Halfway through the 2025 fiscal year, the department has already blown past its new overtime budget of $564.8 million, according to the Independent Budget Office.

Angeliesse and Mike Nesterwitz met and married as New York Police Department officers.

They each made more than $100,000 a year, but life had become unbearable. The couple were eager to start a family, but they barely saw each other because they were constantly pulled into mandatory overtime shifts. Mr. Nesterwitz would often finish a tour and sign out only to learn that he had to sign right back in again.

“We were going to get a house, thinking, ‘Are we even going to enjoy that house?’” he said. “I want to work to live, not live to work.”

In 2022, they left for Florida.

Their story illustrates a larger problem at the Police Department, where officers have been leaving in droves and leaders are leaning hard on overtime to make up the shortfalls.

It’s a strategy that in the 2024 fiscal year cost the department more than $1 billion, twice what it had budgeted for overtime, and created opportunities for corruption, capped by the resignation of Jeffrey Maddrey, the top uniformed officer. He came under investigation after a lieutenant accused him of coercing her into sex in exchange for hundreds of thousands of dollars in overtime.To solve the problem, Commissioner Jessica S. Tisch has been cracking down on the hours, even as thousands of officers may respond by retiring to avoid seeing their pensions shrink. The recruitment picture is just as bleak, with the number of people signing up to take the entrance exam plunging by more than half since 2017.

“I am not going to sugarcoat the real recruitment issues that we’re facing,” Commissioner Tisch said on Thursday during a speech before the New York City Police Foundation and department brass. “N.Y.P.D. applicants used to wait for years to get the call to join the academy. Now we are practically begging people to take the exam.”

The department, the nation’s largest, has about 34,600 police officers, down from a peak of 40,000 in 2000, according to department figures and the city’s Independent Budget Office.

In a statement, the police said that Mayor Eric Adams and Commissioner Tisch were working to get the force up to at least 35,000 officers while making “smart, thoughtful decisions about how to manage overtime.”
 

The agency pointed to the hiring of 600 rookies and nearly 1,000 officers who are expected to go on patrol later this year. At the same time, the department acknowledged that it was facing a “triple threat of challenges.”

The department is girding for mass departures this year, when about 3,700 officers will reach their 20th anniversaries, making them eligible for full pension. Those pensions will be based on their 2024 salaries — including overtime.

“Many officers would be leaving significant money on the table if they stayed,” the police said.

It’s not just officers hitting the 20-year mark who are leaving. In 2024, an average of 250 officers a month retired or resigned, a pattern that is expected to continue in 2025, according to the officers’ union, the Police Benevolent Association. The union is pushing for the state to make pension packages for New York City officers competitive with those of other departments in the state.

Last year, only 8,177 applicants signed up to take the police exam, the union said; in 2017, more than 18,400 did.

“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.”

As the department has shed officers, high-ranking supervisors have used mandatory overtime to force officers to cover shifts. For the department as a whole, the strategy has been costly.

In the fiscal year that ended June 30, the department spent more than twice the $517 million it had set aside for overtime. It was significant overspending of the agency’s $5.8 billion approved budget, according to budget data provided by the City Council.