Mayor Adams is cracking down excessive spending on overtime throughout the NYPD, FDNY and town’s Departments of Correction and Sanitation — simply days after bombshell allegations surfaced that former NYPD Chief of Police Jeffrey Maddrey was buying and selling intercourse for pay for extra time, the Daily News has discovered.
In an inside directive written Monday and posted on-line Thursday, Adams ordered his first deputy mayor, chief of workers, deputy mayor for public security and the Office of Management and Budget to supervise overtime spending from town’s uniformed providers and supply month-to-month reviews to make sure businesses have been on observe with their annual extra time projections.
Overtime spending discount targets are nonetheless being labored out, a spokesperson for Adams stated Friday.
Adams additionally ordered every division to restrict the quantity of people that can approve extra time and to supply an entire checklist of their names to the mayor’s workplace.
“Control of using extra time, together with paid compensatory time, shall be the direct accountability of the commissioner of every company,” Adams wrote in his directive.
These safeguards have been introduced simply days after NYPD Lt. Quathisha Epps, one of many division’s high extra time earners, accused Maddrey of predatory sexual harassment and coercing her to supply “undesirable sexual favors” in change in extra time pay.
In a criticism filed with the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, Epps alleged that Maddrey repeatedly requested her for intercourse “in alternate for extra time alternatives at work.”
Maddrey resigned final Friday as quickly because the criticism was filed, inflicting an enormous upheaval on the high of the division.
In the wake of the scandal, Police Commissioner Jessica Tisch removed internal affairs chief Miguel Iglesias from his post through the weekend.
On Friday, 10 officers assigned to the Internal Affairs Bureau — together with two lieutenants, two sergeants and 5 detectives — have been moved to different assignments as a uncommon purge of the unit continued, paperwork shared with The News present.
Adams by no means talked about Maddrey or the scandal in his directive, which now instructs the commissioners of the NYPD, FDNY, DOC and DSNY to “personally evaluate those that earn probably the most extra time of their respective businesses, at the very least quarterly, to make sure that extra time is distributed equitably.” and to keep away from potential abuse.”
“The metropolis faces fiscal constraints that require steady monitoring of company spending,” Adams famous. “Overtime management is necessary for good governance and extra time ought to solely be accredited the place it’s justified and acceptable.”
Overtime spending was rampant within the NYPD through the Adams administration and topped $1 billion for the primary time within the newest fiscal 12 months, which ended July 1.
At a March City Council listening to, former Police Commissioner Edward Caban admitted that, eight months into the fiscal 12 months earlier than the beginning of summer time, the division had it blew the overtime budget by more than $100 million — greater than 50% in comparison with forecasts.
At the time, Caban stated the extra time cash was getting used to place extra police on the subway to fight rising crime underground.
Despite rampant extra time spending, Adams exempted the NYPD, FDNY, and Sanitation Department from earlier rounds of metropolis finances cuts that drastically impacted another businesses, together with libraries, which have been compelled in consequence to eradicate common Sunday service.
City Council Finance Committee Chairman Justin Brannan stated Friday that Adams took motion towards the NYPD’s extraordinary spending solely after the allegations towards Maddrey emerged.
“It should not take a scandal to get everybody’s consideration,” Brannan (D-Brooklyn) stated. “The Council has been demanding solutions in regards to the mismanagement of the NYPD finances for years solely to get excuses for protests and parades. At instances they (the NYPD) have gone as far as guilty the Council for his or her unrestrained spending on extra time!
“This isn’t a fundamental problem,” stated Brannan, who added that he hoped Tisch would take curbing extra time bills critically. “This comes from a tradition on the high.”
In his criticism, Epps and his lawyer Eric Sanders allege that Maddrey and different NYPD leaders have been capable of alter the checklist of high extra time earners to “conceal the true variety of extra time abusers through the former Police Commissioner Edward Caban’s administration and the present administration.”
Key employees incomes extra time who by no means appeared on the extra time checklist embrace Maddrey, new division chief John Chell and NYPD Deputy Commissioner for Operations Kaz Daughtry, the criticism notes.
A Daily News report published in November named Epps the highest-paid member of the NYPD with a wage of $406,515, $118,203 greater than the $285,313 former commissioner Caban earned in fiscal 2024.
Epps’ extra time instantly raised eyebrows as he labored in Maddrey’s workplace as help workers and was not within the subject or responding to emergencies.
The News report additionally outlined Epps’ reported 1,600 hours of extra time, which earned her $204,000. Sources stated the division would evaluate Epps’ pay and the lieutenant was suspended on Dec. 18, two days later he asked for a pension.
Epps’ resignation got here seven months earlier than his twentieth 12 months with the division, when he would have earned full retirement advantages.
A News evaluation of his wage exhibits his pension might be at the very least $150,000 a 12 months tax-free and maybe nearer to $232,000.
In gentle of the allegations towards Maddrey, Sanders despatched a letter to Commissioner Tisch’s workplace, requesting that The EPPs will be reinstated so he can retire as he had deliberate.
The Manhattan district lawyer’s workplace and town’s Department of Investigation are investigating allegations of sexual abuse and harassment, in addition to claims that lists of extra time earners have been altered, officers stated.
At an NYPD promotion ceremony on Monday, Commissioner Tisch stated he wouldn’t settle for something lower than “moral management” within the wake of sexual harassment allegations.
“Leadership is the cornerstone of the NYPD: good, sturdy, moral management,” Tisch he stated through the ceremony at NYPD headquarters.
Despite the directive to cut back extra time spending, Adams made it clear that nothing will prohibit “using extra time to fulfill the calls for of emergency providers.”
If an occasion or accident just like the massive amount of protests following the death of George Floyd arises, businesses are anticipated to cut back “non-urgent extra time” to compensate “if such emergency prices trigger an company to overspend towards its plan with out discover,” Adams wrote in his directive.
With Rocco Parascandola
