Mayor Mamdani Has Not Staffed Up NYPD Oversight Office
It’s a personnel failure.
The city’s main independent overseer of the NYPD is operating with less than one-third of its workforce — and might even have more interns than staffers right now — the latest example of Mayor Mamdani failing to beef up oversight of the department.
Streetsblog has learned that the Office of the Inspector General of the NYPD now has just 10 staffers, down from as many as 37 in 2017. And the Department of Investigation, the mayoral agency that includes the inspector general, has funding to fill just two positions, a spokesperson said.
A source familiar with the office told Streetsblog that its work has slowed significantly. In the past, staff have typically juggled two dozen open investigations into police policy. As of April, it had just five open cases.
When told of these findings, a former investigator with the independent Civilian Complaint Review Board raised the alarm.
“Only a fully funded inspector general can lead to policy changes by lawmakers and the NYPD itself,” said Mac Muir, who later became the director of police oversight in Oakland after his stint supervising investigations for CCRB. “The other oversight offices [such as CCRB and the NYPD’s internal affairs bureau] only respond to complaints, to instances of misconduct usually by individual officers.”
Muir called the inspector general’s work “critical.” In January 2025, for example, the agency released a report on the “irresponsible and unprofessional” use of social media by officers and leadership.
The inspector general’s office could be investigating policies such as the criminal crackdown on cyclists instituted by NYPD Commissioner Jessica Tisch. But the agency has not released findings on new NYPD practices since January 2025, though it did release its an annual report in April.
Since then, it has gone completely silent.
In December, Jeanene Barrett, the head of the IG office, resigned, yet she remains listed as the NYPD’s inspector general on the Department of Investigation webpage.
The Mamdani’s administration has had four months to find the a new inspector general, but a source said that the process only recently started. A Streetsblog search for office employees on the business social media site LinkedIn revealed more interns than staff.
Mayor Mamdani is well aware of the staffing issues — or he should be. In August 2025, when he was in the heat of his election campaign, then-Comptroller Brad Lander and Public Advocate Jumaane Williams wrote an “urgent” letter to then-Mayor Eric Adams asking why the Inspector General’s office — which had 37 staffers during the de Blasio administration — had shrunk to just three.
In the nine months since that letter was issued, the office hired new staff, bringing the total to 10. By the end of his term, Adams had promised to get the staff up to 20, but now the Mamdani administration is aiming for 15, which is the “budgeted headcount,” according to a spokesperson for the Department of Investigation. That 15 is less than half of the 43 originally budgeted when the office was launched in 2014.
By comparison, Chicago’s police inspector general employs 18 staff to investigate an agency about one-third the size of the NYPD. In other words, there’s one inspector general staffer for every 667 cops in Chicago. In New York City, that ratio will be one to 2,400 — and only once the office is fully staffed.
When asked why the Mamdani administration has lowered the headcount of such a critical agency, a City Hall spokesperson said, “Government and police oversight and transparency are critical for the Mamdani administration.”
During his campaign for mayor, Mamdani had said he wanted the CCRB to be the “final voice” on NYPD, but he did not follow through on that promise after deciding to retain NYPD Commissioner Jessica Tisch, who was originally appointed by Eric Adams.
The revelation of the lack of staffing at another crucial oversight office of the NYPD comes as Mayor Mamdani has been under criticism for not taking on the NYPD.
And he even defended the NYPD after allegations that it had coordinated with federal immigration authorities, despite the mayor’s insistence that city cops should refrain from such cooperation.
Following initial publication of this story, the Department of Investigation claimed that it felt it needed to wait for a new DOI commissioner to appoint a new NYPD inspector general.
A spokesperson for the mayor insisted his his promises to increase department oversight never extended to the NYPD Inspector General’s Office.
“He never made a campaign promise on the NYPD OIG,” said City Hall spokesman Sam Raskin told Streetsblog.
This story was updated to more precisely describe the mayor’s campaign commitment and the inspector general’s annual report.
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