New York City will reduce the amount of overtime pay that officers in the New York Police Department can receive, despite a staffing shortage, to free up funding for the city's migrant crisis.
Democratic Mayor Eric Adams's budget director, Jacques Jiha, told the city’s police, fire, sanitation, and corrections departments on Saturday to come up with plans to cut their high overtime budgets and begin tracking their progress toward that reduction each month.
CHICAGO LAWMAKER LEADS DEMOCRATIC REBELLION TO BRING IN ICE AND STOP IMMIGRANT SURGE
“The mayor will … issue a directive to implement an overtime reduction initiative for our city’s four uniformed agencies (NYPD, FDNY, DOC/DSNY),” Jiha said in a memo obtained by the New York Post. “These agencies must submit a plan to reduce year-to-year OT spending.”
The city is also issuing a hiring freeze on the four agencies, preventing them from filling the staffing gaps, which police unions claim will make the city less safe because there would be fewer officers on the streets.
“It is going to be impossible for the NYPD to significantly reduce overtime unless it fixes its staffing crisis," Patrick Hendry, head of the Police Benevolent Association, said. “We are still thousands of cops short, and we’re struggling to drive crime back to pre-2020 levels without adequate personnel. If City Hall wants to save money without jeopardizing public safety, it needs to invest in keeping experienced cops on the job.”
The agencies were instructed not to reduce the number of jobs in their forces or create new ones, but they can fill some needed vacancies when necessary.
Adams claimed the migrant crisis, which has seen a flood of more than 100,000 immigrants enter the city since the spring of 2022, will cost the city $12 billion by 2025 and affect every aspect of the city. The state of New York is seeing more than 10,000 immigrants enter its largest city each month but has yet to provide substantial aid to Manhattan.
"We are about to experience a financial tsunami that I don’t think the city has ever experienced," Adams said Sunday. "Every service in this city is going to be impacted, from child service to our seniors to housing. Everything will be impacted."
CLICK HERE TO READ MORE FROM THE WASHINGTON EXAMINER
Adams also called for a budget cut of 5% across all city agencies for the November budget, which could increase to a 15% budget reduction by April.
The mayor's plan additionally includes a cut in services provided to asylum-seekers, though it does not include specifics, and freezes official out-of-town travel except to the state's capital and Washington, D.C. It also bans the purchasing of new equipment.