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Tag: police pay

  • Pay NYPD More (II)

    A police officer was arrested in Pennsylvania for bank robbery. I don’t like to compare common criminals with mistakes people make because they’re poor–like the NYPD officer who discharged his gun (shooting an 18-month-old boy in the apartment below) while cleaning it… in the dark… because he couldn’t pay his electric bill.

    But what all this has in common is that it wouldn’t happen if police officers could live off their starting salary ($25,100) and recruiting standards were higher.

    From Veronika Belenkaya and Ethan Rouen’s story in the New York Daily News:

    An NYPD rookie sworn to enforce the law broke it big-time Thursday, stealing $113,000 from a Pennsylvania bank at gunpoint, authorities said.

    Cop-turned-robber Christian Torres, 21, of Queens, was collared less than a block away and the loot was recovered, police said.
    …
    Officers Hector Alvarez and Miguel Castillo told New Jersey police they were investigating terrorism when they were caught trying to rob a Bergen County drug den in May 2007, cops said.

    Four months later, NYPD recruit Claribel Polanco, a mother of two, allegedly committed welfare fraud.

    Too poor to pay his electric bill, Officer Patrick Venetek of Brooklyn was cleaning his gun in the dark when it accidentally went off in February. The bullet struck an 18-month-old boy in the apartment below.

  • Pay NYPD more

    Seattle is trying poach New York City’s police. They’re actively recruiting in New York City.

    The Daily News reports:

    Seattle pays its police recruits $47,334 a year and the annual salary rises to a maximum base pay of $67,045 in just six years.

    NYPD recruits get a paltry $25,100 annual salary while they are in the academy. Their pay jumps to $32,800 after graduation and tops out at $59,588 after seven years.

    Seattle will pay $5,000 in moving expenses as well. Not to mention that cost of living in New York City is higher as well.

    New York City police officer need a raise. And I’m willing to pay higher taxes to pay for it.

  • Around when you need one?

    The Timesreports that the NYPD is to shrink to its smallest size in 15 years. That’s a little misleading because the department in never at its budgeted size. The “size” of the department would “drop” to 36,838. But the actual number of officers today is 35,800. So the department could still grow despite this “drop.” The horrible irony is that the department has been shrinking ever since 2000. You know, right before the country set on a new path of safety and security. You might think the federal government would want more New York City police to help prevent the next large-scale terrorist attack. You might think that.

    This does point to a larger issue of why there are so many unfilled positions. Word on the street is that standards in the academy have already dropped substantially. The answer, for once, is shocking simple: Starting salary: $25,100. Top pay after 5 or 6 years: $59,585. That’s not a lot to live in New York. And it’s less than most other surrounding police departments pay. You get what you pay for.

    The idea the more cops equals more safety is actually surprisingly new. For decades, at least until the mid 1990s, “experts” in the criminal justice field used a lot of trees to disprove any link between police numbers and crime. What matters isn’t so much how many police there are, but what those police officers do. But if police are doing the right thing—and that’s a big if—more police officers help. And since the early 1990s, police officers in New York have been doing the right thing more often than not.

    Nobody knows the “right” number of police to have. Ideally we’d always have more. But when you take the zero-sum world of municipal budgets into account, I think New York City has about the right numbers today. Raising the pay of police officers is an issue of fairness and an issue of getting and retaining better officers.

    It only takes one big lawsuit tomorrow—paid out of the pockets of New York City taxpayers such as myself—to negate any financial savings from cheap pay today. Saving a buck or two (or million) now will cost us more later.

  • Struggling NYPD mother caught in welfare bust

    When I tell you that a New York City police officer was caught milking the welfare system, your first thought should be, “what’s a police officer doing on welfare?!” Good question, thanks for asking. The starting salary of the NYPD is $25,100 a year. Granted it goes up a lot after 6 months, but still. How can you live off this for 6 months when you’re not allowed to hold secondary jobs and can’t make overtime? I was making $28,400 when I was hired as a police officer… 8 years ago… in Baltimore. I could get by, but I had no family, no car payments, and $300/month rent.

    You can’t live in New York City on that money. This headline was inevitable. Sad, too. How did it get this way? Well, a few years back, in contract negotiations, police got a well deserved raise. But it came at the expense of new recruits. Peter was robbed to pay Paul. At the time, I thought, “fine.” In a few months this absurd situation will be rectified and all New York City police will get the raise they deserve. Now it’s a few years later.

    A recruit, perhaps a very good future police office, was caught for abusing the food stamp system. It wasn’t even aggressive abuse. It was passive abuse. Somehow I think that’s better. She didn’t lie to the system. She just “forgot” to mention to welfare people that she was now employed. Had she mentioned it, she would have lost $1,000. A thousand dollars that she used, I suppose, to feed her hungry kids. How many of you would have done differently?

    Except for the welfare abuse part, she did all the right things. Working her up. Trying to get off welfare. Becoming a police officer after going through the cadet program. Now I suppose she’s unemployed and costing us more money.

    New York will pay for this in the long run. Mark my words. You get what you pay for. We will have worse cops, dirtier cops, and bigger lawsuits to pay in coming years. Lawsuits that will probably overshadow any savings from paying police a low starting salary. If crime goes up, we’re all doomed as a city. But if we refuse to pay police officers a living wage, we get what we deserve.

    Struggling NYPD mother caught in welfare bust
    By Alison Gendar, Kerry Burke and Michael White
    New York Daily News staff writers

    Friday, September 21st 2007, 4:00 AM

    A 25-year-old NYPD recruit was so strapped by her $25,100 Police Academy salary that she committed welfare fraud, authorities said.

    Claribel Polanco, a mother of two who was collared yesterday at her Bronx home, was suspended from duty and most likely will be fired, police sources said.

    “She’s all the problems in a nutshell – a trifecta,” one police source said. “The department pays dirt, so all they can hire are kids on welfare. … So she committed a crime to get by. And now the department has a criminal on the books – and she’s not even out of the Police Academy yet.”

    When asked about the charges, Polanco said only, “This is ridiculous. Why are they doing this?”

    Polanco, of Morris Ave. in Morrisania, was an NYPD cadet – a program for students – and was attending college when she signed up for welfare, a police source said.

    She had been receiving food stamps and Medicaid.

    But she failed to notify the authorities when she was hired by the NYPD in January and continued to receive more than $1,000 in benefits illegally, court records show.

    Polanco was arraigned in Bronx Criminal Court yesterday on felony grand larceny and welfare fraud as well as misdemeanor larceny and welfare fraud counts and was released without bail.

    NYPD Internal Affairs Bureau investigators had prevented her from graduating with her academy class in June after catching wind of the alleged fraud, police sources said.

    Police union officials declined to comment on the arrest.

    Police officials have expressed concerns that dropout rates in the current class also have risen because of the low $25,100 starting salary.