New York City Comptroller Brad Lander and Public Advocate Jumaane D. Williams are sounding the alarm about the Adams’ administration’s lack of staff at the Office of the Inspector General for the NYPD. The office, created through a law sponsored by the two leaders over a decade ago, has been cut from 37 employees in 2017 down to as few as 3 as of August 2025.
In a letter to the mayor, the two leaders decried this drastic reduction, saying that “As members of the City Council at the time, we co-sponsored Local Law 70 of 2013, which created the OIG-NYPD with the goal of empowering an independent office to scrutinize NYPD policies, practices, and procedures, particularly where civil rights and liberties are concerned. That mission remains as vital today as it was at the time of the office’s founding…With only three positions filled, OIG-NYPD’s capacity to conduct independent investigations and issue timely findings has been severely undermined.”
In FY 2022, the office had a headcount of 19 - still only half of what it was budgeted for in that year. Correlating to the drop in staff has been a substantial reduction in output – last year, the office released just one substantive, non-legally required report.
These findings come after a January oversight hearing on the Inspector General’s office held by Council Member Gale A. Brewer, chair of the Committee on Oversight and Investigations, details of which can be found here. In July, Council Member Brewer passed legislation designed to get a clearer picture of what’s limiting the OIG’s work on police oversight through new reporting requirements.
The officials note that the NYPD oversight has been reduced far more than similar investigative bodies. OIG-NYPD, which operates within DOI, has faced far steeper cuts than the agency overall. Since January 2022, DOI’s budgeted headcount dropped by 33% and its filled headcount by 18.9%, with its budget reduced from $31.67 million to $26.2 million. Over the same period, OIG-NYPD saw a 49% cut to budgeted headcount and an 84.2% drop in filled positions.
In light of this deeply troubling trend, the leaders pose questions to the administration including:
- What accounts for the sharp decline in filled positions at OIG-NYPD since January 2022, and why has the office experienced a higher attrition rate than other DOI inspector general offices
- What steps has DOI taken to recruit, onboard, and retain staff within OIG-NYPD?
- Does DOI plan to restore or expand the number of filled and budgeted positions for OIG-NYPD in future budget cycles?
- How does DOI determine what constitutes an appropriate number of budgeted positions for OIG-NYPD in relation to the size and complexity of the NYPD?
The full letter is available here.
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