Audit Report on the New York City Police Department’s Civilianization Efforts

Executive Summary

The New York City Police Department (NYPD), established in 1845, is the largest municipal police department in the United States and is responsible for policing more than eight million New York City (City) residents. One of the agency’s goals is “to enhance the quality of life in New York City by working in partnership with the community to enforce the law, preserve peace, protect the people, reduce fear, and maintain order.”

Civilianization is a process by which the NYPD identifies positions in the agency that do not need to be performed by uniformed personnel and replaces them with civilian employees. A New York City Comptroller’s Office audit report issued in 2002 determined that the City lost $24.4 million in annual potential cost savings because the NYPD did not civilianize positions in administrative units.^[1] The City Council has also called for civilianization “[t]o reduce the number of police officers working in civilian positions to maximize enforcement strength of the [NYPD], and to allocate City resources as budgeted.”

The NYPD designed its most recent formal civilianization initiative in Fiscal Year 2016, which called for the NYPD to hire 415 civilians. The NYPD completed this initiative by March 31, 2019. The NYPD by then had identified another 368 additional positions that it intended to civilianize, different than the 415 positions previously identified—this initiative has not been completed as of the issued date of this report.

According to the Fiscal Year 2020 Mayor’s Management Report, the NYPD employed nearly 36,000 officers and 17,500 civilians during that year. According to the Comprehensive Annual Financial Reports issued by the Comptroller’s Office for Fiscal Years 2019 and 2020, the NYPD spent $5.30 billion and $5.45 billion, respectively, for personal services during those years. The adopted budget for Fiscal Year 2021 included $4.80 billion for personal services in the NYPD.

Audit Findings and Conclusions

While the NYPD has made efforts to civilianize a number of positions within various units in the agency, those efforts have not been systematic and have been delayed when compared to the NYPD’s own timetables. Moreover, the NYPD was not able to provide supporting data for the progress it has reported to the City Council.

The NYPD reported to the City Council that its efforts resulted in the civilianization of 415 positions in Fiscal Years 2016 through 2019 in the following titles: Police Administrative Aide, Crime Analyst, Auto Service Worker and Evidence Property Control Specialist. However, our review of the data the NYPD provided in support of its claimed civilianization of 415 positions found that the agency was unable to substantiate its reported civilianization of 415 positions. Rather, the evidence the NYPD provided was not internally consistent, nor was it consistent with the corresponding data it submitted to the City Council. Consequently, the audit cannot assess the degree to which the figures the NYPD reported to the City Council accurately represent actual civilianized positions.

Additionally, according to the NYPD’s own reports, it did not civilianize the 415 positions until March 31, 2019, 21 months past the target date. Furthermore, although the NYPD reportedly had identified as many as 368 additional civilianizable positions as of May 2019, the agency acknowledged that as of April 2021 it had not yet actually civilianized any of those positions.

Moreover, the NYPD lacks documented policies and procedures governing the civilianization process which may have contributed to the weaknesses that we found in its efforts. And finally, the NYPD declined to provide information from its records pertaining to a comprehensive list of uniformed staff. As a result, we were unable to estimate the savings that the NYPD had achieved, could have achieved, and could potentially achieve in the future through civilianization efforts.

The above-described weaknesses, if not corrected, will likely continue to hinder management’s efforts to effectively utilize civilianization to help increase the number of officers it can assign full- time to policing duties and to realize related cost savings.

Audit Recommendations

To address the issues raised by this audit, we make four recommendations that the NYPD should:

1. Ensure that it captures and maintains verifiable supporting evidence of its activities, determinations, and results, pertaining to: (a) the identification of civilianizable duties and positions; and (b) its progress in converting them.
2. Ensure that when it identifies duties performed and/or positions occupied by uniformed personnel that are appropriate for civilian personnel, it converts those duties and positions to civilian jobs in a timely manner, within reasonable time frames.
3. Develop, disseminate, and implement written management policies and procedures for a comprehensive, continuous, and documented process of identifying duties and positions assigned to uniformed personnel that can be civilianized, as well as methods for implementing and documenting those conversions in a reasonable time frame.
4. Ensure it has the capacity to produce and appropriately share the data and other records it maintains related to personnel and the civilianization process to enable it and the public to determine if it is meeting the objectives of its civilianization mandate.

Agency Response

In its response, the NYPD agreed to implement one of the audit’s four recommendations (#3—develop, disseminate, and implement written management policies and procedures) and contended that it was already in compliance with another (#1—maintain supporting evidence of its activities, determinations, and results). However, that assertion is belied by our audit findings. Of the remaining two recommendations, the NYPD disagreed with one (#2—convert duties and positions to civilian jobs in a timely manner) and did not address the other one (#4—ensure that it has the capacity to produce and share data and records related to the civilianization process).

The NYPD also objected to the report’s methodology and presentation of its findings.  After carefully reviewing the NYPD’s arguments, we found no basis to change any of the report’s findings or conclusions.

[1] Audit #MG02-164F, Follow-up Audit Report on the Opportunities for Savings in Administrative Units through Civilianization in the New York City Police Department; Issued on May 31, 2002.