More than half of the NYPD's
Joint Terrorism Task Force (JTTF) detectives can punch out right now with full pensions, and thousands of sergeants, lieutenants, and captains are in the same boat. That has officials sweating bullets over the future of terror prevention and crime fighting in New York City, The Post has learned.
Forty-five of the 82 JTTF detectives, or 55 percent, have racked up 20 years on the job, enough for a full pension, according to union data.
Out of 5,121 active detectives citywide, 1,193, or 23 percent, are eligible to retire with full benefits after two decades of service. And why wouldn't they?
The NYPD could lose 57 percent of its detectives because they've hit that 20-year mark and can walk away, officials said.
Another 698 lieutenants, about 42 percent of the 1,669 total, could retire immediately. Add in 518 captains, or 66 percent of the 780, and 954 sergeants, roughly 22 percent of the 4,300 total, who could bolt at any moment, per union figures.
Cops are worried that these thousands of veteran bosses and street-smart detectives will head for the exits if Mayor Comrade Zohran Mamdani slashes overtime, which would gut their pensions, union officials said. And he hates cops, based on his history.
Officers hired after 2000 get a pension based on half their pay in their final year.
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| Comrade Zohran Mamdani |
If they believe anti-cop Mamdani is going to chop their future overtime earnings, it makes perfect sense for them to retire now, lock in their 2025 pay under cop-friendly
Mayor Adams as the pension base, and get out while the getting is good.
"If they have a big overtime year, they have to go," said Detectives Endowment Association President
Scott Munro, who has been pushing Albany hard for a three-year average instead.He said a perceived lack of mayoral support, and the public anti-cop vibe it fuels, is also driving officers away.
"What's happening is people are getting in our police officers' faces," Munro said. "They're harassing them out there in the street."
Unions are "losing control of people leaving," Lieutenants Benevolent Association President Lou Turco said.
"Once you hit 20 [years], the department loses control," he said. "If I have a really good year of overtime and the department decides it wants to cut overtime, I have to leave."
Detectives Endowment Association President Scott Munro has been lobbying Albany to get pension rules changed to keep cops from leaving.
At the start of the year, officers got word they needed to cut overtime by nine to 11 hours in February as part of a cost-cutting push, The Post reported.
The reductions hit during the shortest and coldest month, when major events were scarce, a spokeswoman called it "management 101" at the time.
But cops "see the
writing on the wall," said retired NYPD Detective Michael Alcazar, an adjunct professor at
John Jay College of Criminal Justice who put in three decades before retiring in 2019.
"I did 30 years because it was a good job, I was getting good overtime, and I was enjoying it," he said.
"But now these guys are not because they're backfilling patrol," he said of veteran supervisors forced back to the street to cover manpower shortages.
"Detectives and lieutenants are back on patrol," he said. "You know when you've got 20, 25 years you don't want to put the bag back on and get on foot post, which is what they're doing."
Police Commissioner Jessica Tisch testified at a City Council budget hearing this week that 2025 retirements are tracking right along with projections, based on the big hiring wave two decades ago.
She noted the NYPD had its "largest hiring year on record, more than 4,000 officers" last year.The department "not only outpaced attrition in 2025, we essentially brought the NYPD back to its authorized uniformed headcount for the first time in three years," Tisch said. The agency wrapped 2025 with about 800 more officers than the average over the prior three years, officials said.
"We are not in a hiring crisis anymore," she told the City Council. "We ended 2025 at a headcount of 34,769, just 250 shy of our authorized headcount."
"It's the senior people we do not want to lose,"
Sergeants' Benevolent Association President Vincent Vallelong said.
There are 220 sergeants who serve as bosses in the detective bureau but don't get special assignment money, which is basically lieutenant pay, he said.
"If they gave them special assignment money, I promise right off the bat these guys wouldn't leave," the union boss said.
Part of the headache with veteran officers walking away is that there's no one ready to step up and replace them, Munro said.
"I have senior detectives telling their kids, 'Do not come on this job,'" said Munro, who has two police officer sons. "And that's not the way this job used to be."
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