NEW YORK (AP) – After years of downsizing because of budget cuts and falling crime rates, the nation’s largest police department will begin growing again this summer, Mayor Michael Bloomberg announced Tuesday.

In the first major expansion of the New York Police Department since 1993, the mayor said he plans to add 800 police officers and 400 civilians to the force over the next year.

Another 400 uniformed officers who were doing desk jobs will be transferred back to patrol jobs, bringing the total number of new police officers on the street to 1,200.

The hiring will mark the end in a steady reduction of the department’s size that began amid the fiscal crisis and economic slump that followed the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks.

Crime has continued to fall each year in New York City since then, despite the smaller numbers of police patrols. Bloomberg said he is intent on holding those gains.

“This is the time you do things: before you have a problem,” Bloomberg said. He announced the expansion with Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly at City Hall.

The bolstered department will have up to 37,838 uniformed officers, still fewer than the 39,110 it had on the job in July 2002.

About 1,000 officers are now assigned to counterterrorism duties, and Kelly said that number would probably stay about the same when the new hires are added.

The first 400 recruits will arrive at the police academy in July. The remainder will start in January.

The expansion won’t come cheap. The new officers will add $80 million to the department’s payroll by 2010. But Bloomberg said the money is well spent, considering what safer New York streets have meant to tourism and the economy.

“There’s probably no investment as good as keeping crime coming down,” Bloomberg said.