FOP, city reach agreement in police contract talks
City hall gets empty victory -- cops ready for mass defections to other law enforcement agencies as a result of city's negotiation tactics
-- John Patten, 10/28/05
-- jpatten@veniceflorida.com

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Fraternal Order of Police chapter president and spokesman Rob Palmieri has announced that Venice police officers have voted to accept the city's contract offer of May 13. The announcement was delayed until late last night as the union was accepting ballots until around 8:00 PM.

Information that I have been receiving through the week indicated that membership was extremely unhappy about the offer but would likely vote to accept out of a sense of resignation. Literal resignation -- 7 officers have applied for positions with the North Port Police Department, two have already fled to join the Sarasota Police Department and a wave of further defections is expected.

Officers will now have an eight-step pay increase plan, a situation that is considered untenable by many officers I have spoken with. "We were told to accept this or the city will go to a twelve-step plan, which would even be worse." According to the officers, this will allow for small increases in pay that will not keep up with the cost of living.

According to conversations with various police officers, the cops were willing to accept the contract because of two factors: the first being that quite a few of the officers will be retiring soon, which means that the city's contract with active officers will be a moot point for them as they enter the police pension plan (which is also up for negotiation soon).

Secondly, a good number of other officers just want the negotiations to be over so that they can concentrate on seeking employment elsewhere. "Venice is no place special anymore," one officer told me. Others compared the current relationship between the department and city hall with that of North Port a decade or so ago -- under the leadership of then-police chief Vic Costello, North Port officers fled the department in droves, citing pay issues and bizarre personnel policies that included disciplinary actions for cashing their paychecks on their lunch hours.

"North Port P.D. is just coming back from all of that," one officer told me. "But for Venice -- it's hard to recruit new officers once you get a reputation as a department that loses a lot of officers, and that's just where Venice is headed."

The final issuance and publication of The Matrix Report was also cited as a significant factor in the membership's decision to get the negotiations over with -- a gloomy sense of being hammered from all sides pervades almost every conversation that I've had with various officers about the arduous series of union negotiations that have gone on for the last year or so which coincided with the development and publication of The Matrix Report.

So while city hall may finally claim a victory in the economic war that has been waged against the department and its officers, it is likely to be an extremely empty and destructive victory -- all signs at this time point to a future department that will not have enough officers to do the job that they are entrusted with.

"That's what city hall has wanted all along," one officer stated. "They want to get rid of us and contract with the county."

Even I have a hard time buying that one, but it is a possible scenario that the city could be forced into if we end up with a department so downsized that it is unable to protect the city adequately.

Fellow Venetians: hang your heads in shame.

John Patten is the head of Web Operations for Creative Pages, and has worked in broadcasting for over 12 years. He can also be incredibly rude at times.