Ex-NYC Official's Feud With Teen Drone Pilot Leads To $20K Fine

NEW YORK — Call it a rough landing. New York City's ethics watchdog fined a former top Department of Correction official $20,000 over her bitter feud with a drone-flying teenage neighbor, officials revealed Monday.

Shirvahna Gobin, who served as the DOC's deputy commissioner for strategic planning, flashed her official badge to get the kid arrested and enlisted subordinates in a push for a drone ban in the Long Island township where she lived, according to the city's Conflicts of Interest Board.

Gobin admitted to the misconduct in a settlement that the board released Monday in which she agreed to pay the $20,000 fine by the end of last month. The papers were signed by Gobin and her attorney, Gregory Kuczinski — another ex-DOC official who was reportedly ousted for allegedly spying on another city agency.

"Ms. Gobin’s use of city resources for personal gain was absolutely indefensible," Correction Department spokesperson Jason Kersten said. The department said Gobin resigned in March 2018 after nearly five years with the agency.

But Gobin said she actually disputes many of the allegations and took the deal only so she could put the "nightmare" behind her.

"There was no winning with this case and I did not have billions of dollars to go back and forth in litigation with them, and I settled so I could move on with my life," Gobin told Patch in a phone interview.

Kuczinski did not return a phone call seeking comment on the settlement.

Gobin's 14-year-old neighbor started flying the drone near her Bellmore, Long Island home in February 2017, the settlement says. She made 13 complaints over the next six months to the Nassau County Police Department, which told her it was not illegal to fly a drone, the papers say.

The quarrel escalated on July 26 of that year, when the kid allegedly sprayed Gobin's home security camera with a hose, according to the settlement. In Gobin's telling, he dented her house and destroyed part of the camera with a power washer after calling her a profane, racist name.

That was part of a pattern of harassment in which the teen hovered his drone over her home and lobbed "constant racist remarks" at her and her husband, she said.

Gobin accepted an offer from the Correction Department's chief of health and safety to assign a five-person security detail to her home that day as she "feared for (her) family's physical safety," the documents say. Gobin told Patch that there is no record of her asking for the detail and she did not have the power to assign it.

Two of the officers had to go back to Rikers Island to help search for an escaped inmate while the other three remained and were replaced by four different guards the next morning, the settlement says.

While the guards were there, the teen neighbor's father called Nassau County cops to Gobin's home where she talked with them while her Correction Department badge hung "prominently" around her neck, the settlement says. She asked the officers to arrest the kid, saying she had been to the mayor's office that day and didn't "need this kind of nonsense," according to the settlement.

The cops arrested the teen and his father and Gobin appeared at the dad's arraignment the next day, her DOC badge once again around her neck, the papers say. She said she ordered the kid's arrest because he "had vandalized my property."

But the boy's mother, Debbie Delgado, denied that he ever harassed Gobin or used racist language against her, and maintained that he only sprayed her camera with a garden hose. The boy, now 16, is "very angry and bitter over this whole thing," she said.

"My 14-year-old son did nothing to this woman. All he did was fly his drone," Delgado said in a phone interview.

Before the arrest, Gobin had directed DOC officials beneath her to help her push the Long Island Town of Hempstead to change its drone laws, the settlement says.

One project coordinator drafted a form letter, put together "hundreds of pages" of materials supporting it and gave Gobin feedback on an anti-drone speech, according to the settlement. A different staffer reviewed the letter, edited a PowerPoint presentation supporting a drone ban, researched federal rules on drones and created a list of 10 "Recent High-Profile Drone Mishaps," the papers say.

Gobin also asked several subordinates in an email to sign an online petition she started pushing for a local drone ban, the settlement says. In the interview, Gobin said her supervisor had approved her team's research on drones, but she did not directly explain why she had her city workers dealing with Long Island issues.

That was not the only time Gobin asked subordinates for favors, according to city officials. She asked a correction officer to design and print "dinosaur-themed labels" for her son's fourth and fifth birthday partie in 2015 and 2016, the settlement says.

According to the settlement, Gobin said the officer was being "ridiculous" when she said she was too busy with official work in 2016 and panned the guard's first draft of the labels, saying, "HATE IT!!!"

Gobin is among several current or former senior Correction Department officials who have been punished in a series of ethics scandals in recent years. Nine top officials — including Commissioner Cynthia Brann — were fined in 2017 for taking personal trips in their city-owned cars.

And Kuczinski, Gobin's lawyer, was removed from duty that year for allegedly surveilling the Department of Investigation as its staffers probed the jail agency, according to The New York Times.

Gobin said she trusted Kuczinski and noted that he is suing the Department of Investigation over his ouster. She said she may take further legal action against the city herself, but declined to be more specific.

"I chose to use someone that I trust, someone that I know has credibility and has integrity — and has gone through the same laborious process that I had gone through," Gobin said.

Conflicts of Interest Board spokesperson Michele Weinstat said Gobin admitted to all the facts stated in the settlement and confirmed that she "freely" agreed to the deal.