The NYPD has a staggering budget—$6.4 billion for the fiscal year that ends this month—more than the combined budgets of the Fire Department, the Parks Department, the public library system, and the City University of New York system. Included in this budget is $512 million to pay uniformed police officers overtime when they work outside or beyond their normally assigned hours. But in recent years, the NYPD has blown through that overtime budget—and then just kept going. Each of the last three concluded fiscal years, it has spent more than double its OT budget, culminating in last year's all-time historic overtime record of $960 million. This year, they're on track to spend around $890 million.
In budget testimony to City Council last week, Police Commissioner Jessica Tisch touted this reduction, and trotted out a somewhat elaborate way of slicing the numbers to make spending $890 million on overtime not sound that bad: "This year's overtime spending is actually below the 10-year average," Tisch told City Councilmembers, "if you put it in today's dollars, and if you exclude the transit program that the governor is funding."
But a new report published by the New York City Comptroller Mark Levine uses a different analysis, and suggests that the NYPD could be doing a lot more to rein in overtime spending.