UPDATE: Easy Come, Easy Go: UWS 20th Precinct Sees New Police Officers Diverted to Transit

By Daniel Katzive

UPDATE: Wednesday, January 29 at 3 p.m.: City Councilmember Gale Brewer, who had advocated for additional manpower in the 20th Precinct late last year, told West Side Rag on Wednesday she was very upset when she heard the officers had been reassigned.

She said that she did not know if the loss of manpower was going to be permanent.

“We need them on the West Side desperately,” Brewer told the Rag. “We are upset and we are going to fight it.” She added that she planned to put her concerns in writing and request that the officers be brought back to the neighborhood.

Original Story

Neighborhood residents and an Upper West Side City Council representative celebrated the news three weeks ago that the 20th Precinct had received 15 new officers from the latest NYPD Police Academy class. Their arrival helped boost staffing at the command, which had been running well-below historical levels amidst a surge in high-profile robberies and assaults.

However, just three weeks later, the new arrivals have left the West Side and a cohort from an earlier class has also been reassigned.

Deputy Inspector Candida Pun-Sullivan, commanding officer of the precinct, told the 2-0’s community council meeting on Monday evening that the 15 officers from the January Academy graduating class had been shifted to the Transit Bureau, part of a citywide surge to combat subway crime.

The command has also lost 12 officers from the class that graduated on October 31. They were moved to another precinct.

The officers from that earlier class had been working foot posts throughout the precinct, particularly along the Broadway and Columbus Avenue retail corridors and by the Amsterdam Houses development, according to Pun-Sullivan. Residents should now expect to see fewer officers on foot in those areas relative to the past couple of weeks, though it is possible that the officers moved to Transit could return to the 2-0 at some point in the future.

The New York Post reported over the weekend that department-wide orders had been issued Friday to implement the surge in overnight subway policing announced by Governor Kathy Hochul and Mayor Eric Adams on January 16. About 700 officers in total are being moved underground, according to the Post, including a number of recent Academy graduates. The article also indicated officers are being moved from already-understaffed court security roles.

Steve Anderson, president of the Upper West Side Coalition of Block Associations and Community Groups, was at the precinct council meeting and called the news a big deal. “Nothing makes people feel calmer and assured than seeing cops on the street, and, therefore, having 27 new cops, even rookies, was a very, very good thing for most people’s anxiety level,” he told the Rag. “And to find out they have been redeployed to other places is disappointing.”  

The presence of additional officers in the command until this week has coincided with a drop in reported crime. The period from December 30 through Sunday, January 26, saw a 22 percent decline in major felonies compared to the same period a year earlier, though within those numbers robberies did tick higher, from 8 to 11. The majority of those robberies involved what Inspector Pun-Sullivan called “shopliftings gone bad,” meaning a shoplifter was confronted by a store employee or security guard and threatened physical violence, upgrading the seriousness of the crime. Eight of the 11 robberies resulted in arrests as of Monday. 

There were no murders or rapes in the precinct during this period and, in fact, there have been no murders in the precinct since September 2023.

West Side Rag has reached out to City Council Member Gale Brewer’s office and will update this article with her comments.