NEW YORK — After a long, distinguished career with the FBI, Thomas Donlon could have ridden off into the sunset. Instead, he says, he accepted the post as interim NYPD commissioner in September because he genuinely wanted to lend a hand.

“I have a great admiration and love for the NYPD. I knew they were having some issues and I wanted to bring my experience to help the rank and file,” said Donlon, 71. “I knew what I was walking into.”

What he found, he says, was “a lot of dysfunction” in the top leadership of the NYPD.

“Everyone was just doing what they wanted to do,” he says. “The feds have much better systems and structure. But they just didn’t get it.”

On Wednesday, Donlon filed a lawsuit that accuses Mayor Eric Adams and top NYPD officials including former Chief of Department Jeffrey Maddrey, current Chief of Department John Chell, former top spokesman Tarik Sheppard and Deputy Mayor Kaz Daughtry of running a “corrupt enterprise.”

In an interview with WPIX Thursday morning, Sheppard responded by claiming Donlon was “isolated” from the start because “his phones were taken by the FBI.”

Sheppard also claimed, “He (Donlon) was showing many signs of some cognitive issues that he wasn’t up to the task of being police commissioner.”

But in the wide-ranging interview with The News, Donlon showed no signs of any cognitive problems.

“He’s just grasping at straws, it’s pathetic,” Donlon said, revealing a little of the city edge honed in his Bronx upbringing. “Of course he’s defaming me. But he’s used to getting his way all these years.

“Just about every day I was police commissioner, I was out in the community. Weekends. I never took a day off,” he said. “So, no, I wasn’t isolated. And no, the FBI never took my phones.”

Reps for the NYPD and Adams did not reply to requests for comment on Sheppard’s claims. City Hall spokeswoman Kayla Mamelak Wednesday described Donlon as a “disgruntled former employee who proved himself ineffective.”

“This suit is nothing more than an attempt to seek compensation at the taxpayers’ expense,” she added.

Donlon’s FBI career intersected with a number of the major federal gang and terror cases of the 1990s, including the 1993 World Trade Center bombing, and the Manila Air case, which was masterminded by Ramzi Yousef who was also involved in planning the 9/11 attacks.

He retired in 2005 and later worked for state Homeland Security before forming a consulting company.

He says Mayor Adams instructed him to clear his initiatives with him, but “If I did a good job, I would become full police commissioner.” But he was immediately at a disadvantage from top subordinates like Maddrey, Sheppard, Chell and Daughtry.

“The core of the issue was I had no control over them,” he says. “Adams is protecting them. They know if they screw up they are not going to be in trouble.”

Donlon says he witnessed behavior among the top brass that would never be condoned in the FBI.

“You would be fired,” he says. “The lack of candor, the lying. In the FBI you would be gone the next day.”

In his first staff meeting, he directed all social media posts be cleared with NYPD legal.

“I said we need one voice here, we can’t act like cowboys,” Donlon said. “What do they do? They run over and complain to Adams. If I was up to me, I would have gotten rid of them.”

At one point, Daughtry told Donlon he thought up a prostitution task force from Roosevelt Avenue in Queens “in a dream.”

Donlon proposed bringing the feds in to use their power to make larger narcotics and sex trafficking case that would really stick. Chell, Daughtry and Maddrey didn’t want the feds involved.

“It was all about getting credit, it was all about them,” he says. “But it’s not about them. It’s about the community.”

Donlon came into office intending to examine evidence storage in the NYPD warehouses.

“I walk into Erie Basin, it was a disaster,” he says. “There were boxes all piled up in no kind of order. Maddrey was livid, Adams was livid. I said ‘What’s the problem? I’m doing my job.”

Soon after he took office, the FBI served a search warrant on him for documents from 30-year-old terror investigations. Donlon says he had had no contact with sensitive federal documents since he retired.

He says the documents were so old any restrictions on them had lapsed. “It was all generic stuff. If they had anything they would have charged me,” he said. “They also told me they did this because they thought there might be something with me and Adams,” he said. “But of course there wasn’t.”

On Nov. 20, he was called to City Hall for a conference. He says when he saw Jessica Tisch, he knew he was going to be replaced. The mayor had him sit down.

“He wasn’t very nice. I think he was mad about the warehouse thing,” Donlon says. “He says ‘If you want to stay (in city government), stay. If you want to go, go. He was very abrupt, not nice.”

Donlon recalled a previous meeting where he briefed the mayor as Adams perused a document, disinterested. “When I was done, there was no response and then he just said, ‘Anything else?’” Donlon said.

Donlon departed the department skeptical of whether the top leadership was really prepared to deal with a major disaster.

“They were cowboys, they just didn’t really know what they were doing,” he said.

He also thinks the department is insensitive to the needs of the rank and file.

“You can’t treat people like robots; they have lives,” he says. “These guys need some care and compassion.”

But Donlon opted to stay on in City Hall working on law enforcement grants until he was dismissed in April. “I still wanted to stay involved in law enforcement and public safety and I wanted to keep working,” he says.

Donlon remains angry about the treatment his wife received when she was detained for two hours in the 17th Precinct after a fender bender on the East Side on Dec. 16.

Almost immediately, the private cell numbers for Donlon and his wife Deirdre O’Connor-Donlon were leaked to the media.

“That was Tarik. That was put out to hurt me,” Donlon says, an allegation contained in his lawsuit. “They should have just given her a summons at the scene and let her go. It was very very upsetting to be treated this way.

In the end, Donlon, after much consideration, decided to file the lawsuit.

“I have a high tolerance level but for me to sit back and take this guff was unbearable,” he said.

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