Former New York City Police Commissioner Bernie Kerik told Newsmax Friday that he doesn't "know what the mayor is thinking" amid reports that NYPD staffing levels are being slashed to levels not seen since 1990.
"This is completely insane," Kerik said during an appearance on Newsmax's "American Agenda." "We're 22 years post-9/11, when I had 41,000 uniformed officers in the department; they're going to drop it below 30,000, when they should have close to [45,000] to 50,000 officers in New York City today, given the increases in population, given the migrant issue, given the violent crime issue that's going on today?
"They're dropping back. All this is going to do is it's going to increase violent crime. It's going to have a major impact on economic development, the real estate values, people leaving the city, tourism."
"I don't know what the mayor is thinking, but the one thing I learned under [former Mayor Rudy] Giuliani — and we've learned over the years — is the one department in New York City that you cannot deplete is the NYPD, because it has so much impact on other areas of the city. And he's doing exactly what he should not be doing," he added.
New York City Mayor Eric Adams unveiled 5% budget cuts across the board for every city agency Thursday, with potentially the most notable impact of the cuts being a hiring freeze at the NYPD, amNY reported. The move will put the NYPD's ranks below approximately 29,000 by the end of fiscal year 2025, which is the lowest they've been since the mid-1990s. It will also save the city $1.1 billion over the next four fiscal years."
"This is truly a disaster for every New Yorker who cares about safe streets," Police Benevolent Association President Patrick Hendry said in a statement. "Cops are already stretched to our breaking point, and these cuts will return us to staffing levels we haven't seen since the crime epidemic of the '80s and '90s. We cannot go back there."
Kerik said that liberal cities that have tried to defund the police, such as Minneapolis, where the movement essentially began in the wake of the death of George Floyd, have had to "re-fund the police and hire additional cops over what they had, as a result of the increase in crime."
"The bottom line is, it's completely unacceptable," he said. "It's not going to work. It's amazing that these chief executives in these cities have not come to the realization that they cannot do this without creating harm for the city."
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