"To Extort And Serve"

The NYPD, thousands of officers short, is having trouble finding and retaining new recruits. One possible reason :

[Police Commissioner Ray] Kelly speculates that the just-graduated class should have been almost double the size it was, and he calls the academy's near-record 16 percent dropout rate "high."…

What happened?

During the last round of contract negotiations, the Patrolmen's Benevolent Association promoted the rookie-cop salary cut in exchange for raises for senior serving cops….

Whereupon the PBA took to accusing City Hall of being responsible for the crisis the union itself essentially had created—in the expectation of keeping the higher pay for senior cops as public pressure forced big raises for rookies.

It must be great comfort to the newest members of the 'Thin Blue Line' to know their salaries were cut–by their own colleagues –to make them politically useful.