For years, rhe NYPD boasted it had well more than 36,000 officers. But now, it's projecting it could have fewer than 34,000 cops for the first time in 25 years. 

“2,500 less officers than just a few months ago,” said NYPD Chief Michael LiPetri. “Next month. we could possibly be at the lowest levels that we have seen since 1995.”

 

What You Need To Know

  • 2,500 fewer NYPD officers are on the force since the beginning of the summer

  • Next month, there could be fewer than 34,000 officers for the first time in 25 years

  • There were 607 gun arrests in September, compared to 307 in September 2019

  • So far this year, 344 people have been murdered

 

That’s because of budget cuts, a result of the city's plunging revenues during the pandemic and the push to defund the police after protests over George Floyd’s death in Minnesota. 

LiPetri, who is the chief of crime control strategies, said the department will adapt, and continue to fight crime and get guns off the streets.

NYPD statistics show gun arrests nearly doubled to 607 in September, compared to September of 2019. Yet shootings were still up 118 percent last month.

One-quarter of the shootings are happening in Central Brooklyn. 

“Brownsville, East New York into Crown Heights, into Bedford-Stuyvesant and also into East Flatbush. Each of those five precincts all border each other, and we are seeing a concentrated uptick of shootings, mainly driven by gangs or crews,” LiPetri said. 

There’s also a spike in the 40th and 47th precincts in The Bronx.

Along with their crime-fighting strategies, police officials are hoping the city will see drastic decreases in murders and shootings in the coming months now that the hot summer months are over. 

There were over 200 shooting incidents a month from June through August, but September had 152.

“I feel we are trending in the right direction. I feel our partners with the district attorneys’ offices are really working well with us,” LiPetri said.

LiPetri added that more defendants getting caught with guns are not being released immediately, as happened earlier in the year when bail reforms kicked in. And while a record number of guns were taken off the streets last month, police admit that might only be a small dent in the amount of illegal guns entering the city.

It’s not just about statistics or numbers on a page. It’s lives ended and families devastated. There have been 344 murders so far this year, up 40 percent over the same period last year. 2018 had the fewest murders since the 1950s, 289.