NYC police flee to cop-friendly Conn. for morale
New York’s loss is Connecticut’s gain.
Six of nine cops just hired by the city of Danbury’s police force are former NYPD officers — the latest proof of the flood of Finest from the city to greener pastures, according to the local News Times.
Danbury is a sleepy city 50 miles north of the Big Apple — with a fraction of the crime rate and better pay for its officers.
The new hires will make between $63,900 and $74,400 a year, according to a job listing for the town at PoliceApp.com.
The NYPD’s starting salary is $42,500, jumping to $85,292 after five and a half years.
The Connecticut transplants will enjoy a lower cost of living, too: The average monthly cost of a one-bedroom apartment in New York City is $3,925, while it’s just $1,863 in Danbury, according to Zumper.com.
‘Morale is horrible’
Danbury has a population of about 85,000 people and saw one murder and a total of 97 violent crimes in 2019, according to the most recent FBI data available.
New York City, with a population of 8.5 million, saw 335 murders and 49,124 violent crimes in the same year, the data shows.
A Brooklyn cop told The Post Sunday that NYPD officers are going just about anywhere they think they can find a better life.
“It’s sad how people are going to small-town police departments to make more money,” the cop said. “It’s embarrassing.”
Another NYPD officer with more than 20 years on the job said he doesn’t see the trend stopping anytime soon.
“There’s going to be a lot more [city cops leaving] because they’ve been without a contract for seven years,” the Brooklyn officer said, adding that current NYPD “morale is horrible.”
“Instead of [higher-ups] trying to help police, they’re worried about stickers on your phone,” the cop said, referring to the recent move by the NYPD to mandate that officers put stickers on their work phones to help the public see if they are doing their job while on duty or looking at their personal devices.
“You lock somebody up, and they’re out the next day,’’ the source added, lamenting the state’s lax bail-reform laws. “What’s the purpose of being a police officer out here?”
A slew of NYPD officers with different ranks, time on the force and ethnicities recently told The Post they are fighting an uphill battle against internal issues such as nepotism, mismanagement, unrealistic expectations and a revolving door of out-oftouch chiefs — and that’s on top of the outside forces working against them, such as progressive politicians’ criminal-justice “reforms” and widespread anticop sentiment.
Since 2020, 9,180 cops have left the job, with 36% of them quitting before they were eligible for their full pension.
The Police Department is now on pace to see more than 4,000 cops retire or resign this year.
By the end of September of this year, 1,628 officers had retired and another 1,426 quit — the most resignations seen since the post-Sept. 11 exodus in 2002, and more than in 2019 and 2020 combined.