NYPD top cop Bill Bratton rejected the City Council’s proposal to hire 1000 new officers - saying he’d rather have the money to give police officers raises - while his boss Mayor de Blasio also shot down the idea, reports the New York Daily News.

"The city’s in a very significant budget situation. To be quite frank with you, the issue of pay raises for my personnel, I’m more supportive of that at the moment than I am [of\] additional officers," Bratton said. "We need a lot of money to address that issue."

NYPD officers - like the rest of the city’s unionized workers - are currently working with expired contracts, and pushing for raises that could cost the city billions.

"Like every police chief in America, if offered more or given more, I certainly will use them," he said, adding that while some areas like public housing projects could use more cops, the department has been able to use overtime to make up for the smaller size of the force, currently around 35,000.