The result is a police department struggling to do anything more than provide the basic service of responding to calls, investigating crimes and making arrests.

In the past few months, Syracuse Police Chief Mark Rusin has shut down a dedicated gang violence prevention task force, an overnight detective shift and an intelligence unit. The chief said his leadership team figured out ways to continue getting the work of those units done, but if the uniformed staffing level now at 350 officers continues to drop, the ability to creatively adjust will be erased.

“I think it’s beyond urgent at this point,” Rusin said. “What happens is you’re put into a constant cycle of evaluation every time somebody retires. ... You have to evaluate every position, every program to protect the core of what you do.”

Calling it his top priority, the chief said having adequate staffing is vital to providing adequate response times to calls, as well as solving and preventing crimes.

He also points to the impact on officer wellness from the stress of long hours and heavy call volumes.

“These officers are just working at an incredible pace and they’re handling incredibly difficult calls,” Rusin said.

SPD’s current staffing level appears to be at its lowest level since the 1950s, an analysis of FBI and state records shows. It peaked around 530 in the late 1990s, and was above 500 as recently as 2009.

The decline has been steady since 2012, when there were 468 sworn officers.

In recent years, SPD has budgeted for about 420 positions, but Rusin dropped that to 385 with the current budget because he wanted it to more accurately reflect what can realistically be filled by the end of the fiscal year.

The chief’s biggest worry is a continued staffing drop that would threaten the department’s ability to reorganize at times in order to protect the core mission.

“You only have so many opportunities to make those types of moves,” he said.

The chief has been busy with new measures aimed at reversing the trend. He has convinced the mayor to drop a residency requirement, implemented a new-hire bonus program and advocated for a way to put more money in officers’ wallets if they stick around. And there’s some retirement relief on the horizon — an unintended consequence of Mayor Stephanie Miner’s 15-year-old decision to put a pause on hiring new cops.

More aggressive recruiting

One of the most important people in the SPD these days is a 12-year veteran cop, Lt. Dallas Pelz. Earlier this year, Rusin made Pelz the department’s training director, a position that also oversees recruiting.

Pelz, a former detective, has been working with his predecessor in the position, current Deputy Chief Jason Tom, and Rusin on a comprehensive strategy to sell the SPD as a great place to work.

The department gets to every job fair it can find. It’s been holding a series of open house nights at the new police headquarters on the city’s West Side.

There’s also a training program for potential recruits to help them prepare for both the civil service written exam and the physical fitness test that all new cops must pass.

“We’ve kind of developed a little bit of a following of people that have come, and there’s been quite a few that have been successful,” Pelz said.

In addition, the department is rolling out new financial incentives. New police officers who graduate from the SPD academy can now get a $10,000 hiring bonus. Experienced police who transfer from another department in the state to Syracuse are eligible for a $20,000 bonus.

The payments to new recruits aim to augment the department’s starting salary of $67,000, which is below the $72,000 that new Onondaga County Sheriff’s Office deputies receive and the $83,000 paid to new New York State Police troopers.

Pelz said the bonuses are an important tool in what’s become a competitive hiring environment because Syracuse’s staffing plight is not unique.

Nationwide, police officer shortages have become a challenge, particularly in urban departments such as Syracuse. The Police Executive Research Forum conducts an annual staffing survey that earlier this year found that large police forces, defined as those with at least 250 sworn staff, have lost 0.6% of staffing since 2022. Smaller departments, though, have grown by 7.5%.

Regardless of department size, Pelz believes he’s been gifted a big selling point this year with the new public safety building on West Fayette Street. The $31.5 million facility has state-of-the-art technology, two new fitness centers and top-notch training resources.

“A common theme in policing is they’re in old buildings, they’re not updated, they’ve just been there for a long time,” he said. “So this is money. This is something that we can really promote.”

Removing residency rule

The staffing challenge has Mayor Sharon Owens’ attention. In her first months in office, she agreed to Rusin’s recommendation to suspend a residency requirement for new officers in the hopes that it can grow the candidate pool.

“We are pouring water into a bucket with a hole in it,” Owens said of the current hiring pace.

SPD has not been bashful about promoting the removal of the residency requirement, which had been in place since 2022 as part of a negotiation with the union. New officers had to live in Syracuse for their first five years on job. The city gave the union big bonuses and other paydays in exchange for the requirement.

