Public Support Is No Free Ticket

No reasonable person can begrudge Los Angeles police officers a pay increase. They do a tough, often dangerous and thankless job, yet have not gotten a raise since 1991--this while city utility workers did get one recently. If the issue of a pay increase for the Police Department could somehow be put on next month’s election ballot, we are confident it would win overwhelmingly. Sympathy for the officers, especially for the rank-and-file patrol cop--is that widespread in the community.

However, it would be a grievous mistake for the new leaders of the Police Protective League, the union that represents rank-and-file officers, to assume that this community support gives them free rein to use heavy-handed tactics in pushing for a new contract with the city. They should remember the widespread revulsion against the league’s recent advertising campaign that featured billboards suggesting that the LAPD could no longer provide public protection. Now some officers are threatening to stage a sickout over the Memorial Day holiday. That would be an even bigger mistake, for it would undermine their otherwise very legitimate cause.

The error of the union’s current hardball negotiating strategy is that it follows the union’s overwhelming rejection last week of a fair--and reasonably generous, given the state of city finances--contract offer from the city.

The budget crisis that has kept police from getting even a modest pay increase in recent years has coincided approximately with the long and anguished aftermath of the Rodney King beating: key changes in the department’s upper ranks, calls for reform, a major riot, several trials. This flux has helped feed a spreading malaise in what once was one of the proudest police agencies in the nation.

Clearly, that downward trend within the LAPD must be reversed. And clearly a solid pay raise for police officers would be an appropriate gesture to begin the healing process. But, just as obviously, any illegal--or irresponsible--actions by police union members would not elicit public sympathy. Instead they would undercut public goodwill. We hope that the vast majority of LAPD officers understand that, and do the right thing in the days and weeks to come.