Earlier this year, NYPD Commissioner Jessica Tisch frankly admitted to city political and business leaders that the department faced a crisis by losing so many experienced officers through retirements and resignations.
The difference several months and a renewed push for new police officers can make was on display Wednesday as a smiling Tisch swore in nearly 1,100 recruits at the police academy in College Point, Queens. It's the largest class in close to 10 years and proof, Tisch said, of the NYPD's resurgence and resilience after a yearslong wave of police leaving the department.
"Today is a defining moment for the New York City Police Department and New York City," Tisch said in her address to the new recruits, who will be undergoing six months of training before hitting the streets.
Tisch added: "Together, with the class we welcomed in January, this year marks the most recruits hired in nearly 19 years, 2,911."
With an additional academy class still to be sworn in, Tisch estimated that total hires in 2025 will total more than 3,900, the most since 1984.
Police union officials applauded the new hires and said the NYPD recruits, once they don their blue uniforms, will help relieve what is a severely strained force.
"These new recruits are a welcome relief for our overworked and burned-out members on the streets," said Police Benevolent Association president Patrick Hendry in a prepared statement.
"But the real question is: will they stick around? Every New York City police officer knows they can find a less punishing workload, a better quality of life and competitive compensation in virtually any other police department in our area," Hendry continued, noting how other departments have siphoned off NYPD officers.
Tisch said the new recruits were the result of a determined push to overcome the hiring crisis and she credited Mayor Eric Adams for being a spark plug behind the effort.
With the new hires, the NYPD force, according to union officials will be at just under 35,000 officers, still below the nearly 36,000 in 2020 and far lower than the 40,000 at the time of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. With monthly attrition, the department continues to tread water in terms of its head count.
In a nod to the changing ethnic and racial composition of the NYPD, Tisch noted that 25% of the new academy class was born outside the United States, coming from 51 countries. Almost 70% are city residents, according to the police commissioner.
The diverse ethnic composition of the department was a theme Tisch echoed as she brought up the death of Det. Didarul Islam, of Bangladeshi descent, who was slain in a July mass shooting while working an off-duty security detail in a Manhattan office high rise. Islam’s wife over the weekend gave birth to a baby boy, Arham, the couple’s third child.
"Four years ago he sat in the same seats you sit in now," Tisch said of Islam. "His sacrifice reminds us that the dangers of this profession are real. But it also reminds us of its nobility. And from this day forward, his legacy is now yours to uphold, to protect."
The new academy class will go through a six month training regime before being assigned to commands and begin patrolling the streets.
"You will be the difference between despair and hope," Tisch told the recruits.