The New York City Police Department has exceeded its overtime budget by almost $100 million and it is on pace to break a 10-year high for spending on extra hours for officers.
Before taking office, Mayor Eric Adams pledged to reduce the NYPD’s overtime spending by half in his first year by deploying officers more efficiently and reducing the number on duty at parades and other events.
Yet, the NYPD has spent $472 million on officer overtime through February, exceeding its budget by $98 million, according to a report from New York City Comptroller Brad Lander. The final tally will be much higher because the fiscal year ends June 30. Lander’s office said the department is on pace to spend $740 million, which would be the most in a decade.
“If New York City had unlimited cash, it would be lovely to allow teachers unlimited overtime to stay afterschool to help every kid learn to read, or social workers unlimited shifts to help counsel New Yorkers struggling with mental illness,” Lander said in a statement. “But other agencies aren’t allowed to show total disregard for their overtime budget, and we can’t afford for the NYPD to do so year after year.”
Neither Adams’s office nor the NYPD immediately responded to a request for comment on the report.
While he pledged to cut overtime spending, Adams has deployed thousands of additional officers into the city’s subway system as part of a safety initiative that is buttressed by additional hours from officers and the increased use of stop-and-frisk. More overtime doesn’t necessarily correspond with a decrease in crime. Instead it can provide a financial incentive for officers to initiate arrests and begin investigations at the end of their shifts.
The overtime budget overage comes as Adams seeks to cut city spending. His preliminary budget calls for frugality amid an uncertain economic picture, reducing spending by $4 billion compared with the current year’s projected spending. His preliminary proposal includes cuts to the city’s library system, schools and the elimination of thousands of vacant city positions.
When discussing the proposed cuts and his approach to spending, Adams said “as mayor the buck stops with me.”
The comptroller’s findings came from a broader look at the city’s spending on additional work hours. According to the new report, the city consistently sets its budget for overtime too low, meaning it has to find money to cover the costs of its overspending.
Lander’s report confirms Bloomberg reporting that showed NYPD officers work hundreds of hours of overtime with little correlation to public safety. Some officers record enough overtime to take home an additional full year of pay. That extra spending means that the NYPD has gone over its budget every year for the past two decades.
“NYPD overtime has grown without any regard for what’s in the budget agreed to by the Mayor and the City Council — and with no accountability for overspending each year by hundreds of millions of dollars,” Lander said.
©2023 Bloomberg L.P.
