A senior law enforcement official in Mount Vernon, New York, was arrested and charged with attempted murder after prosecutors say she drove her 20-year-old son to and from a gang-related shooting outside the Bronx Criminal Courthouse, then helped him change clothes to dodge detection.

Jennifer Lackard, 49, served as the city's deputy commissioner of public safety and earned $138,219 a year before Mount Vernon fired her hours after her arrest became public. Her son, Chase Lackard, an alleged member of a Bronx street gang known as "Slutty Gang," is accused of opening fire on a rival gang member on June 29 behind the courthouse at East 162nd Street and Grand Avenue. No one was hit. Both mother and son face charges of attempted murder, attempted assault, criminal possession of a firearm, conspiracy, and reckless endangerment.

Officers arrested both Lackards at their home on Boynton Avenue in Mount Vernon on Tuesday morning. Jennifer Lackard pleaded not guilty to the indictment. A judge set her bail at $75,000, and her next court date is in September. Chase Lackard was due back in court Tuesday night on the same charges.

Prosecutors say text messages reveal a coordinated plan

In court, a prosecutor read aloud what the state says is a text message Jennifer Lackard sent to her son before the shooting. WABC-TV reported the prosecutor's account of the exchange:

"When?? You can't just be standing out front. The timing has to be right."

Chase Lackard allegedly texted his mother to wait outside the building. After he opened fire, prosecutors say Jennifer Lackard drove the vehicle away from the scene. Court documents also place a third person in the car: James Lackard, Jennifer's ex-husband and Chase's father. No charges against James Lackard had been announced at the time of the arraignment.

The New York Post reported that the family coordinated the attack through text messages, switched seats in the car after the shooting, and had Chase change clothes to avoid identification, steps that suggest planning, not panic.

A city official entrusted with public safety does not stumble into a getaway-driver role. If the prosecution's account holds, Jennifer Lackard did not merely fail to stop her son. She allegedly helped him prepare, waited on his signal, and drove him to safety while a rival lay in the line of fire behind a courthouse. That is not a lapse in judgment. It is, as charged, a conspiracy.

Chase Lackard's record includes pointing a gun at an NYPD officer

Chase Lackard is no stranger to police attention. He has been shot by police on two separate occasions. In November 2024, when he was 19, surveillance footage captured him pointing a gun at an NYPD officer in the Bronx. An officer shot him in the leg. He was arrested on weapons and menacing charges.

The outcome of those prior charges remains unclear. But a mother who holds a senior law enforcement position, and who, according to her own attorney, spent "20 years" working in community advocacy and re-entry programs, would have known her son's criminal history in granular detail. The question prosecutors will have to answer is how far back her alleged involvement goes.

That a top law enforcement figure now faces criminal charges is jarring enough. That she allegedly participated in the very kind of gang violence her office existed to prevent makes the case harder to dismiss as an isolated personal failing.

Hired during the George Floyd protests, fired after an indictment

Mount Vernon appointed Jennifer Lackard as deputy commissioner of wellness in 2020, during the wave of police-reform hiring that followed the George Floyd protests. She had served two terms on Community Board 9 in the Bronx and built a reputation in re-entry advocacy, helping people with criminal records transition back into their communities. Fox News reported that her role carried the title of deputy police commissioner at the time of her arrest.

Her defense attorney told the court that she had "dedicated her professional life to the health and healing of impacted communities." That framing will be difficult to sustain now that prosecutors allege she drove her gang-affiliated son away from a shooting scene near a courthouse.

The City of Mount Vernon moved quickly to cut ties. Its statement said 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." The city terminated her employment immediately.

Damon Jones, a law enforcement activist and 33-year corrections veteran, offered a blunter assessment. Jones told the New York Post:

"I am embarrassed as a black law enforcement officer to see the dysfunction in a city that has a black mayor, a majority of black city council, a majority black police department that we have to see continuing dysfunction and just foolery in an organization that should be so professional."

Jones's frustration points to a pattern that extends well beyond Mount Vernon. Across the country, cases of senior law enforcement officials facing criminal accountability have tested public confidence in departments already under scrutiny. When the people hired to restore trust become defendants, the damage runs deeper than any single indictment.

Mount Vernon's statement raises more questions than it answers

The city's effort to wall off Lackard's alleged conduct from her official duties deserves scrutiny. Mount Vernon did not explain how a deputy commissioner of public safety, a title that implies direct oversight of policing operations, could allegedly participate in gang-related gun violence without any connection to her professional role. The city quoted its statement only "in part," leaving the full text undisclosed.

Several questions remain open. Did anyone in city government know about Chase Lackard's extensive criminal history when his mother held a senior police post? Were there internal reviews or background protocols that should have flagged the conflict? And what, if anything, did James Lackard, who prosecutors say was also in the vehicle, do before, during, or after the shooting?

Cases like this one echo a broader accountability problem. A Louisiana sheriff recently resigned after a felony guilty plea, and a Seattle police chief was forced out after a deadly shooting exposed institutional failures. The common thread is leadership that failed the officers and communities counting on it.

Jennifer Lackard has pleaded not guilty, and the charges against her remain allegations. But the facts prosecutors have laid out so far, the text messages, the surveillance footage, the seat-switching, the clothing change, describe something more deliberate than a mother caught off guard by a troubled son.

Communities hire public safety officials to stand between residents and violence. When those officials allegedly drive the car, the job title becomes the indictment's sharpest detail.