Ed. Note: At a crecent City Council session, Police Commissioner John Carrano alerted the legislators of increasing retention problems at the WHPD. The following is printed in its entirety to help the public understand the problem.
My name in John Carrano and I am a West Haven Police Commissioner. Ray Collins, the Chairman of the Commission, was supposed to address you this evening but he fell ill with COVID. First, I’d like to welcome the new council, our commission worked well with the previous council, and I am certain that relationship will continue to flourish. I am here tonight as a partner with you in the care of this city. The Police Commission, the Chief and the Union have been working closely with Mayor Rossi and her staff in an attempt to address some of the inequities we have at the WHPD. In anticipation of the upcoming Budget Season, here are some facts we would like you to consider, because we now have a crisis in the making.
We are regularly losing officers to other Municipalities and through the exit interviews, we consistently hear the pay is too low and the compensation packages are more attractive at other departments. Because of this, we compared WHPD Patrolman Salaries to 11 other “Like” Municipalities…the 11 other towns are…read from excel file
We found that WH offers the lowest salary compared to these other municipalities. We are 11% or $6,300 below the average on our starting salary and 15% or $11,000 under the average on our Maximum Patrolman Salary. It wasn’t always like this. In fact, we were the go-to department in the not so distant past as we were highly competitive with both our salary and compensation. Unfortunately, our steady decline in competitive wages worsened over the last 5 years. While other departments were getting 3% raises each year, the WHPD received 2% in 2017, 0% for 2018, 0% in 2019, 0% in 2020 and 1% in 2021. In summary, we lost 12% in pay to these other departments since 2017 and the result is we are now last. Yes, in the upcoming budget there is a 2.5% raise, but at this point that just makes sure we don’t fall any further behind and does nothing to bridge the large gap created.
This downward spiral in competitive pay was preceded by a decision in 2009 to not offer new officers a pension and instead only offer a 401k without an attractive long-term disability coverage. At the WHPD, our more seasoned officers still operate under the pension that had been in place for years. There are some other towns that offer a 401k, BUT in each of these instances the officer’s future earning power is covered by higher wages and an attractive Long-Term Disability Plan. In West Haven, we are not only the lowest paid, but we do not have a pension AND we do not have an attractive long-term disability plan. I want you to think about this, these officers are not sitting behind a desk like me, these officers are on the street and it is well recognized that this career choice is high risk. If one of our officers gets permanently disabled, say they get hit by a car or worse, their only course of earnings is 36-months of Workers Compensation and then Social Security Disability. Even further, if one of our officers gets killed in action, there is no means for the family to get reimbursed for the future lost earnings. This is flat out unacceptable as we ask our officers to run into danger every day. On behalf of the Chief and this Department, we invite each of you to schedule a ride along with one of our officers. I went on a ride along with Sgt. Kevin Bowerman and while I used to watch Live PD with excitement, nothing prepares you for the unknown of physically walking into someone else’s house during a domestic dispute. The risks are enormous with every call our officers get.
In some industries, losing higher wage earners and replacing them with lower wage earners is a smart strategy. If you have read any news, you know that applications to become a Police Officer, Nationwide, are severely down. We are part of the South-Central Criminal Justice Association, which consists of many Police Departments that all pull from the same group of applicants. Anyone who wants to be a Police Officer at one of these municipalities puts in their application, takes the written test, if they score high enough, they take a physical, psychological and lie detector test. Upon successful completion, they then choose who they want to interview with. 10 years ago, the pool of applicants was usually around 1,000, and at least 250 would have their applications sent to West Haven, however, in the most recent test cycle, this past October, there was a total of 29 applicants for all open positions for 6 Departments. Of these 29 applicants, only 16 chose the WHPD as one of their possible destinations. Of these 16 applicants, 10 have already been eliminated. Of the 6 remaining, 1 has told us he is accepting a job elsewhere due to the pay and compensation package and based on preliminary information on the remaining candidates, we may still have a chance to hire 2 of these applicants to fill one of our 7 open positions. Simply put, we are not competitive and have become the place to go if you do not get an offer from another department. I was advised by the West Haven Police Department’s Training & Recruitment Division that this alarming trend has also been identified by the South-Central Criminal Justice Association’s staff. When recruitment strategies were discussed with the staff, the WHPD Training Sergeant was advised “you really need to talk up West Haven. Your salary is very low so you need to sell other perks….like opportunity for advancement”, ………… Imagine that, we need to sell new recruits on their ability to advance faster in WH because officers with more seniority are leaving for other departments….This is just a sad state of affairs for the citizens of WH. If you read the New Haven Register this Sunday, you will see that Ansonia is offering new recruits $70,000 to start and within 2 years they will be at $74,000. Just for clarity, we start at $54,000 and our MAXIMUM for a Senior Patrol Officer is that same $74,000…….How can we possibly attract officers when other towns are bringing their new officers all the way up to our Max salary in just 2 years…… With every officer that leaves, so does the wealth of knowledge and experience they have gained and the vast amount of training we provide as a continuous improvement effort to mold all WH Police Officers to be the best in the state. In our industry, losing higher end wage earners and replacing them with lower wage earners is not a sound strategy, it is a recipe for disaster.
