Andrew Cuomo plans to hire 5,000 more cops — boosting the number of NYPD officers by 15% — if he’s elected NYC’s next mayor, The Post has learned.
“A larger police presence is a deterrent to crime, improves response rates to 911 calls and gives the police the resources they need to solve crimes,” according to a policy paper his campaign is set to release this week.
Extra cops would also mean the city could beef up security in so-called “urban crime zones,” such as the Eighth Avenue corridor between Penn Station and Times Square and the Roosevelt Avenue corridor in Queens.
And the bump to a force of 39,000 would all but pay for itself by reducing police overtime costs – which soared well over budget to $1 billion last year – and provide a much-needed morale boost for a department plagued by disgruntled cops eyeing early retirement, the former governor said.
“The larger police force would reduce the level of mandatory overtime, which is one of the leading complaints that lead to the very high level of attrition the NYPD is now experiencing,” the paper reads.
Cutting overtime in half would nearly cover the cost of the 5,000 new officers, Cuomo noted.
The NYPD’s current 34,000-member police force is short of the nearly 36,300-officer roster it had five years ago, before both the pandemic and May 25, 2020 police killing of George Floyd that spurred nationwide riots and leftist calls to defund cops — which also contributed to a spike in attrition.
The extra officers would bring the total count to just above levels seen in the early 1990s under ex-Mayor David Dinkins – an era also rocked by racial tumult and rising crime.
The NYPD reached an all-time high of slightly over 40,000 cops in 2000 under then-Mayor Rudy Giuliani, and then saw historic drops in crime over the next decade-plus through ex-Mayor Michael Bloomberg.
“The numbers are startling,” said a Cuomo insider.
“We have less cops on the beat now than we did during the Dinkins era – even though we have 1 million more New Yorkers, and the socialist-oriented City Council cutting $1 billion out of the police budget [in 2000] certainly didn’t help anything.”
“We need to hire more police and retain more police- period – and Andrew Cuomo is poised to announce his plan to get us there and help save this city in crisis.”
Cuomo is looking to unseat embattled Mayor Eric Adams, a fellow Democrat and a retired NYPD captain who made public safety the centerpiece of his successful 2021 campaign.
Citywide crime has gone up under Adams – something he’s blamed on bail reform laws Cuomo signed into law while in office and other lefty policies he inherited.
Major crime is down 15% so far this year.
The governor is considered the frontrunner in a crowded Democratic field that also includes ex-Comptroller Scott Stringer and Comptroller Brad Lander, according to recent polls.
