NYPD Replacing Windows Phones With iPhones – And it Will Cost Taxpayers

Less than a year after completing an expensive rollout of Windows Phones to its entire police force, the New York City Police Department officials plan to begin replacing them with iPhones by the end of the year.

According to the New York Post, the taxpayer funded swap will be done out of a “need” for phones. The NYPD has to apparently scrap the 36,000 smartphones it gave cops over the past two years because they’re already obsolete and can’t be upgraded. The city bought Microsoft-based Nokia smartphones as part of a $160 million NYPD Mobility Initiative that Mayor Bill de Blasio touted as “a huge step into the 21st century.”

But just months after the last phone was handed out, officials are planning to begin replacing every single phone with a brand-new iPhone by the end of the year, sources said. The decision to make the switch to iPhones follows Microsoft’s recent decision to stop supporting the operating system that runs the NYPD’s devices and nearly a dozen custom-engineered apps. Law enforcement sources blamed the boondoggle on NYPD Deputy Commissioner for Information Technology Jessica Tisch, with one saying, “She drove the whole process.”

Technology experts had long questioned the NYPD’s decision to choose Microsoft-based phones over those that run on Google’s Android software or Apple’s iOS.

“Nobody purchases 36,000 phones based on the judgment of one person,” a source said to the New York Post. “I don’t care if you’re Jesus f- -king Christ, you get a panel of experts.” An article published on the tech news site Digital Trends in October said, “The NYPD’s decision to go with Microsoft’s mobile operating system seems to confound more than a few since Windows Phone’s 2.3 percent US market share is anemic when compared to Android’s 65.2 percent and iOS’s 30.9 percent.”

Sources said Tisch, whose late grandfather co-founded the Loews Corp. conglomerate, insisted on Microsoft-based phones in part because the NYPD was already using Microsoft software to run the video surveillance program at its Lower Manhattan Security Initiative Command Center. “She was in charge. It was her project, no question about that,” the source said.

So, there’s nothing to see here. Just another police department wasting more stolen funds. Both of the NYPD phones (two models of Nokia phones: the Lumia 830, first released in October 2014, and the Lumia 640XL, which was rolled out in March 2015) and their Microsoft-engineered apps, run on the Windows 8.1 operating system, which the company announced it would no longer support after July 11.

“She’s a terror if she doesn’t get her way, so I usually let her get her way,”then-NYPD Commissioner Bill Bratton had joked. “So she’s certainly getting her way with this technology.”

There you have it, taxpayers. One person is a pain in the neck if she doesn’t get her way, so pay up, and replace the cops’ phones again.