Health Benefits reduced.

[dcfdsid]

I cant believe this hasnt made it on here yet. NOTE THAT EVERY SINGLE VOTE WAS IN FAVOR OR THIS REDUCTION..

sid

D.C. POLICE UNION NEWS UPDATE

FRATERNAL ORDER OF POLICE,
METROPOLITAN POLICE DEPARTMENT LABOR COMMITTEE


MAYOR AND D.C. COUNCIL REDUCE
POLICE RETIREMENT HEALTH BENEFITS,
CHIEF LANIER SILENT


On Tuesday, September 22, 2009, the Council of the District of Columbia unanimously approved the Fiscal Year 2010 Budget Support Act of 2009 (BSA). As previously reported, the BSA contains provisions, proposed by the Mayor, that reduce retirement health benefits for police officers and firefighters. The fact that the BSA would reduce retirement health benefits for police officers was announced at the hearing and made clear to all councilmembers prior to the vote. Despite that fact, every single councilmember voted to reduce police benefits. At no point did Chief Lanier or any of her command staff raise any objections to or question the necessity and impact of cutting police retirement benefits.

By passing the BSA, the Mayor and the Council have also moved to reduce the number of p olice officers by approximately 10%. The BSA provides for a hiring freeze for police officers (except for 50 positions paid for through a federal grant). We are already approximately 200 officers short of the statutorily authorized 4200 positions. Assuming conservative attrition, we will be at 3800 by this time next year. This means fewer officers on the street and in the neighborhoods, and more work for those that remain. Chief Lanier has raised no objections to this reduction in the police force.

At the same time, as part of the BSA, the Mayor proposed and the Council approved $1.9 million for bonuses for executives, $1 million for the Historical Society, $85 million to buy an office building that has sat unused for 3 years, $2.6 million for the Office of Police Complaints (which adjudicates less than 15 complaints a year), and $20 million for the Mayor’s summer jobs program. In addition, D.C. councilmembers remain eligible for annual statutory cost of living increases to their six-figure salaries (D.C. councilmembers are part-time employees).

This past week has made several things clear; 1) we have no friends or allies on the D.C. Council - they do not care what happens to us; 2) the Chief and the Mayor will not follow the rules and will not support us; and 3) we can prevail through the courts and administrative processes (e.g., AHOD). FOP attorneys are already working on challenges to the reduction in benefits and we will pursue those to the end. But we, as police officers and as20a union, need to make a decision. We must decide whether to stand and fight for our rights and our jobs or to sit by and watch as they strip away the rest of our few remaining benefits and as the working conditions in this Department continue to decline.

If you choose to fight, we have to be prepared to really fight. We need to expand our legal challenges to the Department\'s unlawful behavior, we need go out and recruit candidates for office that are pro-police and tough on crime and work to remove those that are anti-police and soft on crime, and we need to let the public know what is happening to its police officers. To accomplish this, we will need resources.

Next month, you will have an opportunity to vote to amend the By-Laws and increase the dues in order to provide those resources. Over the next several weeks you will be provided with explanations of the changes and encouraged to discuss the changes with your union representatives. The decision to fight, and the future of this union, will be yours to make.

--
Marcello Muzzatti
Secretary
FOP/MPD Labor Committee

[PGComedyClub]

...and as par for the course, Local 36 remains as quiet as the church mice that reside in many of fire houses. Maybe they're busy working on our raise (3 years). Or maybe they're too busy working on our contract (2 years). Just hang in there, I'm sure no news is good news.

[Loo for life]

In defense of the Local and far be it from me to do that... Brother Ed Smith (Retirement Board Active Member) explained the whole situation at the last membership meeting. The Mayor blindsided everyone including Council Member Mary Cheh who was working on killing this bill and she did however get an ammendment attached that basically excluded out disability retirees from this devastation.

[PGComedyClub]

Duly noted, however, aside from that everyone has been in the dark. Prior to the meeting no on e had so much as a clue or shred of info about this situation and had no other choice but to look at the MPD website to find out anything. Not even a statement about the Council's decision from the local? Perhaps on the website? Just leaves me wondering if anything is going on up there. Its been pretty quiet throughout many issues we are dealing with on the floor, to date.

[dcfdsid]

Mayor Says Police, Fire Retirement Benefits Preserved
Mayor Adrian M. Fenty (D), Police Chief Cathy L. Lanier and Fire Chief Dennis L. Rubin appeared together at a press conference this morning to announce that they had restored cuts to retirement health benefits of police and fire employees.

The issue of retirement health care cuts to public safety workers was bubbling for several months but picked up major steam after the D.C. Council approved the FY 2010 budget, which included eligibility changes in retirement health plans for all city employees. The Office of the Chief Financial Officer, in trying to close the city's budget gap, proposed a new formula for retirement health benefits for all city employees. It would require city employees to have more years of service under their belts before the government would pay its full 75 percent toward health insurance.

