Mayor Adams has ordered Police Commissioner Jessica Tisch to “go desk by desk” and find ways to move cops in units not directly involved in law enforcement back to patrol on the streets, noting that cops are “masters at hiding out somewhere.”
Adams, speaking Monday evening at a town hall on the Upper West Side where residents voiced concern about rising crime in the neighborhood, said, “Everyone’s gotta get back on patrol.”
“[Tisch] is going to do an analysis of all of these units,” the mayor said at the Goddard Riverside Community Center on Columbus Ave. “Cops are masters — as good as they are at fighting crime — they are masters at hiding out somewhere. We gotta find them, go desk by desk, unit by unit, and say, What are you doing?”
The remark drew a quick rebuke from Patrick Hendry, president of the Police Benevolent Association, the union that represent police officers.
“Cops aren’t ‘hiding out’ — they are burned out. We’re almost 7,000 police officers short of our peak staffing,” Hendry said. “We’re losing more than 230 cops a month, and hiring is not keeping up with attrition.”
Hendry added, “Shuffling cops’ assignments or squeezing them for even more mandatory overtime is only going to drive more away. The city should be investing in attracting and retaining the finest police officers, not blaming them for the staffing problems management created.”
The mayor added that officers who are assigned “inside,” or to an administrative unit, should be prepared to go out on patrol two days a week. He also suggested that some units, like the NYPD Barrier Section, should be put back on the street.
The barrier unit puts up metal and wood barriers and other crowd control equipment ahead of protests, parades or other large public gatherings and is largely made up of cops on desk duty facing potential disciplinary action. It was not clear if the mayor intended to put cops with open disciplinary cases back on the street or if he meant the unit should be civilianized.
Adams said he wanted “all hands on deck.”
“You have a gun, a shield, you’re not dealing with a medical issue, you need to get back on patrol,” he said. “Everyone needs to get back on patrol so we don’t have shortages of police personnel.”
City Councilwoman Gale Brewer, a Democrat who represents the Upper West Side, said that while she doesn’t agree with the idea that cops are hiding out, she agrees more need to be on the streets.
“You have to look at every job a cop is doing and find out why there are doing it because there’s usually a reason,” Brewer said. “Every position has to be looked at carefully.”
The mayor’s remarks took a different tone from statements police brass made before the City Council in March, when they insisted the only way to address a staffing shortage was through overtime. Overtime last year exceeded $1 billion.
“Our biggest challenge with reducing overtime is the unforeseen and unknown,” Chief of Department Jeffrey Maddrey said in March.
The department often pulls cops out of patrol to special units like the community response team, a special initiative backed by Chief of Patrol John Chell to target illegal motorists, and the drone unit, created on Sept. 18 and staffed with 26 officers pulled from patrol. Officers in patrol commands are also constantly being temporarily assigned to fill gaps outside their commands.
Kayla Mamelak, the mayor’s spokeswoman, said Tuesday that “Mayor Adams has been clear that every New Yorker deserves to live in a neighborhood where they are not only safe, but feel safe, too. That is why, earlier this month, we announced ‘Every Block Counts,’ a data-driven, multiagency initiative that focuses on blocks that have historically experienced high levels of shooting incidents, crime, and quality-of-life issues.
“The mayor also believes that every police officer counts, which is why we are always working to find ways to best utilize our officers and continue driving down crime across our city.”
On Dec. 9, Tisch sent out an order attempting to end the practice of so-called “telephone message transfers,” where cops are reassigned outside of normal procedures. The memo said an internal audit determined that more than 500 officers were improperly transferred from their commands of record without documentation, a copy of the order shows.
The order directed those cops to revert to their command of record by last Friday.
“This practice has always been unauthorized and results in the department’s inability to appropriately account for staffing and ensure sufficient manpower for operational matters,” Tisch’s directive said. “It also contributes to slower response times to critical incidents.”
In September, the Mayor’s Management Report stated police response times to crimes in progress calls rose to more than 15 minutes, four minutes longer than in 2020 and the longest in decades.
On Nov. 16, The News reported that a significant number of the department’s top overtime earners, defined as those earning well over 1,000 hours of overtime in fiscal 2024, were assigned to administrative, nonenforcement posts, including 13 officers in the police commissioner’s office.
The News reported that Quathisha Epps, a lieutenant special assignment who works in Maddrey’s office, made $406,515 in fiscal 2024, fueled in part by 1,626 claimed hours of overtime worth $204,453, according to city payroll records.
The NYPD’s press office did not immediately reply to requests for further comment on the mayor’s remarks.
Originally Published: December 17, 2024 at 2:48 PM EST