The New York City Police Department continues to see a massive wave of retirements and departures, shrinking the force to its smallest in decades, according to the New York Post.
There have already been 2,516 departures from the NYPD this year and recruitment is so slow, and New York City Mayor Eric Adams' budget cuts are so deep, the next five police academy classes have been canceled, according to the report.
The 2023 exodus is the fourth highest total thus far in the past decade and represents a 43% increase over the 2018 total, which is before massive crime influx under Democrat policing reforms kicked in.
Cops are even getting out before the 20-year full pension date as 1,040 have left early this year, a 104% increase over the pandemic-hit 2020 total of 509, according to NYPD pension data obtained by the Post.
The exodus comes amid officers being overworked due to staffing shortages, as they are being asked to work "inhumane amounts of forced overtime," according to Police Benevolent Association President Patrick Hendry.
"The workload is a leading factor driving people away from the job," the union boss told the Post. "If the NYPD is going to survive these staffing reductions, it cannot just keep squeezing cops for more hours."
After 20 years with the NYPD, officers can collect the full pension that amounts to 50% of their final average salary, according to the Post.
"I keep in contact with the guys that I was in the police academy with, and we all have the same notion," one officer from the 2004 class of 2,400 told the Post. "I think maybe 95% of us are planning on leaving."
The return of political protests that roiled New York City in 2020 are forcing outstretched staffing to be even more problematic.
"We've been working an average of about 13 to 14 hours a day with a lot of the protests happening in the city," an officer told the Post. "Enough is enough. I'll have maybe one day off for the week, and I'm so tired from work I don't want to do anything."
Even the younger officers are tired of the grind, with a 28-year-old telling the Post that "the job is unbearable now," adding that he is "looking to leave sooner than later."
Like disenchanted New Yorkers fleeing to Florida, police officers are doing the same.
"The cops who left can't believe they ever worked there [NYPD]," Spero Georgedakis, 53, a former Miami SWAT team officer who recruits officers for South Florida.
Democrats' anti-policing reforms are a large reason, saying NYPD officers are "afraid to make arrests" and when the do retain someone the soft-on-crime policies have them thinking, What's the point?" Georgedakis told the Post, because they say they are "shoveling sh*t against the tide."
Eric Mack ✉
Eric Mack has been a writer and editor at Newsmax since 2016. He is a 1998 Syracuse University journalism graduate and a New York Press Association award-winning writer.
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