NYPD sees sharp drop in applicants in 2014

The New York City Police Department witnessed a steep drop in the number of people trying to become police officers in 2014, joining other municipalities across the United States that are finding it harder to recruit new officers.

The number of people taking the NYPD police officer’s exam fell 17.8 percent in 2014 to 12,286 from 14,953 a year earlier, according to the city. AM New York, a local daily newspaper, was the first to report the decline.

Some criminal justice experts say the decline in new recruits is due to several recent incidents around the country in which police officers have been involved in killing unarmed black men. New York City had days of protests against police in December after a grand jury declined to indict officers in the death of Eric Garner, a 43-year-old Staten Island man who died after NYPD officers restrained him, forced him to the sidewalk and ignored his plea of “I can’t breathe,” captured on a widely viewed video.

“If you’re a student and you wanted to be a police officer, then you’re looking at what’s going on and how the police are being portrayed,” said Joe Giacalone, a professor of criminal justice at John Jay College in New York City and a 20-year veteran of the NYPD. “These kids are plugged into social media, have seen the videos, demonstrations and will decide differently if they were sitting on the fence.”

New York is not the only city struggling to find new recruits. New Orleans launched a campaign last summer to find suitable recruits, The Times-Picayune reported. In West Virginia, a police official attributed a drop in applicants to increased scrutiny of the police, The Associated Press reported last year.

The Bureau of Justice Statistics, an arm of the Justice Department, does not keep track of recruiting practices, so there is no comprehensive data on nationwide trends in recruiting.

In the absence of hard numbers, some law enforcement observers say the decline in recruiting may be the result of other factors. “For me I think it’s just too early to tell,” said Doug Wyllie, editor of Police One, a news and information resource site for law enforcement officers.

Wyllie blamed low pay and better options. “Putting your life on the line isn’t the most attractive thing compared with making Internet dollars on some future IPO,” he said.

Joe Pasco, executive director of the Fraternal Order of Police, a national law enforcement union, blames better pay in other sectors of an improving job market for the decline. “I think a very good reason why police recruiting is down in the NYPD is that they don’t pay as well as the surrounding jurisdictions,” Pasco said, noting high salaries in Suffolk County, in Long Island.

Suffolk officers make more money and face less risk than their city counterparts, Pasco noted. Base salaries are the same, at $42,000 a year, AM New York reported. However, after 5 years, that salary more than doubles to $100,000. With overtime pay, sergeants can make as much as 300,000, according to Newsday.

AM New York noted that Suffolk county also had a decline in the number of applicants, of 34.8 percent between 2014 and 2011.

Giacalone worries that the issue could lower the quality of service people receive from the police. “This is at a national level,” Giacalone said. "Police departments will suffer with a lack of recruits, increased overtime costs ... and more complaints and corruption problems."