Republican mayoral candidate Curtis Sliwa has declined an offer from the NYPD to provide him a security detail while campaigning across the city, complaining that Mayor Bill de Blasio and the City Council slashed the police budget last year and he didn’t want to divert resources.
“I cannot in good conscience take revenue away from the NYPD by requiring a security detail. As the founding member of the Guardian Angels and candidate for mayor, I stand with our police and as your mayor I will do the same,” Sliwa said in a letter to NYPD Intel Chief Thomas Galati.
In the letter, Sliwa said the mayor and council slashed funding for the NYPD by nearly $1 billion last year.
“This of course was in response to the perilous progressive cries to ‘defund’ our city’s police department. As crimes continue to ravage our city, this defunding was completely unjustified, and its effects have been detrimental to the NYPD,” Sliwa said.
“The loss of 5,300 officers in 2020 to attrition and early retirement amid an anti-cop
climate has only made our city less safe. This new reality has left our city of eight million residents with only 34,994 on-duty NYPD officers, with no hiring plan in sight.”
The mayor and council increased the NYPD budget by a modest $200 million this year to cover overtime costs, but not to hire more officers.
Sliwa, an underdog in the heavily Democratic city, said he would eschew a police security detail if elected mayor.
Meanwhile, the campaign of Brooklyn Borough President Eric Adams, a retired 22-year former cop and favored Democratic nominee for mayor, said he wasn’t offered an NYPD security detail.
“I’m not aware of any offer of protection,” said Adams campaign spokesman Evan Thies.
But last month, off-duty NYPD cops were accompanying Adams after a campaign volunteer was stabbed in the Bronx.
Last year, Adams said he would carry a firearm and ditch the NYPD security detail if elected mayor.
“I won’t have a security detail. If the city is safe, the mayor shouldn’t have a security detail with him. He should be walking the street by himself,” Adams said.
He later modified his stance, telling Politico in April he “would definitely decrease my detail population, my police detail. I believe officers should be protecting the public and I don’t think you need a large police detail as you move around the city.”
A police spokesperson responded, “The NYPD does not discuss security deployments.”
Post interviews with prior mayoral candidates confirmed that the NYPD routinely offered and provided security protection during the final weeks of the campaign.