By Thomas Tracy
New York Daily News
NEW YORK — Nearly 1,100 new recruits were sworn in at the Police Academy in Queens on Wednesday, which NYPD Commissioner Jessica Tisch said was the largest class the department has seen “in nearly a decade.”
“This is proof that people want to be cops again,” Tisch said as she addressed the crowd of 1,093 future officers. “It shows that this profession is back in a big way.”
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This new class, coupled with the nearly 1,000 cadets who graduated from the academy last month and an upcoming class expected to be sworn in by the end of the year, makes this the largest number of recruits sworn into the NYPD in one year since 2006, Tisch said.
The NYPD is also on pace to “have the most hires in a single year in recorded history, going back to 1983,” she said.
“That scale is not just a measure of hiring, it’s a measure of renewal,” Tisch said. “It tells us policing in this city is being rebuilt, the call to service is being answered and that the future of public safety is being secured by those who choose to raise their right hands this morning.”
This year’s surge in hiring was a “determined push” to confront “a hiring crisis we faced just months ago,” Tisch said.
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“The truth is simple,” she added. “The city’s safety depends on cops and the most strategic thing is to hire more of them.”
A quarter of the new recruits were born outside the U.S. , officials said. Together, the class speaks 34 different languages and 68% of them live in New York City .
After six months of rigorous training, the recruit class will graduate and become police officers.
“You’ll see things most people never see, the raw edges of life in this city,” Tisch told the aspiring officers. “You’ll confront fear but you will also witness courage.”
“You’ll see heroism in its purest form,” she added, harkening back to the death of NYPD Officer Didarul Islam at the hands of Park Ave. spree shooter Shane Tamura . “You’ll be there when people face their darkest hours and you’ll be the difference between despair and hope.”
The new class comes after the NYPD earlier this year reduced the number of college credits required to join the force.
The recruits sworn in Wednesday only needed 24 college credits, a steep drop from the 60 previously required.
At the same time, the department plans to prioritize fitness at the academy and reinstated a long-standing requirement of completing a 1.5-mile run in less than 14 minutes and 21 seconds.
Police Benevolent Association President Patrick Hendry said the new recruits are a “welcome relief for our overworked and burned-out members on the streets.”
“But the real question is: will they stick around?” Hendry asked. “Every New York City police officer knows they can find a less punishing workload, a better quality of life and competitive compensation in virtually any other police department in our area.”
“The NYPD staffing crisis won’t end unless the city does more to keep the talented cops it already has,” he added.
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