wnyc.org / 93.9fm / am 820

The Bloomberg Administration decided to delay the start of classes for 540 NYPD recruits that were supposed to start this month. Instead they will combine with the July class that begins in the next fiscal year.

The mayor's spokesman, Stu Loeser, would not confirm whether all 540 recruits would make it into the new combined class.

City Council Speaker Christine Quinn said the decision is a mistake and gets the negotiations over next year's budget off on the wrong foot.
 
She said the incoming April class was already bought and paid for with "painful cuts" made by the council last year as part of the deal they struck with the mayor: "The mayor has taken this action without any consultation with the City Council  or notification to the public. ... We passed a budget in June that funded this police class," she said.
 
Quinn said the department, down some 6,000 officers from just a decade ago, already incurs hundreds of millions of dollars in overtime because it is shorthanded. 

"But cutting into patrol strength is just ill-conceived," Quinn said. "In the end, we will just to have to pay through overtime for police officers regardless but it is a decision that puts public safety at risk."

Quinn wrote the mayor to protest the move along with Finance Chair Councilman Domeci Recchia and Public Safety Chair Peter Vallone.

Last month, all city agencies were asked to make their ninth round of cuts, and for the NYPD that meant finding roughly $100 million in cuts. Police Commissioner Ray Kelly has already given up plans to hire 400 civilian clerical workers to help get more officers out into the community on patrol.

The Bloomberg Administration has said any delayed Aprill recruit whose test results would have expired by July will have that deadline extended.