Disgruntled L.A. Police Consider ‘Slowdowns’

Some Los Angeles police officers, angered at working without a contract for a year, have considered work “slowdowns,” a police union official said Tuesday.

But David Baca Jr., vice president of the Los Angeles Police Protective League, said that the Police Department’s rank and file continue to write as many tickets and make as many arrests as ever, despite mounting frustrations.

“The guys are very much concerned about the seeming lack of interest on the part of the (city) to resolve this thing,” Baca said. “We have been trying as best we can to convince them they should wait for fact-finding, but a lot of guys want to do things now, like slowdowns. There are definitely rumblings out there.”

Review by State

A state fact-finder is presently reviewing both sides’ positions and is expected to issue a non-binding opinion on a new contract by the end of the month. At that time, the matter will likely be forwarded to the City Council for resolution.

It was a year ago Tuesday that the contract between the city and the 7,000-member Police Department expired. Active negotiations began in April, 1985, but an impasse was declared in January and a federal mediator was called in for several months.

Both sides concede that little progress has been made.

At the center of the impasse is the city’s steadfast demand that police officers agree to a change in the department’s overtime pay policy, a move that union officials contend would cost many officers thousands of dollars each year.

At present, Los Angeles police get time-and-a-half pay for every hour more than eight per day. Under the city’s proposal, based on a recent court interpretation of the National Fair Labor Standards Act, officers would first have to work 171 hours in a 28-day pay period before becoming eligible for time-and-a-half pay.

The city could save $9 million annually under such a plan, which would cut by about 340,000 the number of overtime hours the Police Department logs each year, according to Gordon Lawler, a principal analyst in the city administrator’s office.

“It’s a rollback, there’s no question about it,” Lawler said of the proposed overtime pay change. “But that’s what the City Council seemed to want at the time.”

He noted that Los Angeles firefighters accepted a similar rollback in negotiating their contract last year. The firefighters’ new contract gave them a 4% annual raise. A raise “very close to that” has been offered to the city’s police officers, Lawler said.

But while Lawler said he is confident that a new contract with the Police Department will be ironed out soon, Baca was not so sure.

“(The city) doesn’t look like they’re going to budge on the overtime issue, and we’re not about to accept it,” he said.