Gov. Kathy Hochul is leaning into NYPD overtime spending for her subway safety strategy, amplifying the city’s already historic overtime spending on law enforcement. Some transit and good governance observers, however, say they are skeptical of the cost-effectiveness.
Beginning Monday, the state will kick in $77 million to fund three months of police overtime for extra overnight shifts in the subway, particularly on board trains. The spending will finance overtime for roughly 1,000 police officers, including 300 additional shifts for overnight subway patrols and overtime for 750 officers already deployed to subway stations and platforms.
Another $77 million in funding is expected to finance a subsequent three months of NYPD overtime in the subway in the upcoming state budget — bringing the total cost to $154 million, according to Hochul’s office. The extra shifts are on top of officers’ existing transit duties and are not expected to majorly syphon the NYPD from other parts of the city, said Hochul.
“People want to see police officers on the trains and in the stations,” she said during a Thursday briefing on the plan. “They’re not going anywhere. This is not taking people out who are already performing important protection services.”
Overall, transit crime is trending downward, but felony assaults in the system increased slightly year over year, according to police data. High-profile, brutal incidents, such as an intoxicated man setting a woman on fire on a Brooklyn F train, have rattled subway riders.
The NYPD will deploy pairs of officers to subway cars in phases, with the first hundred officers boarding trains by Monday; the rest will be deployed by the end of the month, according to the department.
The state’s $154 million bump in NYPD overtime comes amid soaring city spending on extra shifts. Police overtime cost the city more than $1 billion last year alone. New city data shows that the NYPD spent more than $230 million on overtime just between April and June last year. A third of that figure went toward what authorities call supplemental patrols, which include assigning additional officers to the subway, according to the NYPD’s quarterly overtime report.
New York City’s proposed budget allocates $685 million for police in the next fiscal year, according to city officials. Mayor Eric Adams — who campaigned on a pledge to reduce overtime spending — defended the practice Thursday.
“I’m going to use every dollar that’s needed to keep the city safe,” said Adams. “And if we have to use overtime to do it, we’ll use overtime.”
When it comes to NYPD overtime in the subway, government watchdogs and transit observers argue taxpayer dollars are perhaps better spent on a mix of solutions, such as increasing the frequency of trains in the overnight hours to reduce wait times on desolate platforms.
Rachael Fauss, senior policy adviser at Reinvent Albany, said she would prefer the city take a more targeted approach by adding extra officers to the SCOUT outreach program, in which clinicians and police connect people in the subway exhibiting erratic behavior with mental health treatment.
“This surge, using overtime, the cost is probably disproportionate to the benefit here,” said Fauss. “Doing things [in] a more targeted, rational way through redeployment would probably be a better approach from a money perspective.”
The new overtime funding is on top of a current deployment of National Guard members, MTA police and the nearly 2,600 officers within the NYPD’s Transit Bureau into the system.
Danny Pearlstein, policy and communications director at the Riders Alliance, which advocates for subway and bus travelers, acknowledged that more police riding the rails will likely make straphangers feel safer, but police overtime is a Band-Aid solution to an issue that requires a more comprehensive approach.
“More police at night will certainly make some people feel safer, but we need to hear more about investing in ending, not just managing, the crisis,” said Pearlstein. “There’s only so much the police can do. This is a matter of housing and health care policy, not law enforcement.”
