Northeast
Blue city police sergeants say they're paid less than subordinates as billions go to migrants
The NYPD is losing sergeants in droves as New York City leaders scale back the allure of achieving the rank for police officers, who can make more in annual salary due to a system that allows experienced members of the rank-and-file to make more than freshly promoted supervisors.
Under an expired contract, pay for sergeants starts at $98,000 and is capped at $118,000 after roughly five years, according to the NYPD’s Sergeants Benevolent Association (SBA). Patrol officers top out at $115,000 – meaning hundreds of sergeants make less than thousands of rank-and-file cops who have reached top pay for their position.
“We’re going to have guys potentially in the next year, year and a half that will be making upwards of anywhere between 9 to $15,000 less than a police officer,” said Vincent Vallelong, the president of the SBA. “So you’re going to take a rank with more responsibility, you took a test, three tests, and at the end of the day, you’re losing money.”
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New York Mayor Eric Adams speaks as Jessica Tish, NYPD commissioner, looks on in Manhattan on Dec. 19, 2024. (REUTERS/Eduardo Munoz)
Over the course of a career, a sergeant could lose out on $80,000 to $100,000 in earnings, he said.
Rather than creating a step program to incrementally increase sergeants’ pay, city taxpayers could be on the hook for an estimated $170 million if sergeants are promoted to top pay to outpace their subordinates, according to the SBA.
“It doesn’t seem like anyone’s priorities are in the right place, because back in the ’90s, when the city needed to be turned around and we corrected crime, it was the NYPD that did it,” Vallelong told Fox News Digital.
For comparison, the city reached a $220 million deal with the Roosevelt Hotel, owned by the government of Pakistan, to house illegal immigrants.
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An NYPD sergeant’s patch and chevrons are pictured on an officer in 2022. (Luiz C. Ribeiro for New York Daily News/Tribune News Service via Getty Images)
“They’re bleeding money, the city, in all the wrong places,” Vallelong said. “Somebody in city governance either needs to go, or they really need to sit down and think this through and go back to basics. … Go back to basic math. Go back to basic economics.”
There are about 4,300 sergeants in the NYPD currently, roughly 200 shy of the target, according to the SBA. More than 70 left the department in January 2025, and 1,100 are eligible to retire by June. Others have been promoted to lieutenant in another blow to staffing levels.
An estimated 1,200 active-duty sergeants are working second jobs to make ends meet in the high-cost metropolitan area.
“We are currently going through the mediation process with the SBA and are committed to coming to a fair solution that will continue to protect public safety,” a spokesperson for New York City Mayor Eric Adams told Fox News Digital on Monday.
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NYPD officers patrol as migrants congregate outside a hotel converted into a shelter in the Times Square area of New York City on Feb. 7, 2024. (Matthew McDermott for Fox News Digital)
While they see additional work in their normal range of duties due to understaffing, NYPD sergeants have also been given new assignments ranging from monitoring low-level nonemergency calls, vehicle pursuits from outside their own units, and reviewing hours of bodycam video on a monthly basis, according to the SBA. Those jobs give them less time to go out on patrol in New York City.
In that environment, officials worry top-pay officers will have no motivation to take promotion exams, earn promotions and refill depleted ranks.
Contract negotiations that had been scheduled for the first week of February were postponed, and Vallelong said the city has ignored proposals from the SBA.
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Adams, a former NYPD captain himself, previously said he would reach a new contract agreement.
Migrants are seen sleeping outside the Roosevelt Hotel in Midtown Manhattan on July 31, 2023. (Luiz C. Ribeiro/New York Daily News/Tribune News Service via Getty Images)
“The mayor was a sergeant at one point in time. He had to be in order to get to the point where he’s at,” Vallelong said. “And you would think that he would understand this more than anybody else, because I guarantee you that if push came to shove, he’s not taking this rank unless he’s getting compensated the right way.”
