New York City mayoral hopeful Scott Stringer is setting an ambitious — and potentially unattainable — goal of hiring 3,000 cops to backfill the depleted NYPD ranks and assign officers to each subway train as he ramps up his campaign to challenge Mayor Eric Adams.
The pro-law enforcement platform from the city’s former comptroller was spelled out in a 12-page safety plan shared with The Post, detailing how Stringer aims to address the general unease in the Big Apple stemming from the surge in crime under the current administration, including the recent violence underground.
“It’s time it must be done, we need to make people feel safe,” Stringer told The Post.
“This is why we need a mayor who has vision but also competence and experience so I am being very clear as we launch this campaign we are not proposing pie in the sky,” he pledged.
But recruiting thousands of cops would be a high bar for anyone who ends up in City Hall — as candidate applications for the NYPD academy have plummeted over the last eight years, The Post previously revealed.
The police force has lost thousands of cops over the last few years, bringing the current headcount to just under 33,500 — the lowest since the 1990s.
At the same time, the Adams administration has had to surge cops onto the streets to combat gun violence and into the subway system to combat random attacks. The vast majority of those assignments have been mandatory extra time, sending overtime skyrocketing.
And just two days ago, Gov. Kathy Hochul put even more on the NYPD’s shoulders, pledging in her State of the State address to put a cop on every subway train every night — a plan cops have said is nearly impossible at current staffing levels.
The policing policy is a 180 for Stringer, who proposed cutting the NYPD’s headcount through attrition while comptroller in 2020 when the force had more than 36,000 officers and was battling the anti-cop sentiment during the George Floyd unrest.
Stringer now argues that the forced extra work has driven morale to historic lows, prompting cops to put in their papers in droves.
“They can’t do this round-the-clock police surge bulls–t,” he said.
His other keys to recruitment, though, appear to steal a page from the Adams administration’s playbook: paying cops more, and discussing four-day workweeks.
Adams’ first — of four — police commissioners moved to adopt a short workweek with longer days, aka the modern chart, and locked up nearly all police contracts.
The safety plan, which calls for a deputy mayor to address quality-of-life issues, was released a day after his own poll leaked out, which had him trailing former Gov. Andrew Cuomo.
The poll, exclusively reported by The Post, found Cuomo came out with 33% favorability with New Yorkers and Stringer in second with 13%.
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