Police Commissioner Bill Bratton finally gave a figure for the number of new officers he wants added to the NYPD, requesting at least 450 new police Sunday to combat what he said was an increased threat from terrorist groups like ISIS.
Bratton said he hoped to get approval for the additional officers, a number that would be a compromise between the City Council and Mayor de Blasio and “very, very quickly.”
“I’m going to put another 450 police officers – if we get the approval…into our counterterrorism operations to increase the ability of our officers to protect critical sites around the city,” Bratton said on grocery mogul John Catsimatidis’s Sunday radio show on AM 970.
The City Council has pushed for City Hall to hire an additional 1,000 cops, but de Blasio has continually said that he believes the 35,000-member department has proper staffing.
Bratton said the new officers were needed combat the evolving threat from ISIS and its acolytes.
“We need to be very concerned about terrorism,” he said. “That threat has expanded significantly in the now 16 months I’ve been police commissioner.”
