“Our police officers are being worked to exhaustion, and 911 response times are already rising,” Hendry said, referencing data showing police response times surged in the last fiscal year. Patrick Hendry, president of the Police Benevolent Association, the NYPD’s largest union, said the mayor’s decision to suspend police hiring will “turn the NYPD staffing crisis into a public safety disaster.”

As a mayoral candidate, Adams made public safety the cornerstone of his 2021 campaign and vowed to beef up the NYPD ranks. The police hiring restrictions mark a major concession by Adams, who has in past rounds of city spending trims largely avoided putting a damper on the NYPD. As compared to the same time last year, the major felony crime rate in the city is effectively flat as of this week, police data shows. According to department data, there are currently 33,541 NYPD officers - 1,460 fewer than the 35,001 the department is budgeted for and 2,748 fewer than the 36,461 on the beat in 2019.Īt the same time, major felonies in the city were up in the fiscal year that ended June 30 - the most recent 12-month stretch for which there is comprehensive data - a trend driven by spikes in grand larcenies, robberies and car thefts, among other categories, though murders and rapes dropped in the same period. The freeze, part of a 5% city government-wide spending cut baked into the mayor’s November budget modification plan, will bring Police Academy classes to a halt at a time when the NYPD’s uniformed ranks remain well below pre-pandemic levels, two sources briefed on the matter said Wednesday. The NYPD will freeze hiring of new police officers for the foreseeable future as part of “extremely painful” city budget cuts set to be unveiled by Mayor Adams on Thursday, the Daily News has learned.

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