Rusin concluded that the residency issue has hurt recruiting, so proposed a suspension of the rule to Owens, who agreed. SPD has been including the absence of residency as a job perk in social media posts for the next civil service exam.

Department leaders believe it’s already showing some early positive results.

The countywide police officer civil service exam held in May drew the most participation since 2020, with 184 people taking the test. Of the people who passed the test, SPD is in the background screening phase with 43 potential hires, including 30 who live outside the city, First Deputy Chief Richard Trudell told the Syracuse Common Council earlier this month.

“We are seeing a significant number of non-city residents (become interested in joining SPD),” he said.

The council on Aug. 24 approved a $55,000 contract with a University at Albany-based criminal justice institute that will do a formal study on the residency suspension’s impact.

While the increase in civil service exam takers is encouraging, the department also cautions that there’s still considerable room for growth. When Pelz took his exam, he said, there were about 1,200 participants.

“We want to get that number close to half of that,” he said. “That’s really just promoting ourselves, putting it out there, promoting the profession, trying to make people understand what the job really entails.”

Slowing retirements

Police officers in New York state can retire after 20 years on the job and collect full pensions. Many choose to do just that when the become eligible instead of work for a few more years.

Because of hiring trends that were taking place in 2005 and 2006, SPD has seen a spike in retirements in the past two years.

That slows down a little bit in the next two years, with 16 becoming eligible for a pension in 2027 and 18 in 2028. There’s also a period of almost no new retirement-eligible cops coming because former Mayor Stephanie Miner froze hiring from 2011 to 2014, citing financial pressures.

“We’re going to see that window coming back up,” Pelz said. “I think we’re going to have some sustainability here.”

In the meantime, union president Moran and Rusin have both advocated for a change in state law that they believe would slow the pace cop retirements. They are calling for the state Legislature and the government to establish a “deferred retirement option plan,” or DROP program, for police officers in New York state.

DROP programs give retirement-eligible officers a financial incentive to stay on the job three to five years longer. When an officer opts into the program, their pension payout is locked in when they become eligible for retirement and paid into a type of escrow account while they continue to work and earn their regular pay and benefits.

When they retire, they get a lump sum payout from their DROP account to go along with their annual pension benefit.

Moran said a DROP program would be a game changer for departments like Syracuse.

“I’m confident that program would absolutely keep people for an additional three to five years, I have no doubt,” he said.

Rusin feels the same way. He pointed to the dozens of exit interviews with retiring officers he’s done in the past year.

“Officers overwhelmingly have said, ‘If there was a DROP program, I would stick around,’” Rusin said. “So I think we need to give it a lot of public input.”

DROP legislation has been proposed in the state Legislature for several years but has not advanced. Some state government fiscal watchdogs, such as the Empire Center for Policy, have pushed back on measures that would add costs to the state’s retirement systems because much of the burden gets passed down to local taxpayers.

Moran said staffing concerns will play a big role in contract negotiations between the PBA and the Owens administration. The current contract expires at the end of 2027.

The union has been pushing for increases in longevity pay, which provide salary bumps for cops who reach service milestones of one, 10, 15 and 20 years. The biggest step up under the current contract is $10,000 for those who get to 20 years.

Moran said the union will likely look to improve on the current structure, which was negotiated in 2022.

“It’s just not having the intended impact,” he said of the current longevity schedule.

While not commenting on specific contract terms, Rusin said it’s vital for staffing stability to get a multi-year agreement that helps officers feel valued. He also hopes a deal is reached before the current pact expires.

“The contracts are a very important piece of this whole collage,” he said.

Moran said he’s encouraged by the actions SPD leadership has taken, pointing to hiring bonuses and the residency requirement’s suspension as two of the most promising measures.

“I do believe the department is putting forth a very strong, calculated effort to recruit people,” he said.

Rusin said he’s pleased with the early results, but is no where close to being satisfied.

“I don’t really look at it from an optimistic standpoint,” he said. “I think that we’re starting to see some success, but I just want to build upon that success until we don’t have to talk about staffing anymore.”

_______________

©2026 Advance Local Media LLC.

Visit syracuse.com.

Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.