#De Blasio says ‘very substantial’ cuts coming to NYPD budget

Mayor Bill de Blasio said Friday that cuts to the NYPD’s $6 billion budget would be “very, very substantial” amid calls to slash $1 billion from the department’s coffers.

“We’re working with the City Council right now. We don’t have a final dollar figure, but we’re going to do something very, very substantial,” de Blasio said on WNYC radio’s “The Brian Lehrer Show,” adding, “We’ll know more in the next few days.”

“I think we are moving in a very good direction,” the mayor said.

De Blasio previously promised to cut an unspecified amount of funding from the NYPD and said it will be shifted to youth initiatives and social services.

“I am convinced in the next days — I’m very hopeful that we’ll get to a positive outcome with the Council, a major shift in funds from the NYPD to youth services and other community needs,” the mayor said on WNYC.

Meanwhile, de Blasio during the same interview said that regardless of the reform initiatives there will be NYPD layoffs if the city doesn’t get financial aid from Washington, DC, or the state to stem the city’s coronavirus-induced budget crisis.

He threatened there would be cuts to “every single agency, uniform and civilian” ” in order to close the $1 billion budget gap caused by the COVID-19 pandemic.

Earlier this week, de Blasio said 22,000 municipal employees across all city agencies could lose their jobs to create $1 billion in cuts needed to balance the budget.

“The 22,000 layoff which again we hope we’ll never have to experience, is every single agency, uniform and civilian,” the mayor said Friday.

“Start with the assumption of the percentage each agency is of our budget,” de Blasio said, as he explained that “the NYPD in the civilian employees is over 50,000 out of 380,000 [civilian employees across all agencies].”

“It’s a big chunk of the budget,” Hizzoner said. “So, if we got to that point of layoffs it’s going to affect the NYPD — it’s going to affect all agencies.”

De Blasio called it “tragic” and “horrible” that “if we don’t get another source of revenue we literally have no choice but to start cutting back our workforce which I do not want to do one bit.”

“I’m trying to find another source of revenue and there’s only two places I can get it: Washington, which isn’t acting and Albany, which could give us the borrowing authority to help us tide over and I’m hoping to achieve that in the next few days,” he said.