Former Gov. Andrew Cuomo, the apparent frontrunner in the 2025 NYC mayor’s race, said Sunday he would hire 5,000 new NYPD officers as the centerpiece of a public safety plan he rolled out while visiting a Harlem church.
Cuomo told congregants at Mount Neboh Baptist Church on March 9 that the NYPD’s rank-and-file today, about 34,000, is smaller than it was during the Dinkins administration more than 30 years ago. The department has seen a recent exodus of officers retiring early and has leaned upon costly overtime expenses to keep pace with crime-fighting programs such as several police surges into the subway system.
However, the former governor noted that the increase in overtime work has only exacerbated the NYPD’s staffing problem. Cops are getting burned out from their longer shifts and quitting early. Meanwhile, he noted, the city has spent more than a billion dollars on police overtime.
“Police are getting burned out. Police are quitting. One of the highest attrition rates ever. And we can’t even attract new people to be police officers,” Cuomo said.
The former governor said morale at the NYPD took another hit as a result of the “defund the police” movement in the early part of this decade. Cuomo chastised those who supported such cuts as “pandering to the extremists.”
To solve the problem, Cuomo said, if elected, he would follow the example of the late Mayor David Dinkins. While facing historically high crime rates, Dinkins ordered a 40% increase in the police force in 1990, raising the total number of officers to a peak of 38,438.
Cuomo’s proposed hiring of 5,000 new NYPD officers would amount to a 15% increase in the current department headcount, bringing the total roster to roughly 39,100 cops — “just about equal” to the peak NYPD count in the mid-1990s. Nevertheless, the former governor said it would make a significant difference in not only keeping New York City safe, but also be more economical for the city.
“Because the overtime is so high, you can hire 5,000 new police officers for half the amount you’re spending in overtime,” Cuomo told congregants. “And the police will have less burnout. There’ll be less attrition, [and it would] be easier to hire new police officers.”
The governor added that the additional cops would rightsize the NYPD to meet the city’s population growth over the last three decades. A million more New Yorkers now live in the Big Apple than during the early 1990s, when the NYPD had its highest number of officers.
Cuomo also proposed changing the pay structure to provide regular pay increases to NYPD officers for their years of service, which would offer “a more attractive long-term career path for officers,” according to his campaign. Currently, new officers start with an annual salary of $58,580, which can climb after 5 1/2 years of service to a competitive base of $121,589 per year.
However, hiring more cops is not the only way to ensure public safety. The candidate called for providing additional resources to help young, at-risk minority men between 18 and 24 years of age, while also forging stronger connections between the community and the NYPD.
“We have to give them a positive future. We have to get them a job. And we have to do a private employment sharing program,” Cuomo said. “We have to get them apprenticeships. We have to show them that there’s a positive way forward. And of course, the police we hire have to respect the community, have to be disciplined. And there has to be a relationship of mutual trust and respect.”
