By Forum Staff
Mayor Eric Adams on Thursday held Gotham’s first-ever public safety promotion ceremony and announced plans for the administration to build a unified training facility for all of its public safety agencies.
A total of 79 city employees, representing 15 different agencies, were promoted Thursday at the first-of-its-kind public safety promotion ceremony, held at the City Police Academy in College Point. The promotion ceremony highlighted public safety professionals from the City Administration for Children’s Services Police; City Department of Citywide Administrative Services Police; City Department of Correction ; City Department of Environmental Protection Police; City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene Police; City Department of Homeless Services Police; City Department of Parks and Recreation Enforcement Patrol; City Department of Probation; City Emergency Management ; the City Fire Department; NYC Health + Hospitals Police; City Human Resources Administration Police; NYPD; City Sheriff’s Office; and City Taxi & Limousine Commission Police.
Two years ago, Adams created the position of the deputy mayor for Public Safety to break down silos, better connect the city’s public safety agencies, and give them the tools and resources needed to continue to keep the five boroughs safe. As the next step in the city’s efforts to keep New Yorkers safe, during the ceremony, Adams also announced that the city is planning to build an additional state-of-the-art training facility building on the current NYPD Academy campus that will become part of a shared training space for the city’s public safety agencies. This shared training space — that will expand the existing training facilities — will enhance an already robust public safety apparatus by breaking down silos, fostering interagency cooperation, and improving training through information sharing.
“This is the best public safety team in the nation, and we’re going to build on that good work by providing them the best training facilities possible,” Adams said.
“This is a new era of collaboration between our public safety agencies,” added Deputy Mayor for Public Safety Philip Banks III.
Construction of the new Public Safety Academy facility is expected to begin in early 2026 with a completion date expected for early 2030. The facility includes space identified in a survey, conducted in 2022, by the Office of Public Safety and the Mayor’s Office of Operations to assess the city’s existing public safety and law enforcement training capacity and needs. The survey found that a unified public safety training center would better allocate resources and reduce redundancies in the city’s training spaces. Funding for the new facility will include $225 million approved in 2021 to build a new training facility for the DOC on the NYPD Academy campus. The new Public Safety Academy will accommodate both the specialty spaces required for DOC, as well as flexible training spaces to allow for 16 agencies — including the City Department of Sanitation Police — to train on the new Public Safety Campus.
“Coordinating training under one roof will boost our collective ability to deliver a safer New York City and enhance the close working relationships the NYPD already enjoys with our sister agencies,” said City Police Commissioner Edward Caban.
