More than half of the NYPD’s Joint Terrorism Task Force officers can retire right now, along with thousands of sergeants, lieutenants and captains, officials who worry about the future of counterterrorism in Gotham, The Post has learned.
Forty-five of the JTTF’s 82 detectives – or 55% – have 20 years under their belts, which is enough time on the job to walk away with a full pension, according to union data.
There are 2,161 active detectives in the NYPD and 1,232 of them – or 57% – are in the same boat, eligible for a full pension after 20 years.
Another 698 lieutenants, or about 42 percent of the total of 1,669, may retire today; 518 captains, or 66% of the 780, could go; and 954 sergeants, representing about 22% of the total of 4,300, could leave at any time, according to union data.
Police officers are worried that thousands of NYPD veterans will walk away if Mayor Mamdani cuts overtime, which could significantly cut their pensions, union officials said.
Police officers hired after 2000 receive a pension of half the amount they earn in their last year.
So if they think that the anti-cop Mamdani will cut their future OT pay, it would make sense for them to retire now, and use their 2025 pay under Mayor Adams pro-cop as the basis for their pension.
“If they have a big overtime year, they should go,” said Detectives Endowment Association President Scott Munro, who has been lobbying Albany for about three years.
He said the lack of support from the mayor, along with anti-police sentiment in the community, is also forcing officers to leave.
“What happens is people get in the police’s face,” Munro said. “They are harassing them over there on the street.”
Unions are “failing to control the people who walk,” said Lieutenants Benevolent Association President Lou Turco.
“When you hit 20 [years]the department is running out of power,” he says, “If I have a really good year of overtime and the department decides they want to cut back on overtime, I have to leave.”
Earlier this year, police were told they needed to reduce overtime by nine to 11 hours in February as part of a cost-cutting plan, The Post reported.
The cuts came in the shortest and coldest month of the year when there were few major events, a spokesman said at the time, calling the move “management 101.”
But the police “saw the writing on the wall,” said retired NYPD Detective Michael Alcazar, an adjunct professor at the John Jay College of Criminal Justice who served in the NYPD for three decades before retiring in 2019.
“I worked for 30 years because it was a good job, I got good overtime and I enjoyed it,” he said.
“But now these guys aren’t doing it because they’re holding back the patrol,” he said of the veteran officers who were forced to return to the road to make up for the loss of staff.
“Detectives and lieutenants are back on duty,” he said. “You know, when you’re 20, 25 years old, you don’t want to put the bag back and get into the foothold, which is what they’re doing.”
Police Commissioner Jessica Tisch testified at a City Council budget hearing this week that the number of police officers retiring in 2025 is the same as the number of police officers hired two decades ago.
He added that the NYPD had its “biggest hiring year in history – over 4,000 officers” last year.
“We’re not in a hiring crisis,” he told the City Council. “We finished the year 2025 with 34,769 – just 250 off our official count.”
“These are seniors we don’t want to lose,” said Sergeants Benevolent Association President Vincent Vallelong.
There are 220 sergeants who are managers in the detective office who do not receive money for special assignments, which is the salary of a lieutenant.
“If they give them money for a special share, I promise them right from the start that these boys will not leave,” said the union manager.
Part of the problem with watching veteran officers leave is that there is no one left to fill their place, said Munro.
“I have detectives who tell their kids, ‘Don’t come into this job,'” said Munro, who has two sons who are police officers. “And it wasn’t the way this job was.”
