The NYPD shelled out nearly $1.1 billion on overtime last fiscal year – the most of any city agency, but still nearly 14% less than the prior 12 months, The Post has learned.
Cops and non-uniformed NYPD staffers pocketed a combined $1,087,616,025 in OT for the fiscal year ending June 30 – including a jaw-dropping 55 captains, lieutenants, detectives and other staffers who each raked in more than $100,000 in OT beyond their actual salaries, an analysis of newly released payroll records.
Leading the way was now-retired Lt. John Tancredi, who racked up 1,256 extra hours – worth $163,681 – bringing his total pay to $345,249.
Lt. Christopher Cheng, a 27-year veteran, was second with $147,758 in paid OT — that’s 1,122 extra hours worked — bringing his total earnings to $340,249 with base pay and fringe benefits.
Cheng, who works in Midtown’s Manhattan South precinct where cops routinely clock in extra hours monitoring protests, declined to comment through his union reps. Tancredi could not be reached.
NYPD overtime spending – which accounted for 18% of the agency’s $6 billion payroll – wound up a whopping 59% over the $601.9 million budgeted for fiscal 2025.
Still, overall overtime dropped 13.7% from $1,259,696,367 the previous fiscal year after Mayor Eric Adams and newly appointed NYPD Commissioner Jessica Tisch laid out new rules in December aimed at cracking down on sky-high OT.
The move came as investigators probed allegations that disgraced ex-Chief of Department Jeffrey Maddrey coerced a female subordinate to have office sex with him in exchange for overtime.
Ex-Lt. Quathisha Epps, a 19-year-vet who retired in January a month after The Post uncovered the scandal, was the department’s highest paid employee in fiscal 2024 — pulling in $403,515, including $204,453.48 in overtime pay.
The NYPD demanded Epps return $231,890.75 in paid overtime, but Epps called the request retaliation for her blowing the whistle on Maddrey, once the department’s No. 2 cop, The Post reported in May.
The newly released payroll data raise new questions about Epps.
Epps reimbursed the NYPD 1,425 hours of overtime worth $176,662, but she received another $253,996 for was called “other pay” in fiscal 2025 — beyond the $85,148 she earned in base pay for working July through December, according to payroll data.
Epps’ lawyer Eric Sanders declined to comment on the $253,996 payment but told The Post the overtime was taken from the ex-cop without her blessing — and that she’ll seek a court order to get it back.
“She didn’t return anything,” he said. “They stole it from her. There’s no legal authority to do what they did.”
“The savior stole it,” quipped the lawyer, speaking of Tisch.
All 55 cops hauling in over $100,000 in OT have either since retired or have worked the minimum 20 years needed to be eligible to retire and collect pension benefits, records show.
Many cops work huge amounts of overtime in their last years on the force before retiring because their lifetime pensions are based on the average salary (with OT) of their last three years.
Christopher Hermann, a former NYPD crime-analyst supervisor who is now an assistant professor at Manhattan’s John Jay College of Criminal Justice, said a big reason for the balloon OT payments is simply a shortage of cops.
“With record numbers of retirements each month/year, the overall number of NYPD cops is relatively low, compared to other years,” he said.
There were 33,614 NYPD cops working for the NYPD last fiscal year – similar to staffing levels the previous two fiscal years, records show. But that is 7.8% below the 36,461 average in fiscal 2019 — before the pandemic — when agency staffers made a combined $727.9 million in OT working 3.2 million less overtime hours.
NYPD non-uniformed personnel staffing dropped 11.1% since fiscal 2019, from 17,025 to 15,135.
Abdullah Ar Rafee, data manager for the nonprofit think tank Empire Center for Public Policy, which tracks government payrolls statewide, credited the NYPD for making some strides cutting overtime the past year but said it still has a long way to go.
He also insisted staffing shortages aren’t the main reason OT is still through the roof– it’s years of agency budget bungling.
“There is still a big issue of mismanagement that needs to be addressed,” the data manager added. “They blow their overtime budgets year after year – typically in the first six months.”
The NYPD did not return messages.
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