Eric Adams’ plan to cut the NYPD budget and reduce the force is a betrayal and a disaster for New York City.
Two years ago, we enthusiastically endorsed and supported Eric Adams for mayor because he stood out as the city’s best hope for getting serious about fighting crime.
He simply cast doubt on this by announcing that he plans to cancel the next five Police Academy classes, a projected “plan” to reduce the ranks of the NYPD to 29,000 officers by the end of fiscal year 2025.
This returns to pre-Giuliani levels, and will inevitably lead to pre-Giuliani levels. public securityalso.
(Yes, today’s NYPD is much more professional and the commanders are much smarter, but a series of laws passed in recent years limit the effectiveness of the force and each member of it.)
And, in reality, the force would be reduced. further than the projected 4,500: making the job harder for everyone (which ensures less available support) guarantees a faster rate of retirements and resignations.
The strengths quality It could also plummet, as agents rush to look for work elsewhere and other places poach New York’s best.
Nor would it bring the promised savings: overtime have increase, since any crisis would mean calling in police from a smaller base.
Furthermore, as Adams himself said while running for mayor, “the prerequisite for prosperity is public safety.”
and a further dangerous city is a less prosperous: Adams is giving every business another reason to flee or simply close, and potential new businesses a big reason to open elsewhere; property values will also decrease: this decimate the tax base.
What is the mayor thinking? That cutting the NYPD is politically easier?
In the short term, that’s probably true: The majority of the City Council doesn’t like cops, and police unions have little power in Albany or city politics.
This is in stark contrast to the teachers union (and other special educational interests), which has enormous power, so even though the city spent $38,000 per public school student (well over double the national average) to get results terrible, the Legislature imposed a “class size” law unique to New York City to force the Department of Education to hire even more teachers, although declining enrollment.
(Yes, the influx of illegal immigrants caused DOE enrollment to increase a little this year, but that won’t reverse the long-term trend.)
Perhaps the mayor is also thinking that the prospect of an implosion of the NYPD somehow getting the city more money by making steep tax increases politically possible, for example, or by prompting Albany or even Washington to send more aid.
But every other level of government faces its own fiscal crisis, while tax increases in an already overburdened city will lead to a decline as surely as a collapse of public safety.
No, no, no: this madness must not continue.
Look and make your cuts elsewhere, Mr. Mayor.
the city spends thousands of millions about social services that literally no other local government in America provides: eliminate some of them.
And look hard at the United Federation of Teachers: it may have the force for now they will be considered harmless from a budgetary point of view, but members of the UFT work in the city and cannot want to return to the crime levels of the 1980s.
Also recognize that the voters I won’t accept this.
Your anger at rising crime put you in office; If you sell them on that issue now, they will never pull the lever for you again.