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Departments around the country are struggling with recruitment and retention, making experienced NYPD members attractive to smaller departments where the cost of living is lower, while those departments also increasingly appeal to cops fed up with life in the Big Apple.
Migrants arrive at the Roosevelt Hotel in Manhattan, New York, on July 25, 2023. (Julia Bonavita/Fox News Digital)
As a result, according to the SBA, NYPD members now face an increased workload while they have less experience overall.
“The mayor was just up in Albany asking for more money for migrants,” Vallelong said. “I know he’s had meetings with the president … maybe he should ask the president to step in like Clinton did back in those years and pass a bill in order to further law enforcement and recruit people and make it more of a respectable job again.”
“We have already spent over $7 billion on this crisis alone, and the previous administration committed only $237 million in funding to help house the migrants in our care and for future services,” a City Hall spokesperson told Fox News Monday. “We have continued to receive previously allocated reimbursements through the past week. We will discuss this matter directly with federal officials.”
Fox News’ Grace Taggart and Max Bacall contributed to this report.
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PORTLAND, Maine (WGME) — It’s graduation season, and 37 medical school grads received their degrees Saturday at USM.
The students graduated from the MaineHealth Maine Track program, which is a part of Tufts Univeristy in Boston.
Program leaders say students specifically trained in community-based medical practices across Maine.
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Eleven of the graduates will begin their residencies at MaineHealth Maine Medical Center in Portland.
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The preliminary injunction ordering SchoolCare to continue paying Dover educators’ health care claims may have implications for the 89 other school districts that paid SchoolCare’s special assessment, according to Anthony Carr of Shaheen and Gordon.
“This could be significant for those 89 other towns and districts,” said Carr, who is representing Superintendent Christine Boston in the lawsuit against SchoolCare.
SchoolCare threatened to stop paying claims on May 1 if Dover failed to pay a special assessment of $1.7 million above and beyond its normal monthly premium in order to cover the insurance risk pool’s losses. Dover refused to pay the special assessment, arguing that it was illegal.
Superior Court Judge John Curran, finding that school employees covered by SchoolCare could face “irreparable harm,” ordered SchoolCare to continue to pay “covered healthcare claims of Dover employees, spouses, dependents, and retirees.”
Curran also found that if the case went to trial, Dover would “likely succeed on the merits” of its case.
Whether the case will go to trial remains an open question, as the judge has not ruled on the claims of SchoolCare and the New Hampshire Secretary of State that the court is not the proper jurisdiction for Dover’s complaint.
“The court will duly consider the important jurisdictional question this case presents in ruling upon those pending motions to dismiss …,” Judge Curran wrote. “For the purposes of this motion, the court finds that the plaintiffs have a sufficient likelihood of establishing jurisdiction at this stage.”
Carr said the order for the preliminary injunction is “very helpful, very favorable.” However, the only “asterisk” is that there is a pending motion to dismiss for lack of jurisdiction.
Favorable ruling hinges on pending jurisdictional argument
Both New Hampshire Secretary of State David Scanlan, through the New Hampshire Bureau of Securities Regulation and its counsel, which intervened, and SchoolCare, have filed motions to dismiss the case with jurisdictional arguments.
“The Bureau respectfully asks this Court to dismiss the District’s Complaint in its entirety because the claims contained therein fall under the Bureau’s exclusive jurisdiction and authority and are best submitted to the Bureau’s administrative enforcement mechanism,” according to court documents.
SchoolCare has argued the plaintiffs can’t show a “likelihood of success on the merits” as the matter needs to be brought before the secretary of state, not the Superior Court.
“Basically, SchoolCare and the Secretary of State are trying to argue that none of these claims brought by Dover, none of these claims brought by Dr. Boston, should be in any court in the state, and these are all issues that should be squarely and solely resolved by the Secretary of State. So that’s really the only lingering issue in that regard,” said Carr.
The lawyer said they’re “hopeful,” based on their comprehension of the law, that a “favorable ruling” will soon come out on the jurisdiction argument.
