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Q&A
Council Member Salaam questions Commissioner Tisch on NYPD recruitment and staffing
0:48:53
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3 min
Council Member Yusef Salaam engages in a Q&A session with NYPD Commissioner Jessica Tisch, focusing on recruitment initiatives and precinct staffing levels. Tisch outlines recent changes to recruitment requirements and efforts to increase patrol officers.
- NYPD reduced college credit requirements for new recruits from 60 to 24 credits
- Over 1,000 officers have been reassigned from desk jobs to precincts
- Tisch emphasizes prioritizing patrol, transit, and housing commands for staffing
Yusef Salaam
0:48:53
And on recruitment, we heard in your opening statement about some of the initiatives that you have taken to increase NYPD's recruitment.
0:49:01
Can you talk more about those initiatives and any new ones since our hearing in March?
Jessica Tisch
0:49:06
Yes, a few things.
0:49:08
The first thing that we did is we looked at the eligibility requirements.
0:49:14
What requirements we put on candidates looking to become police officers.
0:49:19
And a place where we had a real glaring opportunity to improve was on the college credits.
0:49:26
So historically at the department we have required 60 college credits to enter into the academy.
0:49:34
After a lot of thought we reduced that number down to 24 college credits.
0:49:41
At the same time our academy has been accredited for more credits than previously.
0:49:48
So people completing the academy, if they have less than 60 college credits they won't end up with the same amount of credits they otherwise would have had but they will end up with a significant amount of credits at the end of their time at the academy.
0:50:06
In addition to that we have also been working with our fraternal organizations, our NYPD associations.
0:50:15
We have many, many, many of them and they know their communities the best.
0:50:20
They have been working in partnership with our personnel bureau on a massive recruitment effort, meeting people where they are in their communities, in their schools, in their houses of worship.
0:50:36
And that has been quite successful in terms of driving up the number of filers applicants we have to the department over the past several months.
Yusef Salaam
0:50:50
I've heard from captains in my district as I'm sure many of our colleagues have that they need additional officers for their precincts.
0:50:59
Can you talk about the staffing levels of the precincts and how officers are assigned and deployed throughout the city?
Jessica Tisch
0:51:06
Yes.
0:51:07
I am very I agree with them.
0:51:10
We need more cops in our precincts.
0:51:13
I am also proud to tell you that as we sit right now we have more cops on patrol today than we did a year ago.
0:51:24
And that is because we have reassigned over 1,000 officers previously working desk jobs into precincts.
0:51:36
And as we've discussed at this hearing, we are also looking to hire more and more as many officers as possible because we need cops in our patrol commands.
0:51:49
You know, my approach to staffing at the NYPD is patrol transit housing operational commands first.
0:51:59
Everything else is a luxury.
0:52:01
But unless and until those commands and those positions are fully staffed, we can't see bloat in other parts of the department.
0:52:11
And so the way we've gotten more cops onto patrol is one, by upping our hiring, but two, reprioritizing those numbered commands as we call them.