Oh brother where art thou now? There is nothing quite like a brotherhood
looking out for each other in time of need and making sure that all are pulling
together for the common good. That’s the
real meaning of a fraternal order and why I find the recent proposals by the Glendale
Police Department leadership to cut police officers so cynical.
You’ve heard of the “Fraternal
Order of Police” haven’t you? They
usually call your place of business or your home asking for donations to a good
cause. Maybe it’s the little league in
your neighborhood, maybe it’s a fund-raiser for the family of a fallen comrade.
The brothers are always
there to help each other and promote a good police image. They may help promote the character and ethics
program of a local municipality. They
may encourage kids-at-risk to pay attention to the word of the month. There is nothing quite like a public servant
with a badge encouraging loyalty, fairness and compassion.
That‘s why it’s so
baffling to sit at a budget session and hear the assistant chief of police go
about meeting the budget challenge by cutting the jobs of his brothers. Why not just have everyone take a small pay
cut and help save the jobs of fellow subordinate officers?
Would you not do that
for a brother? I mean, many police
officers got outstanding increases in pay in the last few years; why not take a
little cut and help the department out? Since the recession started two years ago,
some have had pay increases in the tens of thousands of dollars annually. Don’t ask me the rationale of giving pay
raises in the middle of a recession, but I believe it’s the multi-year contractual
agreement known as the Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) that the GPOA arranged
with the city council a few years back.
Had the city council
made contingencies on the MOU such as freezing salaries when a recession
becomes official, or when local unemployment increased by more than 10% from
the year before, we wouldn’t be talking personnel cuts at this time, and
grandma wouldn’t have to worry about a brothel business branching our on her
tree-lined street.
So what’s stopping the
brothers from rescinding their pay increases retroactively with future cuts in
pay and saving the jobs of their colleagues in blue? It’s the pension system.
The name of the game for
city employees is the retirement pay. The golden handshake these guys now get is the
“3% at 50”. That means that if you get
hired at 20 and work 30 years you’ll accumulate 3% of your pay as retirement. Not the 3% of the earnings when you were 20,
but 3 times 30 years times your last pay. That turns into 90% of your last yearly income
that you can collect starting at the age of 50 for the rest of your life.
So when faced with the
choice of taking a pay cut to help your brothers keep their job, or keeping
your pension calculation intact but having your brothers lose their job, it’s every
cop for himself. The fraternal concept
goes out the window along with all those nice words taught to all the
kids-at-risk. Out goes loyalty. Out goes fairness. Out goes the compassion.
Fraternal Order indeed. It makes the brothel business look compassionate
by comparison.
Herbert Molano