Williams questions NYPD on racial equity plan hiring goals
Williams asks about NYPD's racial equity plan goal to enhance hiring by removing barriers, and what funding supports this work. Staff explain a hiring panel of experts is convening over 100 days, with no specific funding allocated for the study.
Just turning questions to the racial equity plans that you put forward.
I've been asking all city agencies about their racial equity plans, especially during budget hearings, because we hope that budget allocations are being appropriated to fulfill some of the goals.
So one of the goals of the NYPD is to enhance the hiring process by removing unnecessary barriers, bringing greater transparency to decisions, and ensuring qualified candidates are not excluded by the system.
This is listed as a short-term goal to be completed by 2026.
Has the department done a review in the past of the hiring process?
What was the outcome of this review?
And is any funding in this budget going towards recruitment and hiring?
So there have been many reviews of the hiring process, but not one that particularly looks at equity.
So the hiring panel is convening over a period of about 100 days.
It met earlier last month in the initial meeting.
It's a collection of experts, academic experts, community members, really across the board to give us their best thoughts on how to improve that process.
So we had our initial kickoff.
We should have our next meeting, I think, in just a couple of weeks.
And then we'll have a final meeting at the end, and those are what the recommendations will come out of.
There's no funding allocated just for the study.
That's just being done with in-house staff.
And just to answer the last part of the question, a lot of the success that we have had in hiring over the past year and a half has been
driven by our fraternal organizations.
So those fraternal organizations going out into their communities, educating people about the work of police officers.
We, a year ago at this time,
We couldn't find enough candidates to take the job.
You know, we had an actual, our actual headcount was well below the budgeted headcount.
And I give the work of those fraternal organizations a lot of credit for the work that they have done getting people interested in the job.
Thank you.