Two stories in yesterday's New York tabs offer a crash course in the law of unintended consequences. The Daily News cover story, Cops pay big price for 25G salary, makes the obvious but significant connection between the new starting pay rate, a 40% cut to 1986 entry levels, and a force that's shrunk by 300, despite plans for an 800 officer increase. And even those who join reconsider—the drop-out rate among recruits has doubled to 20%, and at least one cop has applied for food stamps.

In short, Bloomberg was outfoxed by the PBA, which agreed to lower pay for new rookies in exchange for pay raises for veterans, knowing that the rookie pay would have to be pushed back up—and that the raises, of course, would not be scaled down in return. In a nice judo move, the union is actually using screwed-up young cops as an argument for paying young cops more:

…the city's largest police union argued that too many sub-par recruits are being accepted into the academy.

Patrick Lynch, president of the PBA, seized on the high dropout and failure rate of the July class.

"It shows that they have been putting anyone they could get into the academy," he said. "So many other departments in the metro area pay their police substantially more. They are getting the best candidates."

Union officials say their position is supported by the recent arrests of two rookie cops.

In September, Officer Danielle Baymack was arrested for allegedly killing her close friend and fellow officer in a drunken car crash in Long Island. Baymack, who had a checkered driving record before joining the department, graduated from the Police Academy last July.

Last week, Officer Dixon Zapata, who graduated from the academy last January, was arrested for attacking his wife in front of their kids in Brooklyn.

"There is such a scramble, a push, for bodies, there is no way they can give everyone a real checkup," said a police supervisor who works with recruits. The planned expansion of the department was designed to keep a lid on crime as the city's population expands by 200,000 over the next five years.

Meanwhile, the Post reports on that rare crime drop the city is less than eager to claim credit for, or explain, in this short dispatch, here in full:

Police brass want more arrests to com bat rising rates of murders and shoot ings, so they're eliminating limits on over time pay to encourage cops to haul in more perps.

"The more bad guys you put in jail, the less likely they are to shoot and kill people," said a source familiar with the thinking behind the shift in policy.

Department Chief Joseph Esposito announced the change - effective immediately - in a meeting Thursday with borough chiefs and brass in the transit, housing, narcotics and detective bureaus, a source said.

Traditionally, overtime pay is capped at the end of every month or quarter, depending on the command, with a typical limit of about $8,000 per quarter. Additional overtime hours are compensated with time off. But those rules may discourage some officers from making arrests after they hit their limit, because the average collar is a time-consuming process, often running into overtime.

The new policy is a response to the spike in murders in the city this year - almost 10 percent over last year.

As of Dec. 24, there had been 579 murders, compared with 527 during the same period last year. Shootings are up 2 percent, to 1,530.

But overall crime is down 4.6 percent citywide, and busts were up this year 5.5 percent over last year.

Esposito reportedly warned chiefs to keep an eye out for overtime abuses - like deliberately making an arrest at the end of a shift to rack up bigger paychecks.

The Daily News touches on the impact of overtime in their story, closing with

Though overall crime fell 4.7% last year compared with 2005, the murder rate rose 9.2%. Last week, police brass put out the word that overtime would be easier to get, ideally to allow cops to make more arrests.

"It's the old 'dollars for collars,'" said a police official who asked not to be identified. "Is some of it fueled because there are less cops out there? No doubt."

Bloomberg, having been badly out-manouvered, is likely to be forced to push rookie salaries up, and has already restored more generous overtime rules that amount to a de facto raise.