Almost immediately the police union, Fraternal Order of Police Lodge 1 said that this represented a serious benefits cut to police officers, and was harmful given the kind of intense physical work that officers do. Standing outside of police headquarters today, Fenty said that it was an error that police and fire employees got lumped in with the rest of the government employees affected by the change. Rubin and Lanier agreed. No one said that emergency workers were more important than other civil servants, but "over the years, the work that we do, it takes a toll on the bodies of our officers," Lanier said.

Fenty said the city would put $3 million toward police and fire retirement health benefits to cover the emergency workers, a new policy that would not go into at least 2010, when the crop of officers with 25 years of service will encounter the new rules.

Union chairman Kristopher Baumann attended the press conference, silently standing in the rear until the officials left the podium and the TV cameras turned off. Baumann said that the new policy announced by Fenty was meaningless because the changes in the retirement system were passed into law by the D.C. Council, and only the legislature could change it.

"Just like they put the extra money in, they'll be able to take the funding out," Baumann said. "The law says that you don't have to cover it."

By Theola Labbé-DeBose | October 6, 2009; 3:22 PM ET | Category: City Finances , Crime and Public Safety , D.C. Council , Mayor Fenty , Theola Labbé-DeBose
Previous: Council Rejects Hartsock Nomination | Next: Local GOP Leaders Support Same-Sex Marriage

[footsoldier]

so is it dead or alive and kicking...mpd had rep's there, anybody from L-36?...doubtful

[BMIG]

Seems like our brethren in blue are tired of their kool aid server also.


Harry Jaffe: Is Chief Lanier losing the trust of her troops?
By: Harry Jaffe
Examiner Columnist
October 21, 2009

D.C. Police Officer Mike Touart says he and other street cops have lost faith in Chief Cathy Lanier, pictured. "She's a politician," he says, "not a chief of police." (Examiner)
When D.C. Police Chief Cathy Lanier took over the police force, she asked her cops to send her e-mails with comments or suggestions, good or bad. She vowed to protect them and their anonymity.

Officer Mike Touart has paid for his candor.

By any measure, Touart is a dedicated D.C. cop. His parents are D.C. natives. He joined the Metropolitan Police Department in 1990.

"I'm a Washingtonian," he tells me.

Touart has spent most of his 19 plus years on the force policing the other Capitol Hill in the 1st Police District. He ticks off the public housing projects: "Potomac Gardens, Kentucky Courts, Sursum Corda, Greenleaf Gardens."

In these "gardens," people sold drugs and bled to death. Touart worked vice and gun-recovery units.

"We did some undercover buys in some fairly significant cases," he says.

But when Touart saw his partners start to treat the stress of the streets with alcohol — and suicide — the job became less fun. He came home at 3 a.m. one morning after making a drug buy and went to tuck in his daughter. She had just turned 3.

"I had been a good father," he tells me, "but I felt like I didn't even know her."

Next day he went to his sergeant and said: "I gotta go off vice."

For the past decade, Mike Touart has been a hardworking street cop, riding patrol, making arrests, keeping Capitol Hill safe. But two years ago he started wondering whether the police department was behind him and other street cops.

"The straw that broke the camel's back was what they did to Jim Haskell," he says. Haskell was involved in a shootout where a 16-year-old was shot dead. Touart felt Mayor Adrian Fenty and Lanier exposed and accused Haskell in the press.

Then last month he heard the mayor had asked the city council to cut police retirement benefits. He and two buddies went to city hall for the hearing. They expected Lanier to show up and testify on their behalf. She didn't.

A few days later, Lanier sent an e-mail congratulating cops for serving on her All Hands on Deck details. Touart responded on Sept. 23: "Here, you can have this back. Not worth the gigabytes it's written on."

Lanier wrote back: "You have obviously mistaken my kindness to be openly insubordinate. Please don't make that mistake again."

Touart thought: "How vain and pompous. Are we in Cuba?"

Later that day Capt. Jeff Brown ordered his sergeants to get a statement from Touart about the e-mail and wrote: "Do not grant him leave if requested and ensure this is done."

Touart gave his statement. The police department says he's not under investigation. "I don't have a clue," he says. "No one's told me anything."

Says union boss Kris Baumann: "They don't take statements and restrict leave if there's no investigation."

Touart says he and other street cops have lost faith in Lanier.

"She's a politician," he says, "not a chief of police."

But don't tell her that in an e-mail.



Find this article at:
http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/local/Is-Chief-Lanier-losing-the-trust-of-her-troops_-8414625-65055947.html