PHOTO: Mayor de Blasio last week addressed the newest class of NYPD recruits. Photo Courtesy of Demetrius Freeman/Mayoral Photography Unit
Mayor Bill de Blasio and Police Commissioner Bill Bratton last week presided over the swearing-in ceremony for 678 recruits at the new Police Academy in College Point.
The new hires, part of a key Fiscal Year 2016 budget initiative that calls for $170 million to add 1,297 uniformed officers to the department, will now begin six months of intensive academy training.
“Welcome to the NYPD,” Bratton beamed. “There is no profession in this country that will give you the satisfaction as the one you have chosen. The eight million community members in New York City want you out there keeping them safe, and we will equip you with the skills and technology to do just that.”
According to the agency, of those sworn in, more than 37 percent have earned a bachelor’s degree, and 9 percent of the recruits have previous U.S. Military service. A foreign language is spoken by more than 34 percent of the new hires and 32 percent are of Hispanic heritage, the highest number ever in a new recruit class. Twenty-two percent of the recruits were born outside of the Unites States, representing 35 countries.
New recruits will be assigned to a Field Training Officer, who will give them one-on-one interaction. The new training paradigm will also ensure that the rookie officers are closer to the communities they police. This stems from the NYPD’s Plan of Action: the revamping of the patrol model to make sure that cops provide more community interaction, while still fighting violence and crime.
De Blasio said the new class will “make this department even better.”
“The fact is the department will be stronger for a number of reasons,” he continued. “We’ve talked before about new technology like ShotSpotter and the smart phones, and the other devices that officers will have to be able to have information so much more quickly than ever before. We’ve talked about the training and how that’s going to teach officers better than ever before to work with community, literally, to the point of showing very specifically how to deescalate in any given encounter with a civilian; how to use the correct use of force; a clarity of training and follow through on the training that hasn’t been there sufficiently in the past to really help our officers hone their approach—obviously, showing them the right way to approach a stop-and-frisk situation. The clarity, the communication, the training, the follow through are going to help our officers do their work better and better, and also to bond more closely to communities.”
By Michael V. Cusenza michael@theforumnewsgroup.com
