Feliz presses Tisch on why $1B overtime persists

Yeah, and that is my next question.

Why are we still spending a billion dollars in overtime?

I mean, you know, I know all of you continue to mention that the previous administration, there was an anything-goes system.

There were significant changes.

Yeah, there was.

If I could just finish.

And there were also about 4,000 new police officers added last year, which exceeded attrition rates.

So I'm just curious, why are we still in the ballpark of $1 billion?

This is something that we don't see with any other agency.

Yeah, so the officers that were added last year, the reason we hired 4,000 of them is because 20 years ago,

we had hired a huge number of officers.

So we hired over 4,000 officers last year to make sure that we kept up with attrition.

In fact, we beat attrition by a few hundred officers, which was a minor miracle.

But I don't want to give the impression that we ended the year

up 4,000 officers.

We ended the year up several hundred officers, which is the first time we'd ended the year up for many years.

At the same time, it is the case that before,

I got here.

The department did not manage overtime in any meaningful way.

And it, to me, looked like when I showed up an anything goes system.

And the executive team here under the first step and the deputy commissioner of management and budgets leadership have put in, I think, a very responsible

overtime plan that has delivered meaningful results, a 10% decline in overtime in fiscal year 26 and a 12.4%.

Decline in overtime in calendar year 25 and we will continue to do that.

As to the question about why overtime is required, I think we need not look farther than what's going on this summer and the previous questions you just asked.

Are we going to be able to have all of these watch parties?

Are New Yorkers going to be able to celebrate?

And the answer is like, yeah, we're going to do a lot of celebrating, but that celebrating needs to be safe.

And in order for it to be safe, we need to make sure that we have officers there and that we've thought through all of the security.

requirements.

So for things, for example, like special events, that requires overtime.

For protests, things that are like unexpected, that requires overtime.

Sometimes, for example, like if we're seeing a gang war,

in the floor.

And we say, oh, the officers on Saturday night, they usually end at, I'm making this up, at 1 in the morning or midnight, and we want them to stay on post until 2 in the morning because we want to make sure that we curb the gun violence.

Those are examples of things that we would use overtime for.

Right, absolutely.

And yes, this is, as we know, this is, is and will always be a very busy city.

New York City will always have large-scale events, also sports events, parades, and et cetera.

But I think the big, and of course, we need and appreciate the police presence at these events to make sure that people are safe.