By: Daniella Doria
New York City police officers are retiring and resigning at record rates. For as long as statistics have been kept, the city has never seen this amount of cops leaving the force. 1,500 officers have left in 2022 so far.
About 520 cops have resigned, and more than 1,000 have retired as of May 31, according to NYPD pension data previously obtained by The New York Post. The 1,596 total departures from the police department represents a 38% spike compared to the same period in 2021, when 1,159 cops called it a career, and a 46% increase from 2020, when 1,092 left the force by the same point.”
Asked Monday morning by “Good Day New York” host Rosanna Scotto if those figures “concern” him, Adams replied, “No, it does not. The New York City Police Department is an amazing career. I know it first-hand, and we are going to find young men and women who are going to want to be a member of the New York City Finest,” the retired NYPD captain and former transit cop continued on Fox 5.
Adams also was quick to brag about the future officers currently in the academy. “We got an amazing recruitment campaign coming in. “This is a great opportunity to diversify the department,” the mayor said. “So no, people will always want to join the New York City Police Department. It’s one of the best careers you could have in the city.”
According to the NYPD’s most recent demographic data, the force is 44% white, 30% Hispanic, 15% black, and 10% Asian. The population of the five boroughs is currently 41% white, 29% Hispanic or Latino, 24% black, and 14% Asian, according to Census Bureau figures dated July 2021.
Effective use of department Human Resources is one way of combatting lower numbers. Adams told The New York Post, “You don’t see five, six police officers standing at the corner together; you’re seeing us deploy our police properly. We must first utilize the resources we have. I cannot emphasize enough, we were not deploying our police the way they should have been deployed,” said the mayor. “I’m going to deploy New York’s taxpayers’ money correctly.”
On Friday, officials said the spending package set to pass Monday evening trimmed back a $152 million hike to the NYPD budget sought by the mayor to an estimated $90 million boost, which will fund new labor contracts.
A former NYPD officer who asked to go by “Joe” and recently left his job for a position at a Long Island police department told the Post that “anti-cop hostility, bail reform, and rising crime” have all contributed to the mass exodus of law enforcement officers, Breitbart pointed out
“The last few years so many people had been leaving and manpower was so low that you’d go to work and you’d answer 25 to 30 jobs a day and you’re burnt out by the end of the day,” he said, adding that even when he arrested someone, “they were back in the precinct picking up their property the same day.”
