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When I took office, the New Orleans Police Department
was at an all-time low. Corrupt cops had tarnished the department, and low pay had further
lowered morale. With a new chief of police, we worked for two straight years to reform the
department, rooting out bad cops, training officers and improving equipment. In this
speech, we announced the cornerstone of our plan to increase salaries and admission
requirements for officers. It would be funded by increasing the utility franchise fees.
This began a 10-month fight to raise the salaries of NOPD officers; a fight we would
eventually win. -Mayor Marc H. Morial Police Pay Increase
Proposal Ladies and gentlemen, may I have your attention. First of all, I want to thank you for coming. Many of you came on very, very short notice. I want to thank everyone and emphasize how important it is that you, the leaders of this community, are here for what I think is an announcement long time in coming and highly significant to the future of New Orleans; highly significant to our continuing efforts to fight crime and violence in this community. Before getting into the meat of what Chief Pennington and I have to say today, I want to go back a second, because we stood in this room on October 12, 1994 when Chief Pennington was named as the chief of our police. And at that time, I think we began in earnest to change our police department. It was an effort to change our community and to begin to win back the heart and the souls of our people; to rid our streets, to rid our neighborhoods and to rid our community of crime and violence. Eighteen months ago, the month of October was punctuated by a number of significant events. One, if you recall, was a damaging story by 60 Minutes on the New Orleans Police Department. In that same month, a certain officer along with a number of others, was charged by a federal grand jury with heinous crimes. Since then, through a number of initiatives and a lot of hard work, the men and women in uniform along with leaders in this community, began to redouble, triple, quadruple their energies to fight crime and violence in New Orleans; and also to change our police department, to restore it the once proud tradition it had. Not an easy task. It was a challenging task and one that many people said this community was not up to. Many people suggested that its leaders were not up to it. Many people suggested that those who serve us on the NOPD were not up to it. Now, March of 1996, significant progress has been made. Significant progress has been made, but so much more must be done. So many challenges remain ahead. I think that as we look at the past several months, indeed, since Chief Pennington took over, the progress that we have made, if it has done anything, has restored the confidence and hope, that not only can we win the war against crime and violence, but that the NOPD will once again become a department, a group of men and women that we can all be proud of once again. So we come to this point recounting many challenges and indeed many successes. I today certainly want to thank the men and women who serve in blue, many of whom are here, because today is a day for them. Today is a day to say to them that we understand how hard your work is. We understand what it means when you put your lives on the line, and what it means when do so and are not properly compensated. We acknowledge today that our men and women in blue and white haven't been properly compensated. This community and successive administrations have not met that task, have not been up to the challenge, and today we want to break with that sad past. We want to depart from under-compensated police officers. We want to depart from people who put their lives on the line and who have to go to work every day feeling that the citizens of this community do not appreciate them. A little less than a year ago, in an effort to respond to Superintendent Pennington's continuing recommendation that police officers be paid more, we established a three person commission of highly distinguished and knowledgeable New Orleans citizens: Dr. Francis of Xavier, Dr. Kelly of Tulane and Jim Kane who is retired from NOPSI. We gave them a very broad charge to look at the issue of compensation and make some recommendations on how we should proceed. They put together an ambitious set of recommendations. Ambitious because it suggested a change in the way we compensate police officers; a radical change from what I think is an outdated civil service system that in some respects has not kept pace with the times. Today, I am pleased to recommend and embrace what we are going to call the "Police Force 2000" plan. The purposes of this plan are many: number one, to pay the men and women who serve us now much better; number two, to create a compensation system that will allow us to hire another 170 police officers over the next 18 months and to fill existing vacancies. Let's face it, at the current pay rate this job is not as attractive as it should be. And the pay prevents us from hiring new men and women. It also discourages existing officers to remain on the force, given the retirement system, the job pressures and the job market for many officers with experience in other areas of our community. What we are going to recommend today is a pay increase that will go anywhere from nine to 15 percent for every police officer in New Orleans. What does that mean in dollars? It means that currently an entering officer receives $18,900 a year, including base pay, mileage and supplemental pay. We are proposing that a new police officer starts at $25,059. We also, in a radical departure from the past, embrace the philosophy implemented in places like Atlanta, Charleston and other communities. Officers who have a two-year degree or a four-year degree should be paid more money. Everywhere else, higher education is encouraged, and it is rewarded. These members of the Compensation Commission