The Beat Cop Takes a Back Seat, Again : LAPD: The city wanted to give patrol officers extra money, but union leaders shot down the proposal. Why?

Los Angeles police officers have overwhelmingly rejected a proposed contract, citing as their primary reason its lack of retroactive pay raises for the past two years.

However, other crucial issues were involved, especially two badly needed reforms that the people want and the Police Department needs--but which were kept out of the proposed contract by the labor union that represents the police.

At stake were two public-policy questions crucial to running an efficient and effective Police Department. First, can we pay patrol officers, who put their lives on the line for the public every day, a salary bonus to encourage them to remain as patrol officers? Second, can we allow Chief Willie Williams the flexibility he needs--like private-sector chief executives have--to assign officers where they’re needed most and can work most effectively?

In the city’s final contract offer to the police union, the mayor and City Council included these two crucial provisions. Both steps were recommended by the Christopher Commission, which studied the Police Department in detail after the Rodney King beating and made wide-ranging recommendations to reform its operations, policies and culture.

In his report, Chairman Warren Christopher told the city the obvious: that police officers see patrol duty as a dead end for career advancement, and officers try to get out of patrol work as quickly as they can. Allowing that to continue is bad policy, Christopher said, because the city needs experienced patrol officers working the streets, giving the people the best possible protection from crime.

To right that bad policy, the mayor and council agreed to give patrol officers a 2% bonus. That’s in addition to the 3% salary raise in each of the next two years, which was offered to police in spite of the fact that other city employees got no salary increase for the last three years and probably next year.

And to give Williams the management flexibility he needs, the city’s last offer proposed a change in work rules so that sergeants and lieutenants could be assigned where they were needed, and not frozen in their assignments by pay-grade steps within their ranks.

But for reasons of their own, the leaders of the police union rejected both the patrol bonus and the work-rule changes the chief needs. The union insisted that other goodies be included instead in the contract, such as additional vacation for veteran officers who already receive three weeks of paid vacation each year.

Faced with the prospect of protracted labor negotiations with the police, the mayor and council blinked; they allowed the union to set the public-policy agenda by dropping these two crucial provisions, and agreed to a contract without them.

Union members voted overwhelmingly on Thursday to reject that contract. It’s unclear how the situation will be resolved, but the rejection may be a blessing in disguise for the people of Los Angeles; it may again place the issue of the patrol bonus and work-rule changes on the table for negotiation, where they belong, and maybe they can now be adopted, as the Christopher Commission recommended and as the people want.

Now that union members have refused to approve their contract, they should ponder this question: What kind of leadership does their union have when it is willing to sacrifice a 2% bonus for patrol officers--a bonus that would bring their salary increase to 5%--turning its back on the officers who are the heart and soul of the department and the primary reason it enjoys such strong public support?

Union members, especially those in patrol assignments, should realize that the union, and not the City Council, took away the patrol bonus. The mayor and council were eager to strengthen the department by acknowledging, with higher pay, those officers on the front lines of fighting crime.

Now that they have lost the patrol bonus, which was their one best chance of being recognized for the special and difficult work they do, patrol officers should ask their elected union officers why the bonus was dropped and why the union board also rejected the strong Christopher recommendations for reform.

Patrol officers deserve an explanation as to why their own union said no to more patrol pay, a stronger police department and the protection the public deserves.