When the chief of police and the head of the police union actually agree on something, it’s probably news. They agree there is a looming staffing problem that could cost the city half its police personnel—it’s probably bad news.
Speaking during a city council post-agenda meeting two weeks ago, both Pittsburgh Police Chief Cameron McLay and Fraternal Order of Police Lodge 1 President Howard McQuillan said the bureau should move to a continuous recruitment system to address the loss of retiring personnel.
McQuillan was more specific with the details of the pending problem, noting bureau personnel is already down to 838 from a budgeted 892 officers.
Of those, 356 are eligible for retirement, including:
•214 in the operations division;
•90 in the investigations division;
•26 in administrative services;
•14 in professional standards; and
•12 in the chief’s office.
Additionally, all six assistant chiefs are eligible to retire.
McQuillan said the force is losing members, and even recruits, to other departments because of money.
“It’s not just the possible retirements,” he said. “We had 10 people resign to take other jobs—two of them were recruits who left the academy.”
The starting salary for Pittsburgh officers is $42,500. By comparison, Allegheny County police start at $51,364 and Pennsylvania state troopers start at $57, 251.
“We’re significantly behind the majority,” he said.
Regardless of salary issues, McQuillan agreed with McLay that the city should go to a model of continuous recruiting, which means funding a police academy large enough to train multiple classes simultaneously.
After the two resignations, there are 24 recruits in the current class. The bureau lost 49 officers to retirement and resignation in the past year, and the recruits will not graduate and go on assignment until December.
But the personnel problem extends to training as well. Even if the city can run multiple recruiting classes, they don’t have the training officers to do so. Field training officers come from the zone stations, which are losing personnel to retirement and resignation.
Thankfully, McQuillan said, the city has budgeted to hire three more classes through 2016 and received a grant to pay part of the recruits’ salaries.
“So that’s positive, but morale is still low,” he said. “We’re working all this mandatory overtime, and if salary arbitration ruling goes against us, I expect more people to leave.”
If there were a mass exodus, McQuillan said he does not know what contingency plans the city may have in place. An accelerated recruitment or selection process he said, and McLay noted at a different meeting, sacrifice needed training.
“This didn’t just happen, previous administrations ignored the problem for budgetary reasons.
It’s been going on for years,” said McQuillan. “This administration, though, can fix it.”
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