The city’s Police Museum is a deadbeat.
Running up hundreds of thousands of dollars in red ink, the museum has stopped paying its bills, despite getting nearly $1 million a year in taxpayer funds, The Post has learned.
“We’ve delayed payments. We owe people who are not beating us over the head for the money,” said the museum’s executive director, Mike Cronin.
The museum, which is located inside the historic First Precinct station house at 100 Old Slip downtown, has racked up $450,000 in debt over the past two years, financial records show.
It has received about $7.5 million in city operating and capital funds since 1998.
But it continues to struggle with fund-raising.
It generated $1.367 million in revenues for the 2004 fiscal year, according to a report filed with IRS. But nearly two-thirds of the funds raised – $906,500 – came from city coffers.
Only $442,929 came from donations and other revenues.
At the same time, the museum spent $1.665 million – or $299,000 more than it brought in.
And the museum ran a deficit of $150,000 for fiscal year 2005, ending on June 30, despite some belt-tightening and seeing more visitors at its new location after moving from 25 Broadway, officials said.
“We realize it’s a serious situation. We’re monitoring it. We’re trying to do the best we can,” said Cronin, a retired cop who took over the reins last year.
Insiders said the museum has difficulty raising funds because most corporate donors give to another entity – the Police Foundation – the fund-raising arm of the NYPD.
The woman who heads the museum’s board of trustees is Carol Safir, the wife of ex-Police Commissioner Howard Safir, who served under former Mayor Rudy Giuliani.
Sources familiar with the situation said the “history of tension” between the Police Foundation and Carol Safir “runs deep” and has hindered fund-raising and cooperation.
The museum also expected to raise more funds from licensing agreements from selling NYPD merchandise, but that didn’t happen, sources said.
Cronin said the museum will stage more fund-raising events – such as golf outings with Giuliani and other celebrities, and will sponsor a theater party with the Broadway show “The Odd Couple” – one of whose characters is “Murray the Cop” – to raise revenue.
Department of Cultural Affairs officials said they’ve had meetings with museum officials to try to straighten things out. “This is obviously a problem,” said one city official familiar with the situation.