I love New York City. My wife and I got engaged at Rockefeller Center under the Christmas tree. I believe in New York City and the New York City Police Department. I’m ‘the glass is half-full guy.’ I tell the stories of Bill Bratton and his successes like campfire tales. In 1999, walking in the World Trade Center, half the people in the south tower recognized and spoke to my uncle. He endured the loss of friends and co-workers during the 1993 attack.
My law enforcement agency was a haven for forty-something retirees from NYPD double dipping in our pension. Working with dozens of other agencies during my career I found almost all Florida sheriff’s offices and police department welcomed their swagger and no-nonsense attitude. The plot of the movie Die Hard worked because it was the fish-out-of-water NYPD cop in Los Angeles.
It’s chilling to see the challenges NYPD is facing.
The four factors the NYPD are facing are recruiting, retention, rapidly rising crime, and a revolving-door justice system.
Three factors are governed and worsened by poor leadership and policy. The betrayal of the current officers by city and department leadership is an egg that can’t be unscrambled. Those close to the end of their careers are done and have a retirement countdown on their smartphone. Too many officers are completely over the disloyalty of the command staff to the rank and file.
The current commissioner has been undermined by city administration to the degree that she is looking for a soft-landing zone. Recently the training chief bypassed her, going directly to the mayor, to relax recruit physical standards – and was rewarded with a golden parachute.
Nearly every agency in the country is experiencing a hiring crisis. Candidates exist but they are scarce, and recruiters better be selling something better than salary and benefits. The NYPD has a recruiting problem, but far worse, they have a full scale retention crisis. In 2023, in the first 60 days, attrition was 40% higher than the previous year. Dorothy Moses Schultz writes, “If the pace keeps up, the department could lose more than 5,000 officers this year, which would make 2023’s exodus the largest since at least 2002, when more than 3,800 cops left after the September 11 attacks on the World Trade Center.” The New York Post reports:
“The NYPD staffing emergency is approaching the point of no return,” said Police Benevolent Association President Patrick Lynch. New York City’s Finest are also bailing because of what they consider anti-cop politics, woke bail reform policies that make criminal justice a revolving door and low wages.
Spero Georgedakis, 52, a former Miami SWAT team member, who grew up in Queens wanting to be a member of New York’s Finest, runs ads to coax cops to the Sunshine State.
“We had four or five New York City police officers reach out to us last week,” he said. “They saw the spots, and we gave them [salary] quotes.”Georgedakis said “the standard story” he gets from NYPD cops is that “the job is impossible to do.”
Leadership destroyed the culture that previous generations sacrificed pay and comfort to count themselves members of the team. The collision of circumstances is unprecedented, and it is obvious that these factors are related to one another.
The NYPD is the largest municipal police agency in the world. The problems they are facing are not unique to New York but are shared by the other major agencies in this country including, Chicago, Los Angeles, Seattle, Portland, Baltimore, Detroit, Baltimore, and New Orleans. These cities and many more will be watching closely how NYPD responds to these shared challenges.
According to Hannah E. Meyers , Manhattan Institute Fellow and Director of Policing and Public Safety in a March 29 article:
Petit larceny is up 40 percent over the past two years in New York City; misdemeanor assault rose 39 percent; and grand larceny auto grew over 97 percent. All these categories continued to rise over the past year, even as some bail-qualifying offenses declined, like homicides and shootings. So far, 2023 has seen 2,263 more misdemeanor assaults than during the same period in 2021. Under Hochul’s proposed change, those assailants still could not be jailed pretrial.
“Since the policy change, the percentage of weapons charges made against those under age 18 quadrupled, from 2.5 percent of all cases in 2019 to 10 percent in 2021. And 48 percent of 16-year-olds arrested in the year following the policy change were re-arrested by January 31, 2020—including 27 percent rearrested for violent felonies.”
“Bragg’s directives will drive ordinary citizens and the NYPD crazy. He will not charge defendants for resisting arrest. The NYPD now can expect every arrest to be a brawl, in which the only person likely to be charged with a crime is a police officer. Bragg will also decline to charge traffic infractions. This is the sort of de-prosecution decision that has led to deadly street racing and vehicular mayhem in cities such as Chicago and Minneapolis.”
Bail reform has damaged the justice process frustrating citizens, cops and the courts.
According to court data from the summer after bail reform went into effect, 70 percent of New York City defendants arraigned on felonies had a prior conviction or pending case.
New York State’s new bail laws, enacted in 2019 and made effective at the beginning of 2020, were billed as a means to end the “mass incarceration” of the poor and minorities who were unable to post even small amounts of bail.
New York City crime data show that index crimes went up 20% in the first two and a half months after the bail reform took effect, increasing by double digits in the crimes for which judges could no longer set bail: burglary +26%; car theft +68%; grand larceny +16%; and petit larceny +19%. These numbers coincided with the release of every defendant held solely on bail charged with burglary, car theft, grand larceny, and petit larceny from city jails as a result of the new law.
NYC and New York State have some tough choices to make.
Money alone will not solve the problems. Money is my first go-to solution in everything. Before I consider anything else, I figure out whether it is a compensation, collateral, equipment or other fiscal concern. In recent memory, during the continuing dismantle and defund the police movement, the street crime unit was disbanded and has been recently reinstituted. Defunding the police is not a new idea according to this research paper:
Under Mayors Michael R. Bloomberg (2002–13) and Bill de Blasio (2014–21), police spending fell, albeit for different political and policy reasons under each mayor. De Blasio kept the force lean partly as a reflection of his antipolice campaign rhetoric in 2013, the year he won office, and partly to fund his other priorities, including expanded prekindergarten, homeless-services, and social-services (including broader access to mental health care) spending. As NYC voters have long been attentive to crime rates, both mayors implied by their actions that record-low crime reduced the need for police officers.
My hope, always optimistic, is that proper leadership be installed in the command staff of the department. The consequences of missteps will create several vacancies. NYPD deserves a leader who will take the arrows for their officers until due process has its day.
The current trajectory is a crisis state where public safety reaches the tipping point and unthinkable options are considered. News outlets I trust find Mayor Adams is far less concerned than I am. If this great city doesn’t receive some courageous leadership, it will look more like Escape from New York than Blue Bloods. I promise to keep the faith in the NYPD and I hope you will too!
Please pray for those officers in that impossible situation!
Following a year during which officers retired or resigned in greater numbers than at any time in 20 years, the NYPD's uniformed ranks are their lowest in more than a decade.
The officer headcount as of Dec. 8 numbered just under 34,000, according to the NYPD, about 1,000 fewer cops than are budgeted for the current fiscal year.
I also love NYC (and NYPD). Used to feel safe walking alone at night back to my east Midtown hotel. Now? Not sure I want to take the chance. A similar situation is unfolding in Chicago, my original hometown. Heartbreaking to see these great cities fall like this.
Courageous leadership is most desperately needed more than ever.
You outdid yourself with this one, Roland!
I also love NYC (and NYPD). Used to feel safe walking alone at night back to my east Midtown hotel. Now? Not sure I want to take the chance. A similar situation is unfolding in Chicago, my original hometown. Heartbreaking to see these great cities fall like this.
Courageous leadership is most desperately needed more than ever.