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NYPD overtime is expected to surpass the city’s allotted budget by $142.7 million in 2022 in order to respond to increasing violent crime and public events that were canceled last year because of the pandemic.
According to the city’s Independent Budget Office (IBO), the NYPD is projected to spend $750 million in overtime for the fiscal year, which will exceed the department’s $607 million overtime budget.
A spokesman for the IBO told Fox News that 80% of the overtime comes from sworn officers.
According to IBO data, NYPD overtime in 2022 is the second-highest it has been over the past six years, with 2020 remaining the highest at $837.5 million.
Terence Monahan, the NYPD police chief from 2018 to 2021, cites several reasons for the increased overtime.
“I would guess that this fiscal year, with the violence being up as high as it has been, they’ve been doing more and more of that violence reduction overtime. It’s putting the extra cops out on the streets,” Monahan said. “Plus, now events are happening. Parades are happening again. Parades always come into overtime because it takes a lot of personnel,” he added.
The 40-year police veteran said that 2021 overtime was relatively low because of the pandemic and restrictions placed on policing by local officials.
“Plus, there were no events, there were no parades — everything was canceled, which helped somewhat on the overtime,” he said. He added that the department “didn’t do any of our violence reduction overtime that summer, which led to the most violent summer the city’s ever seen.”
Monahan said that he does not believe police are taking advantage of the overtime system.
“Sometimes, we gotta force cops to take the overtime,” he said. “You know, they work on a schedule, and occasionally, they get Friday and Saturdays off, and now they’re being told they gotta come in because we need extra coverage.”
The increase in overtime comes as the department struggles to reduce violent crime in the city.
Total crime is up 41.6% compared to the same period last year, but shootings and murders are down year-to-date.
Mayor Eric Adams has recently urged the department to focus on reducing gun violence and subway crime, with the NYPD responding by creating neighborhood safety teams to target gun crimes in the city’s most dangerous precincts.
So far, the teams have made at least 2,300 arrests.
Adams’ 2022 budget for the police department is nearly $5.6 billion, up from the previous year’s $5.44 billion. He said the budget was about “investing” rather than spending.
John Jay College of Criminal Justice Maria Haberfeld believes that the increase in overtime is also linked to retirements.
“People retired early or just left the force,” she said. “This by itself necessitated additional overtime just to make sure that the coverage is there — thousands of officers retired.”
According to NYPD data, 2,686 personnel resigned from the police department in 2021 — with 1,032 resigning and 1,654 retiring.
Although the department is currently well-staffed, Haberfeld said that senior officers retiring had an impact on the departmental organization.
“It’s not just about numbers. It’s about who retires. If you have a large number of supervisors who retired, which was also the case because too many officers took an early retirement … this required additional overtime for other supervisors.”
Haberfeld argued that the other reason for the overtime was unprecedented crime.
“My opinion is that the city is out of control when it comes to crime. And on a daily basis, we have violent crime, shootings, stabbings,” Haberfeld explained. “If it was up to me, I would put twice as many officers on the street, because it’s not that the mere presence of officers will, you know, eliminate the problem, but it will certainly serve as a serious deterrent to street crime … this is not something that’s going away.”
Mayor Adams affirmed that his administration plans to do a “deep dive” on the NYPD’s use of overtime while announcing this year’s budget.
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