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The disgraced Westchester County police official charged with driving her gangbanging son to a shooting is a sorority sister with the mayor who gave her the cushy gig.
Mount Vernon Mayor Shawyn Patterson-Howard hired Jennifer Lackard to head up the newly created police department Wellness Unit in 2020, despite her having no law enforcement experience, an ex-con husband and an out-of-control son in a street gang.
City officials confirmed Thursday that the mayor and the disgraced police bigwig were sorority sisters, with sources telling The Post they were both sworn to Delta Sigma Theta.
The two also attend Grace Baptist Church, an influential congregation in the troubled suburban city, and sources said the church’s politically connected pastor, the Rev. Franklyn Richardson, may have pulled some strings to help Lackard land the lucrative job.
A spokesperson for Richardson declined to comment.
It is also unclear if Lackard, 49, was the only candidate considered for the $125,000 Mount Vernon police department position, and if Patterson-Howard’s reported friendship played a role in the selection.
The mayor’s office declined to address those questions, and maintained that Patterson-Howard didn’t even know the controversial cop until she was hired — and said the two aren’t even friends.
“There was no personal relationship between Jennifer Lackard and Mayor Shawyn Patterson-Howard either prior to or during Ms. Lackard’s employment with the City of Mount Vernon,” a rep for the mayor’s office said in a statement Thursday.
“Ms. Lackard was hired by former Police Commissioner Glenn Scott following the city’s established hiring process,” the statement said. “The City has no further comment at this time.”
However, a photo posted on Facebook shows the two women arm in arm and smiling at an event. When Chase Lackard was shot in the chest during a gang-related encounter on a Bronx city bus in 2023, sources said Mount Vernon cops showed up at Jacobi Hospital.
In a statement Wednesday, the mayor said Lackard was hired because of her 15-year career in mental health and substance abuse services, which fit the new unit’s task.
She said Lackard underwent a “rigorous background check,” and that her husband’s drug conviction did not disqualify her for the position.
City officials said the Wellness Unit was created to help cops address volatile situations involving emotionally unstable and intoxicated individuals they encounter in they day-to-day jobs.
In one recent gaffe, the unit was called in to execute an order to commit a 58-year-old man who barricaded himself in his Mount Vernon home last week — with cops ultimately shooting and critically wounding the troubled man, ABC Eyewitness News reported.
Patterson-Howard finally fired Lackard Tuesday, but only after police arrested her, her drug-peddling husband, James Lackard, and their troublemaking 20-year-old son, Chase Lackard, for their alleged role in a botched drive-by shooting of a gang rival on June 29.
All three were indicted on attempted murder, conspiracy, attempted assault and gun charges.
The Lackards founded Ivy House Center for Self-Sufficiency, a nonprofit that served criminal defendants with mental health or drug issues in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, in 2007 — with Jennifer Lackard as the CEO and James Lackard serving on the advisory board until the funding dried up.
James Lackard was convicted of federal drug charges in the late 1990s and served time in prison.
Jennifer Lackard reappeared in New York, where she founded a new nonprofit, Re-Entry Link LLC in the Bronx, and took a seat on Bronx Community Board 9 before landing the Mount Vernon job.
On June 29, The Lackards drove to the Bronx Hall of Justice on East 161st Street, where Chase Lackard, a reputed member of the “Slutty Gang,” had a scheduled court appearance — one of three gun pending gun cases he faces in the Bronx and Manhattan.
After leaving court, prosecutors said he jumped into his parents’ waiting Chrysler Pacifica and changed clothes, as his parents began to circle the block for several minutes.
When the intended target was spotted, Chase Lackard allegedly fired at the individual from the window of the SUV — missing the target — before his mom drove him home, prosecutors said.
Jennifer and Chase Lackard were picked up by cops at their Bronx home on Tuesday, while James Lackard was on the loose until her turned himself in to the NYPD on Thursday.
Chase Lackard was ordered held without bail, while his mom posted her bail of $75,000 cash or a $150,000 bond on Thursday. Her husband is being held on $150,000 cash bail or a $300,000 bond after being arraigned on the indictment later in the day.
“The whole block is talking,” a family neighbor told The Post Thursday. “I don’t know when that good girl went bad. The husband, I don’t even really know where he came from. He just showed up a few years ago, and most of us didn’t even know she had a son, a 20 year old.
“I’m shocked,” she said. “The whole building is shocked. We just know Jennifer as getting up and going to work. She should know better than anyone. What made you think you are going to get away with this?”
Mount Vernon is a city of 72,000 people known as a Democratic Party stronghold that shared a border with the Bronx.
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