“Once the jurisdictional issue is resolved, it will be much more clear that the 89 towns and districts likely have causes of action, similar breach of contract actions against SchoolCare to recoup the funds that they were forced to pay under duress, and SchoolCare may not have had a lawful basis to request or receive those funds,” Carr said.
89 members who paid assessment could follow Dover’s lead
Carr explained what the preliminary injunction could mean to the other districts and towns.
“If the jurisdiction were to get resolved favorably, then what those 89 towns and districts would be able to do is piggyback this order, which although it’s directly granting a preliminary injunction, what it’s inherently doing as part of that is saying that we are likely to succeed on the merits of our claim. And one of those claims is the breach of contract claims. So, if we were to be successful on jurisdiction, those other 89 towns and districts would be pretty wise to say that they very well may have viable claims as well,” said Carr.
“This order recognizes that all 89 of those towns and districts may have legal rights to recoup those funds and redeploy them for the betterment of their communities and children, including going toward educational services and staffing. I hope that other towns and school districts will follow the lead of Dover and Dr. Boston and stand up to SchoolCare and demand what’s right,” Carr said in a press release.
He called the judge’s ruling a “huge win for Dover.”
He highlighted one of the immediate results being that district teachers and staff “don’t have to worry about coverage stopping in the middle of a policy period. That’s amazing. We heard stories about a kid who was scheduled to have heart surgery. I believe a staff member needed a kidney transplant. And so, the stakes are very high. And these are people, real humans in Dover, who were worried about how this might go,” said Carr.
“On the flip side, if Dover was forced to pay the ransom, we offered testimony that $1.7 million is the equivalent of about 16 and a half full-time salaries. And we’ve seen in other towns and districts, not just the budget being thrown into crisis, but again, real humans with families being laid off. So it both preserves the status quo for the health coverage for all the fantastic teachers and staff in Dover. And it also, at least for the time being, precludes great teachers and staff within Dover from being laid off,” Carr said.
“I would not want to be the 89th or the 88th town or district that pursues recourse. I think it’s important to act urgently,” said Carr. “I guess I’m on a bit of a personal mission to kind of see all these issues through and to make sure that SchoolCare does not benefit from its own improper conduct. So, we will see what the future holds, but I may very well be representing some of these towns and districts. I would say there’s really no need for any of the towns and districts to wait (for the jurisdictional issue),” said Carr.
Portsmouth agreed to pay assessment ‘under protest’
Trevor McCourt, Portsmouth’s deputy city attorney, said “the city of Portsmouth has not made payment on the $1.57 million assessment at this time. We’ve made arrangement to make that payment by July 15th of this year, and the City Council’s vote was specifically to authorize that payment under protest.”
McCourt said “the last act of the City Council was to agree to make that payment under protest. Certainly, I don’t know what the plan will be moving forward. We plan to make the payment. We continue to make our monthly payments.”
He said they’re “certainly encouraged” by the ruling out of the Strafford Superior Court, and that he personally has already commented “pretty publicly, I agree with the position that Dover is taking.”
What’s next for the case?
Carr said right now, they have “a laser focus on an order on the jurisdictional issue, just so we can make sure that we’ve got the green light to keep these claims in court where we feel like they belong.”
Carr said if they receive a favorable ruling on jurisdiction, they’re attention will be on prosecuting their case and going to trial if needed.
“One of the elements of getting a preliminary injunction is the court has to find a likelihood of succeeding on the merits, meaning that the court is not quite, but kind of pre-adjudicating whether our claims are going to win or not,” said Carr. “So, for the court to find at this early stage that we’ve met that threshold is a great indication, but it doesn’t necessarily mean game over. What it means game over for is that Dover does not have to pay the $1.7 million now. The case will proceed on a 12-month trial track after this, and whether it’s through a jury trial or through pre-trial briefing, we will be hopeful to get a result saying that we never have to pay the $1.7 million.”
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