New NYPD Officers a Win for City Council, but Some Have Further Requests

New York City Council Speaker Melissa Mark-Viverito and her colleagues were quick to declare victory when Mayor Bill de Blasio agreed to hire nearly 300 more police officers than the 1,000 included in their initial budget request. City Councilwoman Elizabeth Crowley called it the most significant hire she’s seen in her tenure; City Council Majority Leader Jimmy Van Bramer listed it as one plank of a budget offering “a tremendous amount of good news”; and City Councilman James Vacca described it as a step that would fulfill government’s most basic duty: ensuring citizens’ safety.

Yet even while praising the police hires, some City Council members sought more. Vacca said he asked the narcotics division about its staffing levels Tuesday and felt his district may merit more attention since its narcotics team merged with another district’s five years ago. 

“The mayor has committed to Vision Zero. He had a commissioner who indicated that he needed more manpower because of ISIS concerns. And both the Council and the mayor are committed to community policing,” said Vacca, who was part of the Council’s budget negotiating team. “You have to say, ‘These are my objectives. How do I meet them?’ I don’t think we had any alternative to increasing manpower. I still think we have a ways to go.”

Councilman David Greenfield, also a budget negotiating team member, said he would have liked to see the administration agree to fund a proposal that would send NYPD security agents to any private school that requested them. Amidst a push by Jewish and Catholic schools, the councilman has secured support from 45 colleagues for a bill he argues would increase private school pupils’ safety. 

“Certainly, it would have been easier and preferable to wrap it up in the budget, but moving this into the legislative stage, I think we’re going to get this done,” Greenfield said.

And Crowley, who chairs the Committee on Fire and Criminal Justice, said she was unsure what the hires might mean for her bid to move the Department of Correction into the NYPD’s old training facility located in Gramercy Park. Crowley said she has been eyeing the location ever since a new, $1 billion police academy recently opened in College Point, but more incoming cops could mean correction officers continue to train at a mall in her Queens district. 

“I think that, now, in light of them expanding to hire so many more police officers, they’re not going to give it up,” Crowley said, noting that she believes there may be some capital funding allocated for the Department of Correction, but is not confident there would be a plan for a new training facility. “They use some space in the mall. There’s no real gym. And the classrooms are substandard … There has to be a lot of training and retraining to meet the reforms needed for the department.”

Sources said budget documents were expected to be printed Wednesday afternoon, permitted to age for a day and voted on Thursday—or Friday at the latest. De Blasio initially sought to announce a budget deal June 18, but was unable to reach agreements with the Council until this week, sources said.