To the Editor:
Once again the Post’s editorial “Pat Lynch’s Want Ads” disregards the truth and parrots Mayor Bloomberg’s misinformation regarding the source of the NYPD’s recruitment problem. The fact is that it was the city’s failure to raise the salary when raising the educational requirements back in 1995 that laid the groundwork for the NYPD’s current recruiting crisis and gave birth to a massive increase in the numbers of veteran officers — almost 1,000 a year -- who quit for better paying jobs.
How do we know that? A 2002 NYPD document seeking to spend $30 million over five years to hire a recruiting consultant says so and that was three years before an arbitration panel lowered the starting pay.
The only way the NYPD will be able to attract mature and better educated candidates and to keep fully trained and experienced veteran officers on the job is to offer a top pay that is competitive with other local jurisdictions. If the PERB arbitration panel fails to make police top pay competitive, it will not only have condemned the future of the NYPD but it will imperil the safety of New York’s streets and neighborhoods.
The Post does this city a disservice by repeating the Mayor’s lies.
Sincerely,
Patrick J. Lynch
President
