Pension payments to the 52,417 retired police officers in the New York City Police Pension Fund (PPF) climbed to $3.17 billion during the fiscal year 2023, according to new data posted today at SeeThroughNY.net, the Empire Center’s transparency website. The data has been anonymized as PPF have chosen to withhold the names of pensioners, claiming potential threats to their personal safety. * 

The pension plan covering the NYPD officers had 253 members with pension payments of at least $200,000 – a 75 percent increase from 2022 (144) and a six-fold increase from 2018 (42). Eight retirees received pension payments of at least $300,000. The largest payout was $351,462 to a member who retired on June 30, 2021, with more than 40 years of service credit. 

Newly retired members—those retiring between July 1, 2021 and June 30, 2022, and collecting their first full-year pension in 2023—included 1,574 “full career” individuals – those employees who had 20 or more years of service credit. The average pension received by full career retirees was $84,964. Among them, two retired officers received more than $300,000; 24 newly retired members received more than $200,000, and 402 received more than $100,000.

* Since 2009, the Empire Center has filed FOIL requests with PPF requesting several data points, including retiree names (as is customarily given by every other state pension system) for analysis and posting at SeeThroughNY.net. The police pension fund has refused to provide retiree names, even after a lawsuit filed by the Empire Center and the passage of a state law its sponsors intended to make the names available. 

The Empire Center, based in Albany, is an independent, not-for-profit, non-partisan think tank dedicated to promoting policies that can make New York a better place to live, work and raise a family.