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Council Member Paladino discusses NYPD staffing and legislative support
2:14:22
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3 min
Council Member Vickie Paladino expresses support for the NYPD and discusses the challenges faced by the department, including staffing shortages and the impact of certain laws on police work. She emphasizes the need for the City Council to work collaboratively with the NYPD to improve public safety.
- Paladino highlights the current NYPD staffing levels (around 32,000-33,000 officers) and potential upcoming retirements.
- She criticizes the decriminalization of certain offenses and argues for laws that would help police do their jobs more effectively.
- Paladino strongly advocates for public safety spending, calling it "the best spent taxpayer dollar."
Vickie Paladino
2:14:22
Thank you, chair.
2:14:24
First, I'd like to start off by saying thank you very much to you, commissioner, and for your extremely detailed and well laid out plan that you put before us today.
2:14:37
You know, I wanna go to a paragraph, if I may, and I'd like to reiterate what you said because I agree with it a %.
2:14:47
We need to have a candid dialogue, not in anger, but in honesty, about the effect that various laws on this department's work and on public safety.
2:15:00
As you know, the council has before a a bill that would ban the department's criminal database.
2:15:09
That database is critical to improve the intelligence tool and to help the NYPD save lives.
2:15:18
If you wanna work with us to improve the department, then by all means, we have to work together, which brings me to my thoughts about what we could do to help you as a legislative body.
2:15:32
As you outlined when you spoke before and I took some notes, you know, the responsibility of the condition that our city and our state is in does indeed lie upon the elected officials.
2:15:46
So while we could sit here and wonder why all we like about certain things is because we decriminalized a great number of things.
2:15:56
We have handcuffed you.
2:15:58
We also know that the overtime that your cops are putting in is indeed necessary because we have cut your service your your members down to how many now?
2:16:08
How many actual police officers in the New York City department?
Jessica Tisch
2:16:13
On the streets right now, it's approximately 33,000.
2:16:16
That doesn't include who we're training in our academy.
Vickie Paladino
2:16:18
Correct.
2:16:19
So I have 32 here.
2:16:20
Right.
2:16:21
So you got 32,000 cops right now.
2:16:23
We're gonna lose how many at the end of the year quite possibly to retirement?
Jessica Tisch
2:16:29
It's a few thousand.
2:16:30
I just went through the numbers.
2:16:31
It was up
Vickie Paladino
2:16:32
to Right.
2:16:32
Don't don't knock yourself out.
2:16:34
I know.
2:16:34
It was 5,000
Jessica Tisch
2:16:35
some that are eligible.
Vickie Paladino
2:16:36
Correct.
2:16:37
Absolutely.
2:16:37
So what we're trying to do now is we're trying to balance the scale here between the retirements that are gonna happen.
2:16:45
We're at 32,000 and we're trying to recruit.
2:16:49
So we gotta try to recruit what we're gonna lose, or we're gonna be down around 28,000 cops.
2:16:57
So we're in a pickle here, and we gotta try to make this worth anybody's lives because that's what they do in order to they risk their lives to become a police officer.
2:17:08
So all I could say is when we wanna do something here in this body and make ourselves useful, we need to come together and figure things out where things start to make sense.
2:17:19
Am I right?
2:17:22
Yes.
2:17:23
Okay.
2:17:24
And, the no.
2:17:26
No.
2:17:26
Because we're not doing that.
2:17:28
What we do is we yell and we scream.
2:17:30
And then we talk about, you know, how much money is being sent spent.
2:17:35
Well, let me tell you something.
2:17:37
This is the best spent taxpayer dollar anybody could ever do because public safety without it, we have nothing.
2:17:46
And that's where our city is at right now.
2:17:49
All the wondering why's and how comes doesn't matter much, does it, if we cannot allow our officers to do their jobs.
Jessica Tisch
2:17:58
New York City needs our New York City Police Officers.
Vickie Paladino
2:18:01
That is correct.
2:18:02
And we need as a body here to work together to try to put together laws that help you to do your jobs better.
2:18:08
Correct?
2:18:08
Indeed.
2:18:09
Thank you.
Nora Daniel
2:18:12
Thank you.