Seeking to recruit more officers, NYPD Commissioner Jessica Tisch announced on Wednesday morning a dramatic reduction in the department’s college credit requirements for candidate cops.
The comments came during the top cop’s speech at the ABNY Power Breakfast inside the Hilton Midtown Hotel. Tisch outlined a new, multi-tier plan designed to bolster NYPD ranks facing both a hiring crisis and a retirement crisis that has depleted the rank-and-file of “New York’s Finest” — from a high of 37,000 uniformed officers seven years ago, to an estimated 33,000 cops today.
“I’m not going to sugar coat it, the NYPD is in a hiring crisis, and this is not a budget problem,” Tisch told the crowd on Feb. 26. “The applicants just aren’t there. It wasn’t that long ago when people would wait years to get the call to join the Academy and every incoming class was full to capacity. Now we are practically begging people to take the exam.”
The main crux of Tisch’s strategy is immediately lowering the number of college credits needed to become an officer from 60 to 24; that impacts more than 5,000 candidates on 29 active civil service lists who were previously ineligible to join the NYPD. Police officials hope that this will attract more applicants and increase the ranks.
However, Tisch acknowledged that it will take more than simply changing qualification criteria to attract new recruits.
“We are still seeing the very real impact of the defund and anti-police movement. A lot of the rhetoric aimed at our police is vile, and the pendulum has swung too far away from what I consider to be the most important and noble job one could do,” Tisch said.
Though the move lowers the credit requirement for enlisting with the NYPD, Tisch noted that the department is also increasing the number of credits earned by a candidate upon completing the police academy.
According to police sources, a reassessment conducted by the National College Credit Recommendation Service (NCCRS), the NCCRS determined that completion of the six-month NYPD Police Academy training program was equivalent to 45 college credits, up from the previous 36 credits.
The increase in credits was based on the academic strength and rigor of the program, which covers criminal law, criminal procedures and investigations, constitutional rights, crisis intervention, and more. As a result, each academy graduate will enter the NYPD having earned a minimum of 69 college credits — which qualifies them for an associate degree.
The NYPD is one of the last major city police departments in America to require college credit. Los Angeles, Chicago, Houston, Philadelphia, Boston, San Francisco, Seattle, Miami, and Detroit do not have such a college credit mandate. Suburban NYC police departments, such as Suffolk and Westchester Counties, also lack this standard.
Along with tweaking academic requirements, Tisch further announced that the NYPD is looking to boost the physical fitness of its officers by reinstating a long-standing requirement for each candidate officer to complete a 1.5-mile run in less than 14 minutes, 21 seconds.
Mayor Eric Adams, in a statement, applauded Tisch for working to ensure “we reach every qualified individual who is committed to serving our city and protecting its people.”
“Public safety and justice are the prerequisites to prosperity, and as we continue to see record declines in crime across our city, but we know we must take bold, decisive action to ensure we are doing everything in our power to put more officers on the streets and keep New York City the safest big city in America,” the mayor said. “We need not only more officers but also enhanced training, and this new initiative delivers on both fronts, setting us on a path to an even safer, more secure city.”
