The NYPD swore in 1,000 new recruits on Wednesday, bolstering its ranks after a year of heavy attrition rate — but the city’s biggest police union says the department is still not doing enough to stem the tidal wave of retirements within the current rank-and-file this year.
The latest crop of recruits that Police Commissioner Jessica Tisch installed at the Police Academy in College Point on Dec. 17 will officially become officers within about six months. Including the new crop, the NYPD has hired 4,000 officers this year — the highest number on record, according to the department.
“That kind of growth does not happen by chance. It happens when a profession earns the confidence of the city it serves, and when people see this work as something worth stepping forward for. That matters because there are people who would have you believe policing is a profession in retreat. Let me be clear: that narrative is wrong,” Tisch said.
The NYPD says the 4,000 new officers it has hired in 2025 have the department outpacing its attrition rate by 800. The attrition rate calculates the number of officers hired against the number of officers who have left the department.
Yet over the past year, some 3,415 cops have quit or filed for retirement from the NYPD, according to the Police Benevolent Association, which represents the rank-and-file officers New Yorkers see on the streets every day. By its calculations, the PBA argues that the NYPD is short of its attrition rate by 500 cops. The union did not include in its math the 1,000 recruits brought into the NYPD Academy, as the NYPD had factored.
The NYPD’s headcount became big news in the summer amid the 2025 mayoral campaign. In August, amNewYork reported that the NYPD was seeing an average of about 300 cops call it quits per month. At the time, anonymous whistleblowers stated that overbearing workloads, forced overtime, a lack of personal life, and poor incentives to stay all contributed to the departure of cops from the NYPD and to other jurisdictions.
“If there were three of us on this interview right now and we’re standing on a police footpost together, each of us would be responsible for 395 people on average. I always make the joke that I have a hard time controlling my two kids, but you want me to be able to control 395 people?” said one cop, who gave his name as John asked earlier this year. “We’re on one, maybe two or three hours of sleep sometimes, and then they expect you not to make mistakes. Nobody wants to be in that situation.”
Throughout the year, the NYPD, Tisch and Mayor Eric Adams had taken numerous actions to add more cops to the rank-and-file, including reducing the number of college credits an applicant needed to be eligible to enlist. Changing that qualification alone made some 5,000 candidates on the NYPD’s application wait list eligible.
The NYPD also boosted its own academy program to award 69 college credits to any new graduate — giving new officers the equivalent of an associate’s degree.
Following amNewYork’s reporting, the pace of officer retirements seemed to slow, according to data provided by the PBA. September saw 180 retirement or resignation applications, followed by 246 in October and 161 in November.
Even with the slower pace, the PBA warns that if attrition continues at such a level, the NYPD will lose more than 1,700 members by the time Wednesday’s new recruits graduate from the academy in six months.
“There was a time when recruits entered the Academy planning to wear our uniform for their entire career. Today, too many of our finest recruits are viewing the NYPD as a stepping-stone to a better law enforcement job, one with a more manageable workload, less demonization and better pay. In addition to getting recruits in the door, our city leaders need to work with us to keep them on the job,” PBA president Patrick Hendry said.
Tisch maintains ‘we’re outpacing attrition’
But the NYPD pushed back on the PBA’s headcount warning.
An NYPD spokesperson told amNewYork that the current NYPD headcount has reached 34,727, the highest since May 2022. The spokesperson also stated that the number of retirements in 2025 was expected due to the number of people who reached their 20-year mark after coming on the job in 2005.
As of Dec. 17, the department maintains that the total headcount is just under 200 officers below what it is authorized to have, which is about 35,000 officers.
Tisch suggested that the high number of retirements experienced this year “were exactly what we projected,” and that the department is moving in a positive direction regarding its total roster.
“This year, the NYPD did not experience an unexpected or extreme wave of departures. Retirements were exactly what we projected based on the 3,700 officers hired in 2005. More importantly, the number of people leaving before 20 years on the job is down more than 40% since 2022. In fact, this year, we’re outpacing attrition by more than 800 officers,” Commissioner Tisch stated. “For several years, the NYPD faced staffing challenges that placed real strain on our ability to meet the city’s needs. From the day I took this job, I made it clear our goal was to rebuild our headcount.”
Days before the mayoral election, outgoing Mayor Eric Adams announced that the city had budgeted funding for the NYPD to hire 5,000 more officers through the 2029 fiscal year. That, he said, would bring the total NYPD headcount by that point to about 40,000.
Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani, however, has committed to maintaining the NYPD headcount as it is, and has pledged to create a Department of Community Safety that would shift some duties away from NYPD officers, especially in responding to mental health concerns. That, the new mayor argued, would help lighten the load for cops and allow them to concentrate more on crime-fighting.
