Cops did a good job this year reducing crime in New York City.
Too good.
So, instead of keeping the pressure on and reducing the crime rate even further, the department has decided to scale down its attack by cutting back on one of its most useful weapons – overtime.
Sources said it’s all about the numbers.
“We don’t want to lower it too much, because we’re going to have to compete with it next year,” one police source said about the city’s crime rate. “It will put more pressure on everybody, from chiefs to cops.”
After a banner year that saw the overall crime rate drop 6.7 percent and the murder rate plunge 17.2 percent, department officials instituted a new edict:
Don’t quit while you’re ahead. Just cut back.
According to department sources, the NYPD last week reduced overtime for warrants and narcotics.
Cops in narcotics were limited to 60 hours of OT each month, a cap that was put in place in March after the city’s crime numbers went down.
But the cap was lowered to 45 hours as the crime stats continued to improve. Cops in the warrants division will be limited to 35 hours a month for the rest of the year.
Sources said the overtime reductions would allow the department to save some money and stay ahead of last year’s crime-reduction pace.
As of Oct. 21, there were more than 95,000 total crimes committed in the five boroughs, about 7,000 fewer than during the same time the year before.
There were 385 murders committed in 2007 between January and October, 80 fewer than that period the year before.
Cops began the year with no cap at all, a strategy aimed at encouraging officers to make more busts.
On Jan. 1, the NYPD decided to eliminate the limit on OT – then 45 hours a month – in response to a 10 percent spike in murders in 2006.
The department restored the cap in March, raising the limit by 15 hours.
In August, the department’s new patrol chief, Robert Giannelli, issued a directive mandating that special overtime money earmarked for cops in violence-prone precincts be given to “aggressive” officers rather than “do-nothing” cops.
Giannelli said officers should get paid extra for what they actually accomplish, not for the time they put in.
He said the system should reward cops who use their overtime shifts to make arrests in higher-profile crimes like gun possession and shootings.