The Post keeps going back to the starting salary of recruits as the reason for fewer police officers testing for or accepting positions with the NYPD (“The Rookie Crisis,” Editorial, June 29).
Once again, you put the blame on PBA President Pat Lynch, but he has said it over and over and has written letters to the editor on several occasions: Please look at the entire package.
The starting pay in Nassau County, up until January, was a little over $21,000.
There is no problem recruiting in Nassau, because its top pay is fair and reasonable. The NYPD’s top pay is not so reasonable.
Forget arbitration. Bring them up to Nassau’s top pay now.
Robert Hughes
Floral Park
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While the editorial’s support for raising the insulting wage status of rookies is admirable, its overwhelming desire to insult the PBA and veteran police with accusations of greediness is, to me, curious.
Every editorial fails to address just how hard it is to get by in New York City on the current top pay.
Want to attract the finest? Offer the finest pay scale, and you’ll get the finest and keep the finest, who this city has paid top dollar to train.
Anthony Maiorano
Ronkonkoma
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The Post has to stop blaming the PBA and start looking at the city’s unwillingness to bargain.
As The Post has stated, a little flexibility would be nice. Why is it that the PBA is the only one that has to be flexible?
Chris Cranston
Staten Island
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The NYPD’s manpower problems pre-date the $25,000 starting salary, and there is more to keeping the city safe than deploying rookie cops to foot posts.
The NYPD needs veteran cops whose experience makes them better at getting guns and violent criminals off the streets.
High turnover among rookie officers creates shortages in these veteran assignments and lessens the NYPD’s effectiveness.
Peter Ungarino
Putnam Valley
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Perhaps The Post’s editorial writers should put on bullet-proof vests and gun belts and walk a mile in a police officer’s shoes before making judgment.
The active cops who have been putting their lives on the line for the city deserve a fair raise before a recruit who has never worked a day on the street.
James Mazza
North Babylon
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You state that the “Public Employment Relations Board bought the notion” that a $25,100 starting annual salary for rookie police officers is appropriate.
This is a mistaken characterization of the arbitration process that resulted in that starting salary.
PERB had no role in the substance of that determination.
It was the opinion of the arbitration panel chairman, in this instance, that embodied the terms that your editorial found objectionable.
Jerome Lefkowitz
Chairman, New York State PERB, Manhattan
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Considering the state Senate’s record, Lynch would fit nicely in this club of empty suits (“PBA Boss Eyed for Dem Albany Coup, June 29).
During his tenure, benefits and pay have gone down and cops are retiring or quitting in record numbers – all of which seems to keep with the tradition of our do-nothing senators.
David P. Burke
Calverton
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The PBA president’s responsibility during negotiations was to represent the members of the PBA who elected him, not possible future police officers who weren’t yet members of the NYPD.
That responsibility was with the city negotiators.
If the city lacked the foresight to see the impact PERB’s recommendations would have on recruiting new police officers, the blame is with Mayor Bloomberg and his negotiators, not Lynch and the PBA’s board.
Jack Coughlin
Deer Park
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The problem facing the NYPD is an inability to keep senior police officers on the job and to attract new ones.
The solution is to raise the top pay to a level competitive with the pay offered by neighboring police departments.
The city needs to develop a plan that will increase our pay to competitive levels over a number of years.
That’s the only way to keep fully-trained senior officers patrolling our streets while attracting new ones for the future.
Failure to do that puts all the economic benefits that safe streets have brought New York at risk.
This may become Bloomberg’s legacy.
Patrick J. Lynch
PBA President, Manhattan
