No OT limits in heartland Less for city cops, lots on Blaz trail
It’s a tale of two police departments.
Members of Mayor de Blasio’s police security detail are racking up overtime following him around the country for his longshot presidential campaign – despite a cap in OT for other cops on the job in the city.
The NYPD put a lid on overtime for all units earlier this spring after blowing past its OT budget, restricting detectives, lieutenants, sergeants and high-ranking officers to a certain number of hours a month.
The limits on overtime don’t cover extra hours worked by de Blasio’s detail because they aren’t discretionary, according to an NYPD spokesman who also insisted there wasn’t a “hard cap” in place.
The move still has some cops thinking about an early retirement.
De Blasio ran for mayor promising to make the city more equitable, contrasting the haves and the havenots, using the slogan “a tale of two cities.”
“It is the height of hypocrisy that while Mayor de Blasio is off wandering around Iowa, running up his police detail’s overtime hours, he continues to tell officers not to work overtime for the police work they do to keep our streets safe,” police union head Patrick Lynch said.
De Blasio said in May that the city’s $92.5 billion budget “will focus on fiscal caution.”
This spring’s OT ceiling is part of larger efforts to restrict ballooning overtime costs for uniformed forces, which began for the NYPD way back in fiscal year 2016.
The City Council warned this month that the NYPD would spend $58 million more than what was budgeted for overtime last June “if the current pace is continued.”
The city originally budgeted $547 million for uniformed NYPD overtime this fiscal year in the spending plan approved last June. By April, that increased to $551 million, some of which comes from federal grants.
Homicide detectives – who typically work for 24 hours after a murder – are limited to 30 hours of overtime a month, the Daily News previously reported. So are detective squad sergeants and lieutenants. Officers who do administrative work for detective squads are capped at 20 hours a month.
“I find it hard to comprehend a cap on police OT for the folks working cases. Perhaps we should cut back on how many cops we have escorting him to the Iowa State Fair and elsewhere as he barnstorms the Midwest,” Councilman Joe Borelli (RStaten Island) said. “He doesn’t need a full detail to protect him from a pork chop on a stick.”
At least four cops escorted de Blasio to Iowa and South Carolina this past weekend during his first trip since officially launching his campaign for the White House last week.
De Blasio’s police detail includes dozens of detectives and sergeants and his wife, First Lady Chirlane McCray, has even more on her security team. McCray joined him in Iowa and is expected to be on the campaign trail regularly.
The mayor refused to say whether taxpayers have a right to know how much they’re spending on security for his travel outside the five boroughs earlier this month. Reminded that he runs the NYPD as mayor, de Blasio doubled down.
“The NYPD is the security experts, and they have to determine what’s the right way to provide security and what is the kind of information that could be available about it,” de Blasio told the Daily News on May 7. “It’s a classic security question. There are some things you put out, there are other things you don’t.”
The head of the mayor’s security detail, Inspector Howard Redmond, made $7,478 in overtime between July 2017 and June 2018, according to city payroll data. He made $8,167 in OT in the 12 months before that.
During those two years, de Blasio took at least 25 trips outside the five boroughs – not including travel to funerals nearby or visits to Washington and Albany – according to his schedules.
De Blasio said in Charleston this weekend that running for president will “take a lot of time” on the road.
“New York taxpayers should not be subsidizing a security detail for a presidential campaign thousands of miles away,” said Councilman Ritchie Torres (D-South Bronx), who also chairs the Oversight and Investigations Committee. “Campaign dollars should pay for the use of a security detail in a campaign.”
In 2017, de Blasio and the NYPD successfully lobbied the Trump administration to reimburse the city for the millions it cost to protect Trump Tower after the 2016 election.
An NYPD spokesman said there are “routine fluctuations” in the amount of available overtime and “adjustments are made accordingly.”