L.A., police union reach legal deal over salaries for new recruits

Los Angeles officials said Tuesday that they have reached an agreement to resolve a union lawsuit over the pay provided to nearly 1,000 police officers hired since 2010.

The settlement with the Los Angeles Police Protective League, the rank-and-file officers’ union, would end a 2012 lawsuit alleging that department recruits had received erroneous salary information.

Stephen Silver, an attorney for the league, said the city’s website showed entry-level salaries that were higher than the amounts ultimately paid. “Had [recruits] had the actual information they wouldn’t have come to work” for the LAPD, he said.

The proposed agreement, scheduled to come to the City Council for a vote on Wednesday, would boost starting salaries to more than $57,000 from about $49,000. The deal also would increase the salaries of nearly 1,000 officers who were hired at a rate 20% lower than earlier recruits, according to Jeff Millman, spokesman for Mayor Eric Garcetti. Lower salaries were imposed in the wake of the recession.

Both deal points were part of a proposed one-year employment contract sent to the union last month by Garcetti and negotiators. That deal was rejected by the union’s rank-and-file members. Union leaders said the contract was rejected, in part, because it did not include salary increases.

Garcetti said in a statement that the new legal agreement would keep officers from leaving for other law enforcement agencies. “With crime down to record levels, I don’t want to lose a single new police officer to another department,” he said.

The league’s president, Tyler Izen, welcomed the legal settlement on Tuesday, saying it would “stop the exodus of officers” who left the department because of the pay differential between new and older officers.

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