Atlanta Business Chronicle
Staff Report
2/20/2004
Atlanta Police Chief Richard J. Pennington says he plans to push for pay raises of 30 percent to 40 percent for the city's officers. Pointing out that many officers work extra jobs to make enough money to support their families - and that underpaid police departments elsewhere have bred corrupt officers - Pennington said it's time for him to make a push for dramatically higher pay.
"This is the reality if you want to have a great police department," he said in a Feb. 18 interview. "I'm going to have to fight extremely hard for these officers to get paid properly."
"I want to get them out of working extra jobs," he added.'
Pennington's remarks came two days before the Atlanta Police Foundation was scheduled to release a report prepared by the police consulting firm Linder & Associates Inc., which has been reviewing the department's operations since late 2002.
The Atlanta Police Foundation, which commissioned the report was scheduled to release it to the public at a Feb. 20 breakfast at the Georgia World Congress Center.
Though he had the report with him during the Feb. 18 interview, Pennington would not provide a copy of it before the breakfast.
But in the interview, Pennington blamed attrition - he said it loses about 100 officers per year - partly on the low pay.
The department has 1,480 officers on the payroll, but Pennington plans to push toward 2,000. The department's budget currently allows for 1,732 officers.
Atlanta police's starting salary for 2004 is $32,783, and their pay ranks 156th out of the largest 200 cities in the country, according to the Web site PolicePaynet, which was last updated Feb. 1. The Atlanta City Council on Feb. 16 approved a 4 percent pay increase for all city employees, including police, in 2004.
Atlanta Mayor Shirley Franklin said the report includes a number of recommendations, and the pay recommendation, if carried out would provide leverage for the city to keep officers from working extra jobs.
According to Pennington's and Franklin's accounts, the report's recommendations also include increasing the force to 2,000 officers, improving training opportunities, focusing on violent hot spots, creating a new police headquarters and replacing records management systems.
The City Council Feb. 16 also approved the hiring of 100 additional police officers. Pennington said 50 of them likely would go to the narcotics unit which he said has only 28 investigative officers.
"If you get a handle on the drug dealers and get a handle on the drug trade in the city, you're going to see a dramatic decrease in violent crimes," he said.
Pennington said he did not know what the total cost of the pay raises would be - or how he could convince the city to pay for them. But he said he was determined to make the push.
Cost an issue
Without specifics, though, even a police offers' union - which has waged a public battle to increase pay - was not so sure Pennington would have a lot of luck.
"I'm happy to see he's continuing to push for improved pay, but we're also skeptical that the city will be able to finance those improvements," said Scott Kreher, president of the local chapter of the International Brotherhood of Police Officers.
"I'd have to hear this whole proposal, but I haven't seen or heard anything yet," said Debi Starnes, who chairs the City Council's finance committee. "It's not feasible in one budget year, I don't imagine, unless he also has some suggestion on how we could save money elsewhere in the public safety budget."
Spurgeon Richardson, president of the Atlanta Convention & Visitors Bureau, said the organization consistently is asked by convention planners about the safety issue.
"There's a perception out there that we need to keep the city safer, and you need to have greater visibility of police officers on the streets," he said.
Franklin said she's committed to the pay hikes as well as the rest of the Under & Associates recommendations - what she described as a multiyear effort thats ambitious, but accomplishable. The next step will be to determine how to implement the report's recommendations, she said.
"From my perspective, it is what is required in order to be safe, in order to be a healthy city," Franklin said.
Linder & Associates has been credited with helping to improve police department operations in New York City, Baltimore and New Orleans, where Pennington was chief before he came to Atlanta in 2002.
Violent crime down 15% in 2003
According to a written summary of the firm's findings, violent crimes and homicides in Atlanta have been dropping, particularly since Pennington made about 100 leadership and personnel changes last August. Violent crime fell 15 percent in 2003, according to the summary.
Even so, Atlanta is "the most dangerous city in America," and the positive momentum is "fragile," according to the summary. Atlanta's violent crime is 463 percent higher than the average city's, and its homicide rate is 520 percent higher than the national average, Linder & Associates found.
"The fact that Atlanta is both a dynamic place to live and a dangerous place to live is a dichotomy that may be hard for many to accept," the summary says.
The Federal Bureau of Investigation statistics have shown Atlanta as one of the top three cities for violent crime over each of the past seven years, Pennington said. The city was No. 1 in 2000, 2001 and 2002.
In addition, Linder & Associates found last year that the police were missing about 22,000 case files - and unreported crimes, if counted, could drive Atlanta's statistics higher. Also, 15 other law enforcement agencies take crime reports in Atlanta but do not report these to the Atlanta Police Department.
The department's technology and records management systems have major problems as well, and morale at the department is low.
The Atlanta Police Foundation, which commissioned the work by Linder & Associates, is a nonprofit organization whose board includes prominent members of the business community and is chaired by Calvin Darden, senior vice president of U.S. operations for Atlanta-based United Parcel Service Inc. (Atlanta Business Chronicle Publisher Ed Baker is on the board.)
Elizabeth Kelly, the foundation's executive director, said the foundation win work with the police department to determine how it can pitch in to help some of the report's recommendations come to fruition.
At press time, foundation board member and BoardWalk Consulting LLC CEO Sam Pettway, who helped recruit Pennington to Atlanta and start the foundation, said it will be most important to focus on the police officers' human needs.
"They have been so undernurtured before this administration, that there's a lot of low-hanging fruit out there," he said.
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