New York City's police force, known as "New York's finest" in the United States, has cancelled training for 1,000 new officers for the class of 2010, news reports said Tuesday, dpa reported.
The 12 months of training a new class of police cadets normally starts each January, but Police Commissioner Ray Kelly said budget cuts ordered by Mayor Michael Bloomberg eliminated this year's programme.
Kelly said, however, that the budget cut did not affect the city's counterterrorism efforts, but may strain the personnel involved in them.
Some City Council members objected to the cut in police force and vowed to fight against it.
"If we continually allow our force to go from 41,000, which we had in 2001, to under 33,000, which we'll have as a result of these cuts, obviously counterterrorism has to be hurt also," said Councilman Peter Vallone Jr. "It's not something we can allow to happen."
Kelly says the maximum number of officers in the New York Police Department would be 34,771 in fiscal year 2010, down 1,700 from four years ago. But Vallone estimated the number could be as low as 32,000, the news reports said.