Commissioner Kelly’s New Officer Recruitment Tool

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The police commissioner is turning to private money to entice new police officers to join the force, as the lower starting salary set by the city and the police union appears to be hurting recruitment efforts this year.

Starting in 2008, new police officers with outstanding student loans will be eligible to have part or all of their loans paid back by the New York City Police Foundation, a private group, after they graduate from the academy.

The new incentive program follows Commissioner Raymond Kelly’s statement that the $25,100 starting salary agreed to by Mayor Bloomberg and the Patrolmen’s Benevolent Association last year has led to a shortage of police recruits. New police officers can make more than twice that much in area suburbs such as Suffolk County.

Negotiations over a new contract for the city’s largest police union are deadlocked, with the two sides waiting for state arbitrators to break the stalemate.

The incentive program, Mr. Kelly said, “is designed to help the NYPD stay competitive in its recruitment efforts.”

“We want to get people with college training, college degrees hopefully into the department,” he said.

Police recruits must have served in the military or earned at least 60 college credits to be eligible to join the police academy. Mr. Kelly said yesterday that about 30% of recruits go the college route, and that on average they have about $16,000 in student loans when they join the academy.

The fund would spend up to $15,000 on each new officer with student loans over a period of five years. The money would go directly to lenders, so police officers would not have to pay taxes on the grants.

Mr. Kelly said the foundation aims to build on $1.5 million initially donated to the fund by Richard Fields, a luxury resort developer and cattle rancher, so that the program can become self-sustaining.


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