It’s ’23 skidoo.
New York City cops are resigning at a record-breaking pace this year as the NYPD’s alarming exodus continues, according to new data obtained by The Post.
“The NYPD staffing emergency is approaching the point of no return,” said Police Benevolent Association President Patrick Lynch.
The shocking stats show 239 officers tapped out in January and February, a 36% spike from the 176 who fled in the same period last year and a disturbing 117% jump from the 110 in 2021, NYPD pension data show.
That’s the highest number of resignations for the first two months of a year since 250 members quit in 2007 during a contentious contract dispute,
“It’s not just politics and poor pay,” the officer said.
“Precinct cops are being forced to work an inhumane amount of overtime, including on their days off, while being penalized for minor uniform and administrative infractions.
“Meanwhile, precincts barely have enough personnel to meet the minimum required to safely answer 911 calls.”
Some officers are so disgusted that the carrot of an NYPD pension isn’t even enough to keep them in.
At the current rate, 1,400 cops are projected to resign this year before qualifying for retirement — even more than last year’s record 1,297 early exits.
Incredibly, 21 cops walked away from the job in just a two-day period — Feb. 20 and 21 — to join the MTA, police sources said.
The Manhattan cop said the department simply “doesn’t know how to manage personnel.
“Hundreds of cops are being hidden under fake assignments or assigned to headquarters sitting at a desk all day and are considered ‘untouchable’ for patrol or enforcement duty because they have high-ranking supervisors protecting them,” he seethed.
New York City’s Finest are also bailing because of what they consider anti-cop politics, woke bail reform policies that make criminal justice a revolving door and low wages.
“We are losing cops to better pay and benefits in other policing jobs almost every day,” said Lynch, who reps 22,000 uniformed officers.
The exodus began after Minnesota cop Derek Chauvin murdered George Floyd on May 25, 2020, triggering nationwide protests and calls to defund the police.
“The allure and luster of the NYPD is gone for now. They need to restore that,” said Spero Georgedakis, 52, a former Miami SWAT team officer who helps recruit and relocate New York City cops to Florida departments.
Georgedakis, who grew up in Queens wanting to be a member of New York’s Finest, runs ads to coax cops to the Sunshine State.
“We had four or five New York City police officers reach out to us last week,” he said. “They saw the spots, and we gave them [salary] quotes.”
Georgedakis said “the standard story” he gets from NYPD cops is that “the job is impossible to do.”
Alexandre Tilan was a cop in the 72nd Precinct in Sunset Park, Brooklyn, before he decided to leave in May for the St. Petersburg Police Department in Florida.
The 29-year-old had just six years on the force, nowhere near the 22-year threshold to qualify for a full pension.
“I’m not surprised at all,” he said of the current exodus.
As a Florida cop, Tilan said, he has “lower stress, higher pay, better support.
“I’ve had a few [NYPD pals] reach out to me asking how to start the process,” he said.
The NYPD saw 3,701 cops retire or resign in 2022, the most since 3,846 cops departed in 2002, after the 9/11 attacks.
In addition to the hordes resigning so far this year, the NYPD has already seen 262 cops retire over the first two months of 2023, a 3% uptick from the 255 for the same period last year and a 7% increase from the 245 who retired in January and February 2021.
The NYPD’s 33,822 uniformed cops are already 1,208 below the budgeted headcount, documents show, and 2,467 cops short of the 36,289 roster at the start of 2020.
The stunning numbers were no surprise to a police source who told The Post about a cop who suddenly quit last week with no job lined up.
“We are having problems keeping and hiring cops,” the source said.
“I don’t see Suffolk and Nassau [County cops] losing vacation days like we do. More money, less BS. I can’t blame them for leaving.”
Diane Spencer, a mental health therapist in Brooklyn who lives in Hempstead, Long Island, said she understands why cops are leaving the city as crime increases and pay remains low.
“Police work in New York City is more cons than pros.” the 55-year-old expert said.
“They feel it’s safer out of state or moving to Connecticut. Crime out there is different. The pay is different. Here you have to start so low.”
As a result, almost every precinct in New York City is understaffed, police sources said, and it’s showing up in response time data.
In the week of Dec. 30, 2020, critical response times were seven minutes and 14 seconds — compared to eight minutes and 17 seconds for the week of Feb. 20, 2023, according to city data.
NYPD data shows every crime category except for murders and shootings is up over the past two years.
“At this rate, keeping everyone safe will be an Herculean task,” said Joseph Giacalone, a retired NYPD sergeant and adjunct professor at John Jay College of Criminal Justice in Manhattan.
“The only people that are happy are the cop haters, activists and defunders.”
Police science professor Maria Haberfeld, also of John Jay, said high cop attribution also makes it harder to enact needed reforms.
“When you lose manpower, the first things that go are all these novel ideas of corrective and preventive policing,” she said, which can also help rebuild the fledging trust between the police and the public.
Haberfeld said her students who are cops often complain about forced overtime, which she called a “horrible” idea.
“Forced overtime can be effective only for a limited period of time before people just start collapsing mentally and physically. You cannot just keep people in forced overtime forever,” she said.
PBA head honcho Lynch warned that “the city needs to focus on resolving our contract and providing competitive pay, better benefits and better quality of life for its police officers.
“If that doesn’t happen very, very soon, we won’t have a police department left,” he said.
But City Hall rep Fabien Levy said in a statement, “As the mayor has said since Day One, public safety is this administration’s top priority, and because of the NYPD’s dedicated workforce and precision policing practices, crime continues to decline with shootings, hate crimes, and major crimes all being down last month.
“And we have done all that despite a labor shortage that has affected almost every sector nationwide, including government and law enforcement, more specifically.
“New Yorkers can rest assured that, under Commissioner Sewell’s leadership, the NYPD remains fully prepared to keep New Yorkers safe and respond to all emergencies. The department continues to aggressively recruit the finest officers in the world to serve the greatest city in the world.”
Said an NYPD spokesperson: “The NYPD regularly monitors attrition and plans accordingly to address the loss of officers who retire or leave the Department for a variety of reasons. While recent events outside of the department continue to present challenges to recruitment efforts, we continue to focus on the positive results that happen when someone joins this organization. In January 2023 we hired more than 500 individuals who are currently training at the Police Academy in addition to the approximately 2000 individuals we hired in 2022.”