De Blasio Denies Ordering NYPD Car Service For His Son

NEW YORK — Mayor Bill de Blasio's security detail ferried his son to and from college out of concern for his safety — not as a favor to Hizzoner, he said Monday.

De Blasio denied repeatedly ordering cops to bring his son, Dante, home from Yale University, as laid out in a New York Daily News report that the mayor called "fundamentally untrue."

The NYPD's Executive Protection Unit gave Dante lifts to the Connecticut school because there were specific threats against him and other members of the city's first family, according to the Democratic mayor.

"Dante was a protectee of the NYPD. There had been threats against him, there had been threats against my family," de Blasio said Monday evening on NY1. "The NYPD made a decision from the beginning of how to handle protection for each family member."

Unnamed sources told the Daily News that de Blasio ordered his police detail to shuttle Dante back and forth from Yale more than half a dozen times before his graduation this spring. The city's Department of Investigation is looking into de Blasio's use of the detail and who leaked details of it to the press, the paper reported.

But de Blasio said he and his family were just following directions from the NYPD, which calls the shots when it comes to their protection.

"The NYPD determines the security needs of the First Family," mayoral spokesperson Olivia Lapeyrolerie said in a statement. "There were credible threats against Dante earlier in the Administration, and the NYPD took the steps necessary to ensure his safety."

Neither de Blasio nor Lapeyrolerie offered details of those threats. But the mayor roundly criticized the Daily News for reporting that he had given orders he says he never issued.

"They got some disgruntled individuals feeding them information and bluntly I don’t think there’s a good faith effort to find out what the truth is," de Blasio said.

De Blasio administration officials did not explicitly deny the Daily News's reporting in the paper's Monday story. Mayoral press secretary Freddi Goldstein told the paper that de Blasio follows ethics rules and his kids are "guaranteed NYPD protection, just like the children of prior mayors." NYPD spokesperson Devora Kaye reportedly declined to discuss "security matters regarding the protection of the mayor, his family, or other elected officials."