As the N.Y.P.D. Struggles to Rein In Overtime, Officers Leave the Force

Good morning. Today we’ll look at the New York Police Department’s billion-dollar problem with overtime, and a new partnership in Nassau County that has local detectives helping the Trump administration’s mass deportation effort.

The Police Department’s big spending on overtime — more than $1 billion last fiscal year — has been lucrative for some, but painful for others.

My colleague Maria Cramer reported that about 100 department employees made $300,000 or more in the 2024 fiscal year thanks to overtime payouts of as much as $200,000, according to payroll data. Compare that with the police commissioner, whose salary is $277,000, according to city records.

Because of understaffing, police officials say, officers are often pulled into mandatory overtime shifts. Stacking up overtime just before retiring can pay off for officers, whose pensions can be based on their final year’s earnings, including overtime. But what about everyone else?

For Angeliesse and Mike Nesterwitz, who met and married as New York Police Department officers, all those extra hours became unbearable. They each made more than $100,000 a year, but they barely saw each other because of work. Like an increasing number of officers, they found a solution: They quit.

They took jobs at the Tampa International Airport Police Department, even though the jobs paid only $66,000.

“I really thought the N.Y.P.D. was it for me,” said Angeliesse, 28, who was raised in Brooklyn. “I didn’t see myself in any other agency.”

Now, she said: “We live a life with no stress. I don’t think I’d ever give it up.”

But back in New York, the struggle to rein in overtime continues.

Some of the problems are linked to corruption and abuse: Last month, Manhattan prosecutors accused a lieutenant detective commander of collecting $64,000 in fake overtime over seven months. Commissioner Jessica S. Tisch also moved at least 29 officers into new jobs to clamp down on overtime abuse. Sixteen of them had earned more than $100,000 in overtime pay in the last fiscal year.

But the crackdown may come at a cost, as officers who were banking on high overtime payouts to juice their pensions leave before the cutbacks affect them.

In January alone, about 285 detectives retired, an ominous sign given that a total of 450 detectives retired in all of last year, said Scott Munro, the president of their union. The department is bracing for mass departures this year, as about 3,700 officers will reach their 20th anniversaries, making them eligible for full pensions based on last fiscal year’s pay.

The department is trying to recruit new officers to fill these holes and beef up staffing to reduce the mandatory overtime that is also driving officers away. But that, too, is a challenge.

“The N.Y.P.D. is not viewed as a dream job,” said Patrick Hendry, president of the Police Benevolent Association. “Many police officers are using it as a steppingstone to another department where they can find better benefits and a better quality of life.”

Weather

Expect cloudy skies and moderate winds with a high in the mid-30s. In the evening, it will be mostly cloudy, with a low around 30 degrees and light snow expected early Thursday morning.

ALTERNATE-SIDE PARKING

In effect until Feb. 12 (Lincoln’s Birthday).

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President Trump has vowed to deport millions of undocumented immigrants, and he is getting help from Nassau County on Long Island.

Ten Nassau detectives will be trained and deputized to conduct immigration arrests, just like U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents, my colleague Luis Ferré-Sadurní reported. The effort, which the county executive said “isn’t about raids” but rather “targeted enforcement,” is part of a partnership with the Trump administration, which cannot reasonably reach its deportation goals with federal resources alone.

“Our detectives are not out looking for illegal migrants,” said Bruce Blakeman, the Republican county executive who announced the partnership. “If a crime is committed, the officers will then do a background check, and if a background check says that they are here illegally or there is a detainer out there, then they will get ICE involved.”

Blakeman, a Trump ally who has appeared at the president’s rallies, said the county would set aside up to 50 cells in the county jail to hold immigrants for up to 72 hours before they are transferred to ICE custody. The partnership is permitted under the U.S. Immigration and Nationality Act, which allows the Homeland Security Department, which houses ICE, to sign agreements with local law enforcement agencies to train and authorize officers to carry out certain immigration enforcement duties.

About 50,000 undocumented immigrants — mostly from El Salvador, Honduras and Guatemala — live in Nassau County, according to 2019 census data analyzed by the Migration Policy Institute. Another 50,000 are estimated to reside in neighboring Suffolk County, on the eastern end of Long Island. A majority of them are believed to work in crucial low-wage jobs, in areas including restaurants, construction, maintenance, transportation, retail, child care and home health care.

Critics of local-federal partnerships like Nassau County’s say they can lead to widespread racial profiling, high costs for localities, the arrests of immigrants with minor criminal histories and the erosion of trust between local governments and immigrant communities.

Dear Diary:

In fall 1956, I traveled to New York City from California for a six-week stint at my employer’s Manhattan headquarters.

The most memorable character in the office was a charming Irish woman named Mai McCarthy.

One Friday evening, as we rode the elevator down to the building’s Madison Avenue entrance together, she had a question for me.

“Have you ever been to Macy’s, lad?”

I had not.

“C’mon, then.”

Her delightful brogue kept me entertained as we walked down Madison Avenue. We turned right at 34th Street.

The signal was against us at Fifth Avenue, still a long block from Herald Square, and she fell silent as we waited at the curb.

When the light turned green, she hesitated a moment. Then she looked up at me anxiously.

“Y’know,” she said with a tremor in her voice, “I have not been on the West Side in years.”