NYCPBA hasn’t endorsed in the mayoral race yet. They're soon negotiating a contract with City Hall

The day after his former interim police commissioner sued him for running the NYPD “as a racketeering enterprise,” New York City Mayor Eric Adams accepted the endorsements of 13 unions representing workers in uniformed agencies on the steps of City Hall on Thursday. 

Several of those unions represent law enforcement officers, including the detectives, sergeants and captains unions. But the city’s largest law enforcement union, the Police Benevolent Association, has not yet weighed in on the race. 

As it happens, the PBA’s eight-year contract expires this month. Adams in 2023 reached an eight-year deal with the union that secured raises retroactive to 2017, which he touted as “only the third voluntary contract with the PBA in 30 years.” 

PBA spokesperson John Nuthall confirmed the union had sent over its request to bargain with the city, but said that process is separate from the union’s endorsement process. The current contract expires on July 31.

“The reality is we have our own process, we’re going through that process and when we have a result from that process then we’ll announce it,” Nuthall said. He added that if they endorse, they’ll do so in September at the earliest.

After publication, City Hall responded to a request for comment saying that bargaining would begin July 25. 

The PBA, which represents 24,000 rank-and-file officers, didn’t make a splashy endorsement in 2021 – when public support for police was low. In an email to members, then-union President Pat Lynch urged them to rank Adams, Andrew Yang and Kathryn Garcia in the primary, the New York Post reported. The union didn’t weigh in on the general election contest between Adams and Curtis Sliwa, Nuthall said. 

At his endorsement rally, the mayor had little to say about the bombshell lawsuit that dropped on Wednesday accusing his administration of running the NYPD as a “coordinated criminal conspiracy.” When The City’s Katie Honan pressed him, the mayor said just “frivolous, disgruntled employee,” referring to former interim NYPD Commissioner Thomas Donlon. Despite his low poll numbers and narrow path to reelection, representatives from law enforcement, sanitation and corrections unions were full-throated in their support of the mayor at a rally on Thursday, chanting “four more years.”

“My members know all too well what it’s like to have a mayor who purposely defunds them, scapegoats them and puts their lives in jeopardy,” said correction officers union President Benny Boscio, Jr. “We have come way too far after the progress made over the past four years to go backwards.”