Retention of certified officers is not just a West Haven issue. Throughout the state, many experienced officers are choosing to retire for a myriad of reasons. When an officer in another municipality retires, there are two options for that department. The first is to hire a rookie officer that you send to training and slowly incorporate into the department and the second is to hire an experienced certified officer. In order to save time and money, when these vacancies occur, those departments look to attract certified officers from other departments first. Because WHPD is the lowest paid, without a pension and an attractive long-term disability plan, our officers are an easy target for these open positions. Additionally, other departments are well aware that our continuous improvement training is among the best in the State…….We had a veteran officer come to WH from another municipality and he remarked that he learned more during his training in WH than he learned in all of his 20 years at the other department.
When we hire a rookie officer, we pay for them to be trained for 25 weeks in the academy, then we pay them while they are on in-field training for 12 weeks, add in the recruitment cycle and we are at about a year before we can expect to fill a position. All-in, we are $100,000 into each new officer before they are fully productive…….We have lost 21 Officers to other Departments since 2015. In most all instances it is a combination of much higher wages, a Pension AND suitable disability insurance coverage. The easy math tells you that it has cost the city $2,100,000 since 2015 alone and this money instead could have been used to save the knowledge base and pay our officers a competitive wage.
The industry suggested number of officers for a city of our population is 134, we only budgeted 121, and are currently at 114. We learned last week that an additional 7 more are leaving over the next few months which will bring us to 107. We are currently hemorrhaging and there are another 20 plus officers who are contemplating leaving, but are waiting to see what the city does in response to this situation because they really want to stay in WH. If we lose even half of those, we will be operating at a severely understaffed situation, and as previously explained, we already have issues attracting new officers. This will cause the Overtime to explode and cause overworked officers to be put into split-second decision-making scenarios while not being properly rested from their prior shift…..We recently lost two officers that we hired from other towns due to the amount of overtime they are being mandated to work. When Ray Collins approached one of these officers this fall, he told Ray that he was thrilled with the department and command staff, but he already put in his 20 years at another force and this past summer he was ordered in EVERY weekend. While pay and defined benefits are important, so is quality of life and when you are in an understaffed situation as bad a we may be, the quality of life for these officers significantly declines as well.
As you can see, we have serious concerns about staffing….the summer is our busiest time of year, with the beaches open, the boardwalk being utilized, fireworks, concerts and festivals. We fear we are going to be unable to fully staff the regular beats, let alone the extra duties. We are currently reviewing the possibility of permanently reassigning School Resource Officers, Street Crime Officers, and Community Resource Officers just to be able to send out a complete shift of officers each day.
Mayor Rossi is aware of the severity of these circumstances and she has asked the WHPD Union and Attorney Chris Hodgson to meet and work on an amicable solution to the salary compensation. Further, we know the Mayor has been working closely with Milliman on reviewing pension options as well as developing an attractive long-term disability option. We are here today to ask for your help in supporting this situation. We look forward to being able to offer a competitive wage along with an affordable and competitive pension to protect our officers and their families moving forward.