Local Municipalities Billed For Poaching New NYPD Officers
NEW YORK (CBSNewYork) - There's apparently high demand for New York's Finest, outside city limits.
New York City has sent bills of around $50,000 to Rockland County's Clarkstown Police Department, the Pelham Fire Department in Westchester County, and to the New York State Police for poaching recent police academy graduates, according to the Daily News.
"We don't want to encourage a system where you can just have somebody, in a sense, feign interest in joining the NYPD to get the training and then go work for a police department closer to home," NYPD spokesman Paul Browne told WCBS 880.
Browne told WCBS 880 that three cadets who graduated in December were poached by these other localities, which is against state law.
"In terms of the numbers, it's not enormous. That class was probably about 1,200 peeople and three of them were picked up by other agencies within a couple of months. So it's not a huge problem but it's something we don't want to encourage," Browne told WCBS 880.
State law requires the new municipality to pay for the officer's training costs if the officer is poached within three years of graduation. Browne said the city invests a lot in new cops.
"It may not be where the other department just says, 'hey, we're going to send this guy there for training and then he can work for us,' but the effect is the same. They've gotten an officer whose training has been paid for by New York City taxpayers and he's working in Westchester instead," Browne told WCBS 880.
"It's not something we want to encourage. It could be an invitation to other departments to exploit the training expense," Browne said.
The Daily News reported none of the bills sent by the city have been contested by the municipalities.
What do you think of other counties poaching NYPD officers? Do you think the state is right to charge for poaching young cops from other municipalities? Sound off below...
