Cops’ Pay Is Shameful

A rookie cop, NYPD Police Officer Stuart Ingram, 22, was attacked in Howard Beach by a man with a knife who allegedly had murder on his mind. That man, Joseph Leonardi, 51, had driven a car on the sidewalk in front of St. Helen’s Church, narrowly missing pedestrians and crashing it into a brick wall.
He exited the vehicle brandishing a steak knife, and menaced several school-age children before attempting to stab Officer Ingram in the chest. By the grace of God, the knife blade struck Ingram’s police shield and broke into several pieces. Leonardi is now in custody and charged with first- and second-degree attempted murder and DUI, among other charges.
A month earlier, Police Officer Joseph Cho was brutally assaulted by a bat-wielding man as he and two other rookie cops walked a beat in Corona. Fellow rookie officers Christine Schmidt and Patrick Lynch chased Cho’s attacker, Danny Fernandez. Again, by the grace of God, Fernandez, who had stolen Cho’s gun, didn’t fire on the rookies.
These rookies are only being paid $32,700 - up from their academy pay level of $25,100.
All New York City cops put their lives on the line every day, yet they are only earning 10 percent more, adjusted for inflation, than their counterparts of 110 years ago.
Theodore Roosevelt, the Police Commissioner at the time then pointed out that “To many of our poorer fellow citizens [a cop] is the embodiment of government itself, . . . Such an officer, therefore, should not only be brave, honest and physically powerful, but also possessed of intelligence distinctly above the average.”
More than 4,400 experienced officers have quit the force in the past five years because of the NYPD’s shamefully low salary ceiling. Compared to the city’s paltry $59,000 top pay scale, MTA police earn $68,000; Port Authority police are compensated at $80,000; and Nassau and Suffolk County cops earn over $90,000. Ironically, the city has spent nearly a half billion dollars to replace those 4,400 lost officers.
Tourism is up and crime is at historic lows citywide because the NYPD does such a good job of protecting us, making it easy to take them for granted.
We say it is time to reward our Finest with better pay for all.
We implore the mayor to stop using pay parity with the city firefighters as an excuse and find a way to give all of our Finest a healthy raise, without nullifying givebacks like longer hours or reducing paid vacation by half.
It is time to stop hiding behind the word “productivity” and do the right thing.
Our police officers do not put themselves in harm’s way for the money. We must find a way to funnel some of our multi-billion dollar budget surplus into the paychecks of our police so that they are no longer ashamed of their pay envelopes.
Our Finest deserve to be the highest paid law enforcers in our area.