Blue city police sergeants say they’re paid less than subordinates as billions go to migrants

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NYPD Sergeants Benevolent Association blasts low pay, stall in contract talks

NYPD SBA President Vincent Vallelong says sergeants in the nation’s largest police department can be paid less than the officers they supervise, prompting many to leave as Democrat city leaders make little movement in contract negotiations.

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The NYPD is losing sergeants in droves as New York City leaders scale back the allure of achieving the rank for police officers, who can make more in annual salary due to a system that allows experienced members of the rank-and-file to make more than freshly promoted supervisors.

Under an expired contract, pay for sergeants starts at $98,000 and is capped at $118,000 after roughly five years, according to the NYPD’s Sergeants Benevolent Association (SBA). Patrol officers top out at $115,000 – meaning hundreds of sergeants make less than thousands of rank-and-file cops who have reached top pay for their position.

“We’re going to have guys potentially in the next year, year and a half that we’ll be making upwards of anywhere between 9 to $15,000 less than a police officer,” said Vincent Vallelong, the president of the SBA. “So you’re going to take a rank with more responsibility, you took a test, three tests, and at the end of the day, you’re losing money.”

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New York Mayor Eric Adams speaks as Jessica Tish, NYPD commissioner, looks on in Manhattan on Dec. 19, 2024. (REUTERS/Eduardo Munoz)

Over the course of a career, a sergeant could lose out on $80,000 to $100,000 in earnings, he said. 

Rather than creating a step program to incrementally increase sergeants’ pay, city taxpayers could be on the hook for an estimated $170 million if sergeants are promoted to top pay to outpace their subordinates, according to the SBA. 

“It doesn’t seem like anyone’s priorities are in the right place, because back in the ’90s, when the city needed to be turned around and we corrected crime, it was the NYPD that did it,” Vallelong told Fox News Digital.

For comparison, the city reached a $220 million deal with the Roosevelt Hotel, owned by the government of Pakistan, to house illegal immigrants.

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An NYPD sergeant’s patch and chevrons are pictured on an officer in 2022. (Luiz C. Ribeiro for New York Daily News/Tribune News Service via Getty Images)

“They’re bleeding money, the city, in all the wrong places,” Vallelong said. “Somebody in city governance either needs to go, or they really need to sit down and think this through and go back to basics. … Go back to basic math. Go back to basic economics.”

There are about 4,300 sergeants in the NYPD currently, roughly 200 shy of the target, according to the SBA. More than 70 left the department in January 2025, and 1,100 are eligible to retire by June. Others have been promoted to lieutenant in another blow to staffing levels.

An estimated 1,200 active-duty sergeants are working second jobs to make ends meet in the high-cost metropolitan area.

“We are currently going through the mediation process with the SBA and are committed to coming to a fair solution that will continue to protect public safety,” a spokesperson for New York City Mayor Eric Adams told Fox News Digital on Monday. 

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NYPD officers patrol as migrants congregate outside a hotel converted into a shelter in the Times Square area of New York City on Feb. 7, 2024. (Matthew McDermott for Fox News Digital)

While they see additional work in their normal range of duties due to understaffing, NYPD sergeants have also been given new assignments ranging from monitoring low-level nonemergency calls, vehicle pursuits from outside their own units, and reviewing hours of bodycam video on a monthly basis, according to the SBA. Those jobs give them less time to go out on patrol in New York City.

In that environment, officials worry top-pay officers will have no motivation to take promotion exams, earn promotions and refill depleted ranks.

Contract negotiations that had been scheduled for the first week of February were postponed, and Vallelong said the city has ignored proposals from the SBA.

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Adams, a former NYPD captain himself, previously said he would reach a new contract agreement. His office did not immediately respond to a request for comment from Fox News Digital.

Migrants are seen sleeping outside the Roosevelt Hotel in Midtown Manhattan on July 31, 2023. (Luiz C. Ribeiro/New York Daily News/Tribune News Service via Getty Images)

“The mayor was a sergeant at one point in time. He had to be in order to get to the point where he’s at,” Vallelong said. “And you would think that he would understand this more than anybody else, because I guarantee you that if push came to shove, he’s not taking this rank unless he’s getting compensated the right way.”

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Departments around the country are struggling with recruitment and retention, making experienced NYPD members attractive to smaller departments where the cost of living is lower, while those departments also increasingly appeal to cops fed up with life in the Big Apple.

Migrants arrive at the Roosevelt Hotel in Manhattan, New York, on July 25, 2023. (Julia Bonavita/Fox News Digital)

As a result, according to the SBA, NYPD members now face an increased workload while they have less experience overall.

“The mayor was just up in Albany asking for more money for migrants,” Vallelong said. “I know he’s had meetings with the president … maybe he should ask the president to step in like Clinton did back in those years and pass a bill in order to further law enforcement and recruit people and make it more of a respectable job again.”

“We have already spent over $7 billion on this crisis alone, and the previous administration committed only $237 million in funding to help house the migrants in our care and for future services,” a City Hall spokesperson told Fox News Monday. “We have continued to receive previously allocated reimbursements through the past week. We will discuss this matter directly with federal officials.”

Fox News’ Grace Taggart and Max Bacall contributed to this report.