LR, police ink deal to boost officer salaries

Pay to increase over 2 years to help attract, retain staff

Rock city officials and police union representatives have signed a new agreement that outlines a salary increase of about 5.5 percent for the city’s officers and sergeants over the next two years.

John Gilchrist, president of the Little Rock Fraternal Order of Police, said the pay raise is a sign the city values the hard work of the department, which continues to face staffing shortages.

“At the tempo they’re working, they’ve been asked to do a lot more work with a lot less resources for a long time,” he said, alluding to the dozens of persistent sworn-officer vacancies in the agency.

The organization is the largest police union in the state and negotiates salaries for all Little Rock officers and sergeants, he said. Police union data show its membership includes about 93 percent of all sworn personnel in the department as of October.

According to the agreement, police officers and sergeants will receive a 3 percent salary raise in 2018, bringing the annual starting salary for an officer to $42,675.97 and the starting sergeant salary to $66,741.97. Officers and sergeants will see an additional 2.5 percent annual salary increase in 2019, based on 2018 salaries.

“I think overall the membership is pleased with the contract,” he said.

The agreement has been signed by police union representatives, along with Stacey Witherell, director of the city’s Human Resources Department, and Shella Atlas Evans, a city labor and employee relations manager. The agreement, obtained last week, did not include the signatures of Assistant Chief Hayward Finks or Assistant Chief Alice Fulk, who participated in the negotiations.

As of Monday morning, Witherell said their signatures were still missing from the agreement, but she described the signatures as a formality.

In an interview last week, she described the contract negotiations as “very cooperative” and said the salary raises are meant to attract new police applicants while retaining officers who could

walk out the door and retire.

The city budget will be presented today and the budget has to be approved by the end of the year, she said.

Meanwhile, Little Rock’s local fire union remained in contract negotiations with the city as of Monday morning, according to Capt. Richard Morehead, president of the organization. Morehead declined to discuss any further details. Witherell also declined to comment about the negotiations with the fire union.

Little Rock has turned to financial incentives as a way

of attracting new police recruits to a department that, as of Nov. 14, had 84 sworn officer vacancies. The incentives have included a $5,000 signing bonus for recruits who complete the agency’s training academy. New recruits also receive another $5,000 for buying a home in Little Rock.

And while the union recognizes the need to attract new recruits, Gilchrist said the financial incentives have seemed unfair, particularly because a new recruit who graduates from the academy is awarded thousands of dollars before responding to his first call on the street. The contract, he said, provided an opportunity for an

across-the-board raise for the officers and sergeants already contributing to the department.

“I think it goes a long way,” he said of the salary increase.

Besides the pay raise, Gilchrist said the new contract has an incentive that will allow officers to receive payment for up to 400 hours of sick leave if they have reached the maximum amount of accrued sick leave, which is 1,600 hours. He said the incentive will only apply to sworn officers with more than 20 years of service with the department.

The incentive, he said, was put in place to retain older officers and prevent the abuse of sick leave.