One of the 4 NYPD whistleblower lawsuits filed today alleges that former police commissioner Edward Caban was selling promotions for as much as $15k a pop. This is from the James Essig lawsuit:

Here's the order

Here’s the prepared testimony of NYPD Commissioner Jessica Tisch on the issue, for a budget hearing before City Council:

12/A week later, Adams claimed (without providing evidence) that young officers are leaving the police force because they don’t want all the overtime. He’s repeated that claim multiple times since

10/In July 2024, he said overtime was instrumental in the NYPD’s success tackling public safety (Crime is UP under the Adams administration compared to 2021)

He told Fox 5: “I am not compromising on public safety.”

9/In May 2024, he blamed NYPD overtime on protests, largely pro-Palestinian protests in the wake of October 7.

He said police officers “don't want to do overtime. They want to go home with their family members”

8/In April 2024, Adams was asked about police coverage for the Trump trial. He told reporters they should do a story about how much OT he had reduced at parades.

He said: “Our overtime needs to be used for real issues, not make-believe ones”

7/In late 2023 early 2024, Adams lobbied against a City Council bill that would require cops to better document police stops. One of his main arguments was that it would increase OT by tens of millions of dollars.

He said this on the day of his veto in Jan. 2024:

6/The following month, Adams pushed back on all the questions about NYPD overtime, asking why the media and critics weren’t asking about OT at agencies like the parks dept, and whether this represents an “anti-police” bias.

5/A few days later he actually claimed NYC taxpayers weren’t paying for the huge increase in OT because Albany had chipped in. Adams later put Albany’s aid at $60M, a fraction of OT spending that year:

4/In March 2023, Adams was asked about projections that NYPD OT would reach $740M – double that year’s allocation. He cited both talking points: It’s down at parades but up b/c of a crime surge.

Note he says “I know because I review it”

3/By November 2022 Adams abandoned his promise when asked about it by a reporter who noticed that police OT was up, not down. Adams blamed it on a “crime surge.”

2/Throughout early 2022, he talked about NYPD OT largely in regards to two aspects: Lowering manpower at parades and civilianization. That’s it.

Here he is announcing the FY2023 budget agreement:

A brief of history of Eric Adams’ shifting statements on police overtime.

As a candidate for mayor in 2021, he told Bloomberg News he’d cut OT in half in his first year in office using “real-time data” monitoring: