Dwindling police staffing as the city enters a potentially hot summer of crime is a key campaign issue. CT Post reporter Frank Juliano has more.
“Seven have retired this month, and I anticipate 10 more going next month,” said Sgt. Chuck Paris, the union president. “Those are just the ones we know about. Anyone can file paperwork today and be retired tomorrow.
“We have 379 (certified officers) right now, which is the lowest I remember it being since I came on in 1993,” Paris said. “Morale is low. This is the critical time; we’re always busier in summer.”
Full story here.
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Finch is a poor manager. All the overtime is calculated into the officer’s highest earning years. How many millions will all this overtime cost an already severely overburdened taxpayer?
Looks like just about 20-25% of our officers will be “rookies” in the next 12-18 months.
What is the breakdown of those who will be hired, how many are from Bridgeport, how many are females, blacks and Hispanics?
Which Mayoral candidate will begin posting active employees on the job next to the department budget numbers each month? It has been part of the BOE budget reporting for several years now, introduced by Paul Vallas.
In the case of the Police Department and Fire Departments it would have allowed us to see the gradual attrition of active Police, and to ignore the VARIANCE comments of the Finance Department that it will all work out the same by year end because while overtime is up, it will be met by lower active pay shown in Line Item 51000.
Have the Mayoral candidates looked at the Monthly Financial Report recently? Bulging 90 pages and no one reads it on the Council. And while Council members can receive it electronically it is not posted on the internet or City site. Go figure. Not open. Not accountable. Not transparent. Who will be first to subscribe to OATs? Time will tell.
Mayor FINCH and his labor relations people gave away the store but they also had the PD selling out future members. Confused??
The pension is covered by the state to which the city pays a certain amount of money each year. I could not find the formula the state uses to figure a city’s cost. The Police and firefighters are part of this system. You take your highest three years and use the department formula to figure what you will make. A top-paid cop makes approximately $62,000 base pay and lets say he makes $40K in overtime and this is his/her highest three-year average, that cop or firefighter who would have retired at $31,000 now can retire at $50,000 per year for life. You will see Sgts, Lts, captains and chiefs retiring at well over $100,000
The police did pay a price for this pension benefit. New rookies will not have paid medical, NO Unlimited sick leave and there are many things they gave up for this pension benefit.
Andy, can you imagine the amount of promises he’s made to get the endorsement? At least, in actuality, it won’t affect the budget because he is not going to keep the promises.
Hector, the pension promises are in the form of a signed contract.
Andy Fardy, the police and firefighter unions didn’t protect their members by not providing them with the much-needed health care benefits they’ll need until they die. They also messed up because their members pay a percentage of their pay for their health benefits that keeps going up every year thereby their pay raise goes towards their health care and not into their pockets.
Isn’t this police contract very similar to the NYPD contract a couple of years ago where the older policemen threw the new hires under the bus?
Denis, yes that is true and that is exactly what the Police and Fire Unions did. These dummies don’t realize many of them will still be working when these yet to be hired cops and firefighters become the majority in their respective unions. These two contracts were sell-outs of yet to be hired cops and firefighters.