The New York City Police Department lost a record number of officers in two decades last year, but leadership “refuses to acknowledge” the growing crisis, the head of the city’s police union said, Fox News reported. on February 2.
Things are so bad that criminals could summon up the courage to threaten the safety of tourists in New York, according to the president of the New York City Police Benevolent Association (BAP), Patrick Lynch.
“The NYPD is playing a dangerous game by refusing to acknowledge and address the recruitment and retention crisis,” Lynch told Fox News. “New Yorkers are demanding more police presence in their neighborhoods and on the subway, but we just don’t have the manpower to consistently provide that.”
The police department needed at least 1,200 new officers to reach its budgeted headcount and 2,500 new members if the force wanted to return to its 2019 headcount, according to figures released by the BAP last month. Instead, the department received 543 recruits.
Data from the NYPD Pension Fund obtained by Fox News shows that 1,955 police officers retired in 2022 and another 1,746 resigned, for a total of 3,701 people who left the police force in the past year alone. The NYPD was budgeted to have 35,030 officers, but as of January 11, the payroll was 33,822. At the end of 2019, the department had 36,289 employees.
This is the highest number recorded in the last 20 years, even higher than in 2020 and 2021, when a large number of resigning police officers attracted the attention of the press. A total of 2,811 NYPD officers resigned or retired in 2021 and 3,315 in 2020.
In 2002, 3,846 NYPD officers left or retired from the police force, according to the data, more than the number last year, according to the data.
Between 2010 and 2019, the NYPD lost an average of 2,112 employees, which means that the number of retirements or resignations increased by 75% in 2022 compared to the average of the decade before the pandemic.
The problem, according to Lynch, is that any police department near New York City pays more and treats employees better, making it very difficult for the city to retain employees.
At the same time, a lack of police officers is a common problem in big US cities run by Democrats. Philadelphia is about to lose more employees in 2023 than the number of recruits the city hopes to attract. Compounding the shortfall, the department has already laid off at least 1,000 police officers, according to a local police union leader.
New Orleans has been forced to call in police officers from across the state to maintain order during parades and the celebration of Mardi Gras because there aren’t enough police officers in the city. And in Baltimore, a judge warned last month that the city’s police personnel crisis is so severe that it cannot be “overstated.”
According to Fox News, the personnel issues plaguing US police departments arose in the wake of the 2020 protests and calls to cut police funding.
Simultaneously with the police shortage in many areas of the United States, crime has risen sharply. Nationwide, the number of homicides increased nearly 30% in 2020 over the previous year, marking the largest single-year increase in homicides since the FBI began tracking such crimes.
Source: Rossa Primavera
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