(Bloomberg) -- When Eric Adams ran for New York City mayor, he made a campaign promise to cut police overtime spending by half. Instead, the NYPD's budget for extra hours is on pace to soar 73% above what was allotted, according to the city's Independent Budget Office.
The NYPD is projected to spend more than $750 million on overtime for fiscal 2022, which ends on June 30. Adams has been in office for only four months, but he's not showing any signs of holding down the spending. He proposed upping the department's overtime allocation by 4% to $452.6 million and increasing the overall police budget by 3.7% to $5.6 billion, in his executive budget for fiscal 2023.
Adams has said he wants to cut costs through efficiency. He has also criticized excessive overtime, which drives up the city's pension obligations and can create a flawed incentive structure that leads to petty arrests among low-income residents and people of color.
However, his spending plans don't appear to reflect those priorities.
The NYPD appears poised for its second-highest overtime mark since at least 2016, which is as far back as the data go, according to the IBO, a nonpartisan watchdog. The figures provided by the IBO pertain to uniformed and civilian overtime at the NYPD.
Neither Adams's office nor the police department immediately responded to a request for comment.
When asked about increases in the police budget this week, he said “this is not spending, this is investing.” He said overtime remained a concern and that he planned to take a “deep dive” into the issue. “I always stated that our police department is not properly deployed,” he said.
Last year, Bloomberg CityLab found that officers regularly log hundreds of overtime hours with little correlation to public safety. In fiscal 2020, 14,430 NYPD officers worked more than 400 hours of overtime—akin to extending a calendar year of work into March, according to an analysis of 31,221 uniformed officers. More than 16,000 took home over $100,000 in salary and overtime, while nearly 1,400 notched enough hours to take home a full year of additional pay. The police force consistently overshoots both its overtime and overall budget.
Read more: NYC Cops Exploited Overtime Pay As Violent Crime Rose
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