NYPD’s ‘dirtiest cop’ Michael Dowd barred from police headquarters after surprise visit: sources

An ex-NYPD officer once considered “the dirtiest cop in N.Y.” is banned from entering police headquarters after he made a surprise stopover there and posted about the visit on Instagram, the Daily News has learned.

Pictures of Michael Dowd have been placed at the booths of all of the entrances to 1 Police Plaza with a note reading “do not allow entry,” photos shared with The News show. Cops are also required to call the security desk if he attempts to come into the building again, sources said.

“I did my time, and they just don’t want to take the knee off my neck. Now I’m banned from a public building that holds my employment records,” Dowd told The News. “It is a public access building and last I checked I am the public.”

Dowd, 62, was fired from the NYPD after he was convicted of extorting drug dealers while assigned to the 75th Precinct in East New York, Brooklyn in the late 1980s and 1990s. He was accused of taking cocaine from the dealers and selling it to buyers on Long Island, prosecutors said.

In April, he accompanied a retired NYPD sergeant he knew to 1 Police Plaza so his friend could get a new ID card. No one batted an eye as the disgraced cop entered the building and went to the department’s shield unit on the second floor.

He posted photos of himself on Instagram standing behind an ornate blue pillow cops lay their shields on before retiring.

“Finally getting my exit photo,” Dowd wrote under a photo of himself broadly smiling behind the pillow and two signs that read “Congratulations on your retirement. Thank you for your service.”

Friends and family of the NYPD’s rank and file were rankled by Dowd’s chutzpah.

“Disgusting that you would think it was ok to stand in the footprints of Good cops,” Instagram user Deborah McCarthy wrote. “Take your hands off the pillow. You gave up the right to walk in our halls the moment you became a perp.”

The Suffolk County Police Department arrested Dowd in 1992 after they intercepted phone conversations between the Brooklyn officer and a small-time dealer, officials said.

During the investigation, Dowd’s partner at the time, Kenneth Eurell, turned federal informant and wore a wire that recorded the crooked cop plotting to rob and kill a drug dealer’s wife.

He spent nearly 12 years in prison then re-invented himself as an “ethics consultant,” claiming on his website that he “is on the road to redemption.”

“People such as Mike Milken, Robert Downey Jr., Mike Tyson, Bernie Kerik, [are] all people who fell from grace and have been embraced back into society to its fullest,” Dowd said. “When does a man get his freedom back?”

Dowd claimed the NYPD has called him on at least four separate occasions, asking him to train new cadets, guiding them “how not to fall into traps” like he did as a young officer.

“So much hypocrisy at play here,” he said of the banning.

Dowd’s arrest led former Mayor Dinkins to create the Mollen Commission, which concluded the NYPD had abandoned its responsibility to ensure the integrity of its officers for more than a decade.

His criminal exploits were later recounted in the 2014 documentary, “The Seven Five.”

When the documentary premiered, Dowd said he regretted his days of robbing drug dealers, committing burglaries and stealing from people he was supposed to protect. But that doesn’t mean it wasn’t an exciting run, he noted.

“Everybody I’ve ever spoken to wishes they had been there and probably would have done worse,” he told The News.

Mayor Adams and NYPD administrators were “mortified” by Dowd’s actions and “initiated a rarely used intra department response” to bar him from the building, a source with knowledge of the move said.

“They made him a security threat of the highest order,” the source said. “He’s ostracized from ever entering 1PP.”

Headquarters security was also given photos of the retiree Dowd accompanied into the building. He is no longer allowed into police headquarters either, the photos show.

An NYPD spokeswoman confirmed the convicted officer had entered the building last month, but did not comment on Dowd’s ban from the building.

“He was there as the guest of the retired member, which is permitted and customarily involves a retired member’s family,” the spokeswoman said. “They were both screened by security prior to being granted access to the building.”

Since Dowd’s visit, Police Commissioner Keechant Sewell has “ordered that the process of how guests of retired members are granted access to police headquarters be reviewed,” the spokeswoman said.