Police officers in New York City are resigning at a record-breaking pace this year, according to new data analyzed by the New Yor...
Police officers in New York City are resigning at a record-breaking pace this year, according to new data analyzed by the New York Post.
In the first two months of 2023, 239 officers left the New York City Police Department, substantially more than the 176 who left in 2022 and the 110 who left in 2021 during the same time period.
“The NYPD staffing emergency is approaching the point of no return,” Police Benevolent Association President Patrick Lynch said. “We are losing cops to better pay and benefits in other policing jobs almost every day.”
Officers have said that poor working conditions, pay, and politics have all contributed to the large number of officers leaving the force.
“Precinct cops are being forced to work an inhumane amount of overtime, including on their days off, while being penalized for minor uniform and administrative infractions,” one officer told The Post. “Meanwhile, precincts barely have enough personnel to meet the minimum required to safely answer 911 calls.”
If resignations continue at the current pace, about 1,400 officers will have quit the department by the end of the year. Some of the officers are going to work for New York’s metro system while others have moved to states like Florida.
According to one Manhattan cop, the NYPD is rife with mismanagement. “Hundreds of cops are being hidden under fake assignments or assigned to headquarters sitting at a desk all day and are considered ‘untouchable’ for patrol or enforcement duty because they have high-ranking supervisors protecting them,” he told The Post.
A spokesman for City Hall said that public safety remained the city’s “top priority” and that the city had seen a decline in certain violent crimes despite a nationwide labor shortage.
Many officers started leaving in the wake of the violent protests over George Floyd’s death in Minneapolis that rocked the country in 2020.
“The allure and luster of the NYPD is gone for now. They need to restore that,” said Spero Georgedakis, a recruiter who seeks to bring former New York cops to Florida.
Retirements have also ticked up in the department as crime in the city increases and the department struggles to effectively manage its limited resources.
Lynch said that the city needed to increase benefits and pay for the officers to keep more from leaving. “If that doesn’t happen very, very soon, we won’t have a police department left,” he said.
The increase in resignations comes as the NYPD has decreased fitness requirements, with the department recently cutting a timed 1.5-mile run in part so more women could qualify for the force.
Police departments across the country have struggled to recruit in recent years, a trend that has come alongside increased anti-police sentiment in major cities and the “defund the police” movement backed by some Democrat politicians.
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