After Just a Week, the N.Y.P.D. Commissioner Faces a Crisis of His Own

In his first week as New York City’s interim police commissioner, Thomas G. Donlon responded to a police shooting that injured four people, including one of his own officers.

He then had to prepare for the U.N. General Assembly, an annual logistical and security challenge that was compounded by deepening conflicts in Gaza, Lebanon and Ukraine.

On Friday, trouble came for the commissioner himself: Federal agents arrived at the residences of Mr. Donlon, 71, a former F.B.I. counterterrorism official hired after his predecessor departed amid an investigation. They seized documents that he said had come into his possession about 20 years ago.

According to two federal officials with knowledge of the matter, the materials that the agents sought were classified documents.

For a department and a city roiled by report after report of search warrants, resignations, subpoenas and investigations by prosecutors in the Southern District of New York, this latest development took a turn into the absurd.

“At a certain point, we all would walk out of the movie theater because the script was just too fantastical, incredulous, and unbelievable for real-life,” Jumaane Williams, the city’s public advocate, said in a social media post.