What cost city taxpayers $1.4 million in just three months and stinks to high heaven?
The How Many Stops Act’s 18,000 hours of make-work NYPD overtime, of course — exactly as we warned.
“Overtime costs will rise,” we wrote in January, repeatedly predicting that the law would “mean higher police overtime costs and lower morale for the already besieged rank-and-file.”
The inane statute, passed early this year over the mayor’s veto but only kicking in July 1, requires cops to file detailed reports on even the briefest encounters with civilians.
We’re still awaiting hard data on how many hours of actual policing it has cost, let alone the impact on morale (though early retirements remain elevated).
But NYPD Chief of Department Jeffrey Maddrey this week shared the 18,000 hours of OT info with the council’s Public Safety Committee.
He also noted that 98% of the paperwork involves Level 1 encounters (over 562,000), including when he asked an exhausted runner at this year’s Marathon if he needed help.
Department sources tell The Post that it takes a cop about 30 minutes to an hour to file these reports — even as police-hating critics claim that as many as 30% of police encounters go undocumented while “unconstitutional” stops have increased.
Chief among those critics is Council Speaker Adrienne Adams, who has pilloried the NYPD over concerns that OT would hit $750 million this fiscal year.
“I don’t think any other agency would be able to do this,” groused the head hypocrite.
Fact is, Madame Speaker, no other city agency is handcuffed by the City Council like the NYPD — not even the child-endangering Administration for Children’s Service, which has seen scores of innocent kids dying under its watch.
Has Adams polled her constituents on whether they’d rather their precinct’s police just headed back to the stationhouse an hour earlier every day to get the makework done without earning OT?
Indeed, every councilmember burning to lower overtime costs should speak up and volunteer his or her district for some “de-policing.”
Plus, if the critics claim stops are up anyway, then the law has failed by the standards of its own supporters.
No one thinks it’s working: Speaker Adams & Co. should get going on repeal of How Many Stops, so the NYPD can get back to a full focus on fighting crime.
