Stephen Greenhut: Perhaps we can have two important things at once: Greater public trust of police officers and more people willing to take police jobs. Instead of complaining about a public that doesn’t appreciate them, police officials ought to spend more time assuring their departments always are worthy of the appreciation

Chico is in crisis and part of that is the police department. I’ve written here about the salaries and benefits and the amount of the budget that is dedicated to the police department. I’ve bitched about the influence they have over our local elections. Other people are raising concerns over excessive use of force and purchases of military style equipment, not to mention the lawsuits directed at the department.

We’re not alone, cities all over the country are having the same conversations about their police departments. One common retort from city officials is that they are having trouble recruiting cops.

According to Greenhut, “Police spokespeople and high-profile sheriffs and chiefs complain they can’t recruit enough officers largely because the public has grown hostile to officers. They point to efforts to “defund the police.” That’s partially true, but not the entire story.” A southern California police chief uses the word “demonized”.

But Greenhut continues, citing an International Association of Chiefs of Police study from 2019 – “well before the Floyd incident – that detailed far-more mundane reasons that many young people don’t want to be cops. These include the desire for more flexible work hours and the long and difficult application and training process. Such issues have been the subject of police conferences for years.“

I believe overtime is not only a financial but a morale problem. Who can be on their best after 8 hours at an oftentimes very stressful job? Why would anybody want a cop to work overtime? It’s about the money. I believe overtime is part of the culture of our police department, whether you want it or not you take it and shut up.

In Chico, I’ve seen many officers’ annual take-home pay raised by 10’s of thousands of dollars over their base salary with overtime. They have a very generous overtime policy if you ask me, rounding up so many minutes “over shift” into hours of overtime. Their union, the CPOA, also has “mandatory overtime” written into the contracts – and a very complex formula by which they turn unused overtime into “time-off” and unused “time-off” into compensation.

Take a cup of OT and add a cup and a half of CTO, pour in some STO, and you get an IOU

Greenhut also cites our generous pension system as part of the problem – “California’s pension benefits are so generous for officers – allowing them to retire in many departments at age 50 with 90 percent of their final pay – that there’s no incentive to stick around.”

Cops are certainly not underpaid in California. “Many analyses about the shortfalls make reference to low pay, but that’s simply not the case in California. In Orange County, for instance, deputy sheriffs were making around $150,000 a year as early as 2008.” Chico cops take home a minimum of $100,000/year, with overtime and “other pay”, plus their generous benefits packages, police compensation in Chico is closer to $200,000/year. They only pay 15% of their pension and benefits cost, making them the biggest driver of our pension deficit. Chico PD gets well over half the city budget.

Greenhut continues, “It’s worth debunking a few of the other common police-union myths. For starters, police agencies were not defunded. ABC News analyzed police budgets in 109 agencies across the country and found they mostly have increased, with 91 having upped their budgets by at least 2 percent. In 49 agencies, police funding has soared by 10 percent or more. Police spending is soaring.“

This article is a must read for those of us concerned about the direction our police department is taking. Some takeaways –

Police staffing and spending are not directly tied to crime rates. Policing is one part of the equation, but myriad demographic factors arguably play a more significant role.

Militarization of police forces – I’ve covered troubling police use-of-force incidents and found that union protections and circle-the-wagons attitude often thwart accountability… Americans have every right to demand that officers with life-and-death powers are held to the highest standards. Unfortunately, union protections make it difficult to rid departments of overly aggressive officers. Chiefs and sheriffs ought to blame themselves for having insufficiently rooted out the few bad apples in their midst. That’s the real source of public mistrust.

Furthermore, the violent police culture is perpetuated during training – “Community-oriented policing strategies might help departments lure more workers. This is also from that chiefs’ study: “Fast-paced images of officers making forced entries into buildings, rappelling down walls, firing high-powered weapons on the range … were common in recruiting materials. … (T)hose images do not resonate with wide swaths of the population entering the labor market. They said that agencies will be more successful in attracting candidates if they emphasize the service aspect of policing.”

My R Street colleague, retired New York Police Department officer Jillian Snider, notes that ‘even in the most contentious of times, the number of full-time sworn officers has not substantially decreased.’ She points to the need to ‘balance the demands of community members with smart, effective, research-based policing’ and to ‘establish new recruitment strategies, create incentives to attract high-quality candidates, and promote a more positive culture within departments.’”

Greenhut concludes, “Perhaps we can have two important things at once: Greater public trust of police officers and more people willing to take police jobs. Instead of complaining about a public that doesn’t appreciate them, police officials ought to spend more time assuring their departments always are worthy of the appreciation.“

Steven Greenhut is Western region director for the R Street Institute and a member of the Southern California News Group editorial board. Write to him at sgreenhut@rstreet.org.

Tags: Chico Police Department, CPOA, Stephen Greenhut