Forum With Mayor, Council : Police Union to Hold Gripe Session on Pay

The San Diego Police Officers Assn. has scheduled an unusual gripe session today with Mayor Roger Hedgecock and the City Council so that rank-and-file officers can make a personal plea for higher pay.

Whether a majority of the council will attend is unclear; POA president Ty Reid has said that some members--he would not say how many--have sent their regrets.

The forum at the Scottish Rite Cathedral in Mission Valley is expected to be the latest round in an increasingly bitter dispute between the 1,380-member police union and the council.

Last week, in a 407-to-21 vote, police officers rejected a 5.5% raise that the council had approved for the 1985-86 fiscal year. Hundreds of other officers, briefed about the contract in three sessions at POA headquarters, refused to vote and “walked out in disgust” when they learned the terms of the city’s final offer, Reid said.

In the interim, city officials have not come up with any plan to increase police salaries, but earlier this week City Manager Ray Blair offered a revised budget for next year that would create 107 new patrol positions--54 more than Blair had proposed several weeks ago.

Blair could not be reached for comment Wednesday, but Chett Chew, the city’s assistant financial management director, said that the new positions came out of “a general concern about police safety, increasing violence on police” and a desire to create more two-officer patrols. (The POA has repeatedly argued that two-officer patrols are much safer than sending a single officer out on a beat.)

The $2.3 million to fund the additional positions became available after city officials discovered they had put more money aside for the city retirement program next year than was needed. But asked if that money could be re-programmed into police salaries, Libby Watson, the city’s financial management director, said she was uncertain.

In addition to the forum today, POA officials have been considering job actions, including an illegal strike, to pressure the council into increasing police salaries next year.

Reid has said that many officers are prepared to quit the force for better-paying jobs in other cities if they don’t get a revised contract soon.

POA leaders say that San Diego officers have the most dangerous job in the nation, with a higher rate of officer fatalities than any other police force. Despite the risks of walking or driving a beat, San Diego police salaries are 9% to 30% below those in Sacramento, Los Angeles and San Francisco, POA leaders said. Mid-level officers in San Diego are paid $27,435 a year now and are scheduled to receive $28,943 in the fiscal year that starts July 1.

To bring its officers up to par with other police agencies, the POA is seeking a two-step increase in the one-year contract--a 5.5% raise to take effect July 1 and a second raise of 5%, effective on Jan. 1.

For all the protests, the City Charter allows the council to approve wages and benefits unilaterally. Thus, the latest package, approved by the council May 14, will go into effect July 1 whether city employees like it or not. And in cases such as this one, when a union strongly disapproves, its options are limited; the charter and a recent state Supreme Court ruling bar strikes by police.

Still, Reid said he would not rule out the possibility of a strike this year. “We are not going to give up,” he vowed Wednesday.

Reid said his union would prefer some sort of positive, well-organized union action to a strike. He promised to continue working for improvements in this year’s contract, and for a change in the City Charter, which currently bars binding arbitration.