Citing new data it obtained, The New York Post reports 2,516 cops have turned in their badge this year in what is the nation’s biggest police force in the largest U.S. city. That is 7% of a police force that was already reeling from race riots that led to hundreds of officers leaving the force since 2020.
New York’s cops have also learned Mayor Eric Adams plans to slash the police department budget and whittle police officer numbers to levels not seen since the 1990s, the Post said.
Law enforcement advocate Randy Sutton, of The Wounded Blue, tells AFN he was alarmed to learn the Big Apple could lose 20% of its force by 2025.
“They are feeling frustrated,” he says, “because they're being rendered ineffective by the policies and the laws being put into place by the state legislature, by the city government, and by the governor.”
One of the dumbest decisions by Mayor Adams, Sutton says, is to cancel future Police Academy classes – five in all – as part of planned budget cuts.
“By canceling the next five police academies,” he predicts, “this is going to create a generational criminal justice crisis.”
Hizzoner’s planned budget cuts likely feel like a stab in the back to the NYPD considering Adams was a veteran NYPD officer before he entered politics.
Frustrated by crime, high taxes, and draconian pandemic lockdowns, New York City has lost an estimated 5% of its population from 2020 to 2022, which is approximately a half-million New Yorkers.
Another statistic cited by the Post is 150-plus Wall Street firms have moved their headquarters out of New York City. The story from August, which cited a Bloomberg survey, said the corporations have taken nearly $1 trillion in assets with them.
It might take a few years to witness what comes next, Sutton says, but famous New York City is collapsing right in front of our eyes.
“As this collapse continues,” he predicts, “you're going to see the city degenerate, more and more people fleeing, more and more businesses closing, and then, of course, that economic crisis then exacerbates the issues that the city is facing.”
