His cop-out is going to hurt.
Mayor Zohran Mamdani caved to the left on the NYPD’s headcount — getting rid of a promised 580 new officers in the upcoming city budget — just as the stretched-thin force faces a “massive summer workload,” critics railed Tuesday.
NYPD officials contended that’d make do without the new cops, but unions said the department’s nearly 35,000 headcount was already inadequate — as officers face extended shifts to cover a slew of high-profile events in the coming months.
“The massive summer workload is just starting to hit, and police officers are already burning out and leaving by the hundreds,” said Police Benevolent Association President Patrick Hendry.
“Mayor Mamdani needs to recognize that there is an even bigger staffing crisis looming, because our members have already been out of contract for nearly a year. He needs to sit down with us and work on ways to keep the cops we already have.”
The nation’s largest police department has long faced a staffing crunch, with retirements outpacing new recruits every year since 2020.
Many pols and NYPD leaders deemed the police pinch a crisis, but progressives and far-left activists haven’t been too concerned — arguing, at best, that the force is bloated.
Mamdani, a democratic socialist true-believer who formerly called to “defund the police,” courted fellow lefties during last year’s mayoral election by promising to freeze the NYPD’s headcount at 35,000.
But once in office, Mamdani flip-flopped on his campaign pledge and proposed within his executive budget to add the nearly 600 cops.
Lefties went apoplectic, holding a rally last week around City Hall calling for Mamdani to keep his promise.
As budget negotiations went down the wire ahead of Tuesday’s deadline, Mamdani again pulled a 180.
He walked back his plan to boost the ranks, blindsiding City Council Speaker Julie Menin late Monday as the pair firmed up a handshake agreement over the budget, sources said.
Menin said she disagreed with the move, as well as Mamdani’s decision to hold off adding “fifth man” to FDNY fire trucks.
“We need to be adding police officers,” Menin said, noting the city has fewer cops than on Sept. 11, 2001.
Police union leaders such as Hendry contended the move will harm public safety and bring the NYPD to a breaking point.
“The ability to do more with less is always a true testament to the cops and their supervisors,” said Sergeants Benevolent Association President Vincent Vallelong.
“Yet this is an untenable situation that begs the question — how much longer can the staffing levels of the NYPD bend before it breaks? Doing extended tours over long periods of time is already burning out the brave men and women who keep this city safe every day.”
An NYPD spokesperson argued that the department stepped up to help the city deal with its “serious financial challenges.”
“For now, the department is able to police effectively with the budgeted headcount we have, driving crime down month after month,” the spokesperson said. “That headcount and our hiring plan gives us the flexibility we need to maintain that balance over the next fiscal year.”
The supposed cost-cutting move will only save $25 million, a fraction compared to the $54 million that Mamdani’s “Office of Mass Engagement” pet project is slated to receive.
Last year, the NYPD had 3.92 officers for every 1,000 New Yorkers, a drop from a peak of 5 in 2000, city data shows. The cop-to-resident ratio was 4.12 per 1,000 civilians in 2021.
— Additional reporting by Haley Brown, Matthew Fischetti and Larry Celona