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.
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.
The widespread use of overtime has created a system ripe for abuse.
Last month, Manhattan prosecutors charged Thomas Fabrizi, a lieutenant detective commander in the major case squad, who they said collected $64,000 in fake overtime over seven months. During those hours, the lieutenant was actually at home in Rockland County, or was commuting or moonlighting as a private security guard, prosecutors said in court documents.
He pleaded not guilty on Jan. 22 to grand larceny and defrauding the government, among other charges.
In late December, Commissioner Tisch moved at least 29 officers — many of whom had worked for top officials — into new jobs, part of an effort to clamp down on overtime abuse. Sixteen had earned more than $100,000 in overtime pay in the last fiscal year.
They were not alone. About one hundred department employees, a vast majority of them officers, made $300,000 or more thanks to overtime payouts as high as $200,000, according to payroll data. By comparison, the police commissioner’s salary is about $277,000 according to city records.
The department’s internal affairs bureau is investigating allegations of overtime abuse, the police said.
In December, Commissioner Tisch sent a memo to her executive staff of chiefs and deputy commissioners that detailed a plan for reining extra pay. It would set overtime limits and appoint a compliance officer for each bureau who would be responsible for submitting monthly reports and written explanations for officers who exceeded them.
But her efforts could worsen attrition: Officers’ pension amounts are based on their last year’s total pay or their average pay over three consecutive years, depending on when they were hired. For many, that is an incentive to leave right after a year of record overtime.
“If they don’t leave and they stay longer, they’re actually losing money,” said Kenneth Quick, a retired inspector who teaches at DeSales University in Center Valley, Pa.
More departures will mean still more understaffed precincts and assignments, and more overtime and burnout for officers who stay behind, Mr. Quick said.
“It’s a vicious cycle,” he said.
He, along with a professor at John Jay College of Criminal Justice, surveyed more than 1,800 New York police officers last year and found that nearly a quarter were thinking seriously about leaving the agency. One of their primary reasons was that they felt that forced overtime was ruining their quality of life.
Angeliesse Nesterwitz had worked as an instructor at the police academy, but she was regularly pulled away to go to neighborhoods in the Bronx, a borough she barely knew, when crime ticked up.
“They’d give you an assignment and you’d be standing there at 3 in the morning, thinking, ‘If we get shot, we don’t even know where we are,’” she said.
In January alone, about 285 detectives retired, an ominous sign given that a total of 450 detectives retired in all of last year, said Scott Munro, the president of their union. Many had decades of experience. They left a void of institutional knowledge and heavier case loads for the remaining investigators, who are already juggling at least 50 cases a month each, he said.Robert Klein, 45, a homicide detective who joined the department in 2005, left on Friday, calling it a “business” decision.
“If I didn’t leave, my pension numbers would start to recede,” said Mr. Klein, a father of four. “I’m just lucky enough where I’m in a position where I can make that transition in my mid-40s, on my terms, with my head held high and enough money to go on occasional vacations.”
Other agencies are aggressively recruiting New York police officers, dangling tempting incentives.
In December, Fremont, Calif., announced a $100,000 hiring bonus for officers making a lateral move. In Syracuse, the police department is offering $20,000 bonuses to New York City officers who join the force. McKinney, Texas, is circulating a video of a beaming ex-N.Y.P.D. officer who promises his old colleagues a “better department, a better community, and a better quality of life.”
After they quit, Mike and Angeliesse Nesterwitz took jobs at the Tampa International Airport Police Department, even though they paid only $66,000.
Ms. Nesterwitz, 28, who was raised in Brooklyn, said she had never thought she would move.
“I really thought the N.Y.P.D. was it for me,” she said. “I didn’t see myself in any other agency.”
She and her husband frequently get messages from former colleagues in New York, asking them how easy it is to make the transfer to Florida.
“We live a life with no stress,” she said. “I don’t think I’d ever give it up.”
On Jan. 25, Ms. Nesterwitz gave birth to a girl they named Isabel Grace. The couple are not worried about their jobs interfering with parenthood.
“The only time we’re ever forced to do overtime is if there is a hurricane,” Mr. Nesterwitz said.
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