[Alberta's Child]

NYC has more than 36,000 police officers, so this is barely even a drop in the bucket.

The better news is that if 300-800 of them are retiring immediately, then I’ll bet several thousand more are visiting their doctors this week to qualify for riot-related and COVID-related “permanent disability.”

[Covenantor]

NYC has more than 36,000 police officers, so this is barely even a drop in the bucket.

Taking retirement...the key phrase. These are officers that have put in their time with attendant promotions along the way...not beat cops. Not only are they unlikely to be beat cops, but given those numbers and how quickly this has been leaked/released chances are very good that almost all would be upper echelon that have heard the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse pounding towards them. They know that Krazy Kyser Wilhelm will throw them to the wolves sooner rather than later.

Expect lots of empty desks at headquarters and division commanders offices. Huge immediate hit to NYC budget...upper six figure pensions.

As for replacements, Irish need not apply.

[Reno89519]

Since the military currently classifies Covid as a disqualifying disability, does that carry over to everyone?

[Svartalfiar]

NYC has more than 36,000 police officers, so this is barely even a drop in the bucket.

Not really. To suddenly lose 300-800 employees you weren't expecting to? That's still decent number. And likely all at relatively high positions, if they're all able to retire immediately. So more like 3-800 out of a couple thousand, not out of the entire force.

But even out of the entire force, that's gonna hurt. Add in resignations that might start coming in (those are just unexpected retirement numbers), as well as normal retirements, and there goes a lot of cops. Other articles here mentioned that NYC needs about 12-1400 recruits entering cop school every year to hit their attrition numbers. This past year was a class size of 400. So just these retirements alone is going to take a full year or two of recruits to replace.

And that doesn't even get into the others that you mentioned: those trying to find other ways out right now, who aren't quite at retirement age.