Hundreds of New York City Police Department veterans are leaving the force, raising concerns that cases and criminals will go unnoticed, the Post reported.
According to NYPD data, 370 detectives will retire in 2023 and 422 detectives have retired so far in 2024, an increase of 14%.
The number of detectives has decreased by 30% from about 7,000 in 2001 to 5,500 this year.
“We're going to lose all of our experienced people,” said Detective Kim Cenizar, 47, who has been with the crime scene unit for 11 years and is retiring in January. “All of our cases are serious and involve bad people who should not be on the streets for one reason or another.”
Ironically, this exodus was facilitated by the benefits of overtime pay.
Mayor Adams flooded the subway with cops as underground crime skyrocketed.
Overtime has increased the average detective's salary from a base salary of about $115,000 to more than $200,000 for OTs.
Because lifetime pensions are determined based on final year's salary, many detectives feel they cannot afford to stay.
But many fear more cases will end up in court because investigators are inexperienced.
The New York City Police Department's solve rate for new murders hovers at just under 50% each year.
“That's a lot of the reason I don't want to leave,” Cenizar said. “But the reasons for leaving outweigh that.”
After 20 years on the job, Bronx homicide detective Robert Klein, 45, has noticed he's working more overtime than ever before.
“There was literally overtime that I could volunteer every weekend, and I took advantage of that,” he said.
The father of four works murder investigations five days a week and spends one day on the weekend donning his blue uniform to police the metro.
“If you delay overtime now, your pension number will start to go down,” he said. “And you know this pension is not just for me. It's for my family, it's for my children. It's an investment and I've spent over 20 years in the police force. Ta.”
Crime on the subways is down 7% this year, but homicides on the subways are up 80%, with nine incidents so far this year, according to NYPD data.
Mayor Adams this week vowed to bring 1,200 new officers to the force. The new personnel could reduce the number of detective OTs, making them even more ripe for retirement.
Klein is also concerned about what liberal police forces will do to the profession in the future.
He cited the Stop Count Act, which requires the age, gender and race of every witness questioned in a case to be tracked so that it can be used as a weapon against police.
“Are you going to continue to legislate against the police?” he asked. “It doesn't seem like we're moving in the direction of good, solid policing.”
Bomb disposal squad member Kevin Canavan worries about the future of his 32-man unit, which has 24 members who have been with the force for more than 20 years.
“If we stand up and leave, the bomb squad will be destroyed,” he said.
The Detective Endowment Association is pushing a bill that would change the pay structure so that detectives' pensions would be paid based on the average of their final three years, union officials said.
“Our most experienced detectives are retiring,” said DEA Director Scott Munro. “We don't have enough people to get the job done, and New York City residents are paying the price as our forces are overwhelmed and understaffed.”
Retired detective Ed Nassar, 45, retired from Ballistic in 2022 along with 508 other detectives, but 2020 is the first time that year has been dwarfed by the number of retirements. More than 800 detectives retired at the beginning of the pandemic.
“When I first arrived at this department, we had more detectives with 20 years or more than we had with less than 10 years,” said Nassar, who has investigated thousands of shootings. “Currently, of the approximately 45 detectives in the force, only two are over the age of 20.”
