The NYPD will suspend new officer recruiting for the foreseeable future as part of Mayor Adams’ “extremely painful” city budget cuts, the Daily News reported.
According to two people informed on the topic on Wednesday, the freeze—which is a component of a 5% city government-wide spending cut baked into the mayor’s November budget adjustment plan—will stop Police Academy classes at a time when the NYPD’s uniformed personnel are still much below pre-pandemic levels. Agency data indicates that there are 33,541 NYPD officers on the beat at the moment, which is 2,748 lower than the 36,461 police on the beat in 2019 and 1,460 fewer than the 35,001 the agency is budgeted for.
Adams has always avoided significantly affecting the NYPD throughout rounds of municipal spending cuts, so the latest limitations on police recruiting represent a significant compromise.
“It’s going to be extremely painful for New Yorkers,” Mayor Adams acknowledged during a press conference at City Hall on Thursday to discuss the budget release. Adams told reporters that the tightening of belt is necessary to make up for the hundreds of millions of dollars the city has spent on housing and other services for the tens of thousands of migrants who have arrived since last year, calling it “probably one of the most painful exercises I’ve gone through.”
Hizzoner thus addressed the federal government, which he has been criticizing for months for not doing more to assist the city in accommodating the flood of migrants, saying, “That’s why we continue to say we need help.”
The most recent 12-month period for which complete data is available shows that major felonies in the city increased in the fiscal year that ended on June 30. This trend was fueled by increases in auto theft, grand larcenies, and robberies, among other categories, while rapes and murders decreased during the same time frame. According to police data, the major felony crime rate in the city as of this week is essentially unchanged from the same period last year.
