By Josephine Stratman and Rocco Parascandola
New York Daily News
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NEW YORK — Police Commissioner Jessica Tisch said Monday that the city will hire over 550 new officers this year — despite Mayor Zohran Mamdani previously saying he’d hold the NYPD headcount flat.
The increase marks a turnaround for Mamdani, whose campaign promises are often at odds with the direction his police commissioner wants to take the department. The mayor has moderated his position on several issues as he as sidestepped open conflict with Tisch.
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Tisch said during a City Council budget hearing that the additional hires would bring the NYPD to 35,555 uniformed officers by the end of the calendar year — larger than the police force than under ex-Mayor Adams, around 35,000 at its peak.
If they reach that number, that’ll put them a year and a half ahead of City Hall’s executive budget projections and will have them past the mayor’s allotment for the upcoming fiscal year.
“That is something to be celebrated — and that is something that we appreciate deeply — especially in a time of general need to cut,” Tisch said at the hearing.
Mamdani and Tisch, who was first appointed to the role under Adams, have different views on policing.
As a mayoral candidate, Mamdani said he wanted to keep the department’s headcount as it was, and he did not include any upticks in headcount in his preliminary budget plan in February.
The news of the roughly 1.5% headcount increase also comes after Tisch testified at a hearing earlier this year that she was satisfied by the number of cops on the force.
“After experiencing a hiring crisis, we are also seeing a resurgence in policing as a profession,” Tisch said during her prepared remarks. “The Department outpaced uniformed attrition in calendar year 2025, with 4,115 hires compared to 3,357 separations. And we are continuing to outpace attrition year-to-date in 2026, with 1,084 hires compared to 896 separations. Actual attrition is down 4.7% this year compared to last year.”
Sam Raskin, a spokesperson for the mayor, said that NYPD headcount is expected to fluctuate throughout the year and as a result the force will sometimes fall above or below authorized headcount.
Phil Desgranges , an attorney with Legal Aid, slammed the increased headcount as the administration “doubling down on failed policing strategies” and said the money should have been invested in the mayor’s Office of Community Safety.
“Increasing the NYPD’s headcount is yet another broken promise from the Mayor on police reform, joining a growing list that includes the City’s continued defense of the gang database, its refusal to disband the Strategic Response Group, and its continuation of broken-windows policing,” Desgranges said in a statement.
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