The Police Department, already at a historic peak with a force of 40,000, needs 1,000 more cops to continue its massive crackdown on drugs, Mayor Giuliani will tell New Yorkers today.
Mayoral aides, confirming a report on New York 1, said Giuliani’s preliminary new budget plan will suggest speeding up the hiring of 1,000 cops over the next 18 months to increase the number of special narcotics task forces.
One insider said the proposal being released today is sure to generate a debate about how many cops the city needs now that crime has been reduced to the lowest level in decades.
“People are going to be asking is this where we need to put our resources,” said the source.
The Police Department’s head count of uniformed officers is at a record 40,210 and its budget is at an all-time high of $2.65 billion. In the last year of the Dinkins administration, the police budget was $1.75 billion.
The mayor also will propose a dramatic way to speed up school construction projects.
Aides said Giuliani would suggest selling bonds to generate $2.5 billion, backing the bonds with part of the city’s share of the statewide settlement with tobacco companies.
That scheme would get around a major roadblock to new bond sales: the debt limit imposed by the state on the city that is fast approaching.
Schools Chancellor Rudy Crew has estimated the Board of Education needs $11 billion over the next five years to build and rehabilitate school buildings.
Giuliani had previously said the city would put up about $6 billion, with the state and federal governments being asked for the rest.
Giuliani’s idea is a twist on the plan first put forward by City Council Speaker Peter Vallone, who suggested a “pay-as-you-go” schools construction project using the tobacco settlement.
But Vallone’s plan would generate just $250 million in the first year.