearly $1 billion annually in accident-disability benefits — and after a new legal challenge accused the Fund of surrendering an independent pension decision to NYPD Personnel Orders — simply saying “the system is the system” is no longer much of an explanation.
The question now is who is responsible for making sure the system actually works.
