The New York City Police Department is reportedly having to limit the number of retirement applications that it processes on a daily basis due to the overwhelming number of officers who are retiring due to loss of overtime pay and a lack of respect in the current political environment that demonizes police officers.
“A surge of city cops filing papers during the past week more than quadrupled last year’s number — as the city grapples with a surge of shootings — and the stampede caused a bottleneck that’s forcing others to delay putting in their papers,” the New York Post reported. “The astonishing rush for the door came as 503 cops filed for retirement between May 25 — the day George Floyd was killed in Minneapolis, sparking anti-cop protests around the country — and July 3, the NYPD said.”
The Post added that the surge of applications forced the department to limit the number of applications that it can process “due to cancellation of overtime for the workers who process them.”
“Apparently, the pension section is only taking a certain amount of people per day and I think they are backed up till late July, early August,” one police officer told the Post. “That’s why you don’t see like 100 a day, because they are only doing like 35 to 40 a day, by appointment.”
A spokeswoman for the NYPD said that the number of police officers who were resigning was “a troubling trend that we are closely monitoring.”
“There’s just droves and droves of people retiring. But there’s no surprise here, who the hell wants to stay on this job?” another police officer told the Post. “Why would you want to stay on this job when people don’t appreciate what you do?”
The Associated Press reported that the NYPD was “halving overtime spending” by looking to cut “nearly $300 million … in police overtime.” The AP noted that the NYPD paid out well over $100 million in overtime from the time of George Floyd’s death in late-May through the start of July because it needed all hands on deck to deal with rioting, looting, and an increase in crime.
The NYPD announced during mid-June that it was disbanding its plainclothes unit of approximately 600 police officers who blend into the community in an effort to fight crime.
Former New York City Police Commissioner Howard Safir told Fox News last week that the recent actions by the NYPD were going to have a major negative impact on the city.
“The fact is that the cuts that have been made are going to be real,” Safir said. “They may not be … a billion dollars, but they’re going to reduce the amount of police officers on the street. Cops are retiring at record numbers. Response time is going to go down.”
“You did away with the anti-crime unit, which was 600 plainclothes officers who prevented crime,” Safir added. “Uniformed officers respond to crime. Plainclothes officers prevent crimes from happening. So it’s going to be a much more dangerous city.”