Police Should Relent

Police officers have always held a special position among the ranks of public employees. City officials can’t help but recognize that the jobs of police officers, like those of firefighters, carry a risk element that sets them apart.

This risk element, along with other unpleasant aspects of the police officer’s job, makes the question of police morale an important one. For the police to do their job well in the face of the danger, the boredom, the frequent abuse and the exposure to the seamy side of life, they must feel supported and appreciated by those in positions of government authority and by the public. When morale slips, so does the quality of police-citizen interaction. And the attrition rate among officers rises.

The past year has been a bad one for the San Diego police. Three of their colleagues were killed in two tragic incidents. Questions have been raised about the adequacy of police training. Minority leaders have charged that police brutality is on the increase. The police union felt the city manager gave short shrift to issues it felt were important to officer safety.

Then, seemingly adding insult to injury, the City Council rejected the Police Officers Assn.’s (POA) demands for two 5% pay raises this coming fiscal year. The council instead approved one 5.5% increase, causing outrage among officers, who symbolically voted to reject it.

But some of the police officers’ anger appears to be misplaced. The POA leadership has not served its membership particularly well in recent months, and in part is responsible for the officers not receiving larger pay raises.

A month ago, POA President Ty Reid was saying that officer safety, not pay, was the union’s No. 1 concern. The rallying cry was for more officers and more two-officer patrols. But after City Manager Ray Blair adjusted his budget proposal to include 107 new officers, an increase of 54 over his original proposal, pay suddenly became the top concern, to the astonishment of some City Council members.

The union’s credibility further suffered from Reid’s talk of a possible job action, even a strike. And, as painful as it is to say, the POA has inappropriately used the recent deaths of officers in its effort to get higher salaries. Tragic as they are, the shooting deaths of the three officers do not prove that San Diego is the most dangerous city in the nation to patrol.

The police justifiably complain that salaries here are less than those in other California cities, and must be raised until a reasonable balance is achieved. But gaining parity will not happen all at once. Mayor Roger Hedgecock and the City Council seem committed to improving police pay in the future.

The council may try to raise more money for police by putting a tax-increase referendum on the ballot, although there is some question about the practicality of that approach.

The POA should tone down its rhetoric now and look to the future. The pay raise offered the police--the highest among city employees this year--should be accepted without further complaint. Then the POA should sort out its priorities for the next budget year and do a better job letting the council know about them.