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By: Ilana Siyance
The New York Police Department has subtly renewed a multi-million-dollar ad contract with a Hollywood advertising agency, in a bid to attract police officers to the force.
As reported by the NY Post, the NYPD has tapped Walton Isaacson LLC, granting the Los Angeles-based firm a $5 million two-year contract in November to continue advising on police recruitment and media strategies. As per city contracts, the ad agency, which also has offices in NYC, had previously raked in a $54 million five-year contract with the city in 2018 to help the NYPD recruit officers. Despite the NYPD spending a whopping $3.7 million in advertising for 2022 alone, the class of new recruits joining the force for the year was still 5% smaller than it had been in 2016.
Last year around 2,650 new cops were sworn in. “The NYPD could spend a billion dollars a year on recruiting ads. It would make no difference as long as the pay and benefits remain inferior to every other policing job in this area,” said Police Benevolent Association President Patrick Lynch. “The city should stop wasting its money on recruiting ads and instead invest in a more effective recruiting tool: competitive compensation.”
Per the Post, the NYPD has been struggling with a mass exodus of cops from the force with record high retirements, reportedly due to poor morale, the defund the police rhetoric and competing agencies that offer much higher pay and better quality of life. NYPD pension data shows 239 officers left the force in January and February alone, a 36% jump from the 176 who left the same time frame last year, and a troublesome 117% leap over the 110 who fled in those months in 2021. Coupled with a low number of new recruits, this has left the force short staffed, and left with no choice but to pay existing cops overtime to keep all shifts covered.
Police Commissioner Keechant Sewell has admitted publicly that recruitment poses a “significant issue,” and has said the NYPD is getting “creative” with how to recruit prospective candidates, including tapping into military bases and colleges. The top cop didn’t mention the advertising contract with Walton Isaacson. “We recognize that with the attrition that we’ve seen that we needed to get a little bit more imaginative when it comes to recruitment,” Sewell said at a budget hearing this month with the City Council Committee on Public Safety. “We put out a number of different videos. We have people who are responding to a number of locations basically really getting the word out, since the pandemic that we’re open for business.”