clearly said, and I endorse it today, that a better educated police force correlates and corresponds to a better overall police force. So instead of just saying it, we're putting some money on the table. If you have a two-year associate's degree, you will make an additional $600 a year. If you have a four-year degree, you will make an additional $1,200 a year. Keep in mind, Delgado Community College is available for that tuition. We are creating an incentive for officers who are on the force now to go back to school. Education ought to be encouraged, but we should also reward it financially. That's what Atlanta does, that's what Charleston does. That's what a number of other cities do. I know when we suggest this, there are going to be those who will say that you don't need a good education to be a good police officer. Education is good because it not only gives us a smarter force, but it invests in our people. When they retire and move on, they're going to be more marketable, they're going to be more attractive to the job market. Many policemen and women will have two, maybe three careers over their life. They won't remain on the force 30 or 35 years. Many will want to go on. So we recommend this radical change. I call it radical because it is a departure. We're also going to recommend, along with the city civil service commission, a change that will allow us to give the entrance examination on an ongoing basis. It's one of the things Chief Pennington wants to do. We also want to give the superintendent the latitude to recruit for the New Orleans Police Department throughout the region. We should be going to Dallas, and to Shreveport, and to Jackson, Birmingham and Atlanta. We should be recruiting officers there and here in the city. And if we want to offer to them a nice home and a nice neighborhood in New Orleans, we think they'll want to grow a family in this community. So we want to administer the test outside of the city. Many other departments operate that way, but we haven't because of antiquated civil service rules. Those rules were written by men and women, they weren't written by God. They should be changed by men and women to accommodate our needs in 1996 for a better police department. So we recommend these changes. Now, how to pay for them. We don't want a rob Peter to pay Paul approach to financing government. Let's cut over here, let's squeeze over there, let's tweak this a little bit and tweak that a little bit, and maybe we'll squeeze out enough money for a pay raise this year. But what happens next year? This is too important a decision for us to take that kind of approach, because if we took that kind of approach, we would fail. We would fail. So, we will recommend a continuous source of revenue. I propose today that we raise by one and one half percent the current franchise fee paid by NOPSI. What does that mean? That would raise over five million dollars. What would that mean? The franchise fee that NOPSI pays has not been raised since before World War I, since before World War I. I don't know who was around then. We propose it after exhausting a menu of alternatives, a whole list of possibilities. None of which has been workable. We do it in good faith, knowing that there will be those who say, I'll never support a fee or I'll never support a tax. I'm about saving lives. I'm about paying people better. I'm not about political sloganeering, gesticulating and weak political speeches. But I also say today if anyone in this community has a better way to pay for it, we'll listen to it. Let's not talk about cutting NORD, let's not talk about cutting parkways, let's not talk about reducing the number of streets we pave. Let's talk about what we need to improve the quality of life in this community. We need a well-paid police force. We need a police force that we can be proud of. We need good streets. We need a good recreation department. We need to pick up the trash and cut the grass. We need all of these things. This year alone, we cut $50 million out of the city's budget, $50 million dollars - the largest cut in modern history. We're doing better than the Contract with America. We're doing better than the Republicans. We're doing better in terms of cutting, scrubbing and reducing for a more efficient city government. We have done it. Today is the day for a decision of conscience. Today is the day for people to stand up with courage, to not pass the buck. Today is the day for us to not duck the punch, but to bite the bullet. And I am proposing that we bite the bullet to pay for a long overdue, much needed police pay increase. We hope there will be an active discussion, and our goal is to get this increase in place by July first of this year. It can be in effect for six months this year, and the chief can begin his recruitment efforts. We can begin changing the way we recruit and compensate officers. And over the next 18 months we can employ another 170 police officers. We can recruit with some confidence that what we are offering is an opportunity to be part of what will be, under Chief Pennington's leadership, the very best police department this nation has ever seen. I'm going to recognize Chief Pennington at this time for some additional remarks and for some additional words about other parts of this overall program, the second phase of reform in this community. I'm also going to ask you to work with us and to fight with us for something that must be done; to work with us and to fight with us. And if you oppose it, come with an alternative. Don't be an obstructionist. Don't be a nay-sayer. Don't be a cynic. Don't stand up and beat your chest like all those tired souls who know not of victory nor defeat. Come down from the gallery, come down into the arena. Come down onto the field where these men and women fight every day. Help us develop another plan if you don't like this one. But don't stand still, now is the time. Thank you very much. |
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