LOOKING FOR ANSWERS
Police chief says bad labor deals hurting department
TROY, N.Y. » City police Chief John Tedesco downplayed rumors of strife within his department Monday night, but said generous past labor contracts have left his hands tied as he tries to run an agency he has been a part of for more than four decades.
At a meeting of the City Council’s Public Safety Committee that Tedesco said he requested, the chief and council members spent more than 90 minutes sharing ideas on how to address a host of issues, ranging from the ongoing suspension of the city’s entire drug and weapons unit and a recent spate of suspicious fires in the northern part of the city to concerns from individual council members about such things as nuisance abatement and traffic enforcement. The chief said, however, the main problem affecting his ability to run the department are constraints put on him in past deals with the city’s Police Benevolent Association that leaves him little leeway to assign officers where they could best be used.
“Ladies and gentlemen, it is you on this body who have the power to correct these deficiencies,” Tedesco told council members. “You are the final arbiter of contracts that are presented before you, and you that power by the virtue of the vote.”
Tedesco refused to blame the union or its leadership for what he considers bad deals in the past, explaining that PBA leaders are simply doing their job of getting the best agreement they can for their members. Instead,
he blames past councils and administrations for letting such agreements go through.
“It is those who have represented the city who have failed at the bargaining table,” he said.
Tedesco also strongly denied rumors of combative relationships with both Mayor Patrick Madden and PBA President Aaron Collington, saying that while the nature of those
relationships are often adversarial, his relationships with both Madden and Collington remain professional. Collington said he and his union members were more than willing to work with the city but said he had yet to sit down with both Madden and Tedesco, though he does meet regularly with the chief.
“You ask us to work with less every day, and we’re doing it to the best of our ability,” Collington said. “We’re just asking to be included in the process. We don’t want to run the police department; we just are asking to be included.”
Council members, however, expressed concern with immediate problems such as the string of suspicious fires and the recent spate of violence. Councilman Mark McGrath, RDistrict 2, who represents the beleaguered North Central neighborhood, expressed frustration with the department’s response, directing criticism at both Madden and Tedesco.
“We’re not getting anywhere. We’re chasing our tails,” McGrath said. “Is
this going to be the administration of ‘There’s nothing we can do?’ That’s not acceptable.”
The investigation of the drug and weapons unit, now being handled by state police, should not have come as a complete surprise to city officials, Tedisco said. The probe is the second into the unit in three years (a third was avoided, he said, after the target of that probe instead chose to retire), and Tedesco reminded officials of the warning he gave after Officer Brian Gross admitted in 2015 to tipping off one of the subjects of a regional drug investigation.
“When the Brian Gross issue became public, I sat before this body and said that if changes were not made, there would be another scandal,” he said Monday. “Here we sit, nothing has changed, and we are in the midst of yet another scandal.”
The latest scandal could have a far-reaching impact on the department’s ability to combat drug and weapons problems, Tedesco warned, by making cooperation with other agencies more troublesome.
“How frequently can issues such as this arise before agencies such as the DEA, the FBI, U.S. Marshals and the New York State Police shun this department?” the chief asked. “How much more embarrassment do our officers have to endure before changes are sought?”
Tedesco said he is most restricted by seniority provisions in the current PBA contract that he claims gives him no control over where his officers are placed. Under the contract, he explained, openings on individual units are filled through a bid system, where the longest-tenured officer to express interest in an opening generally must be given the spot, whether they are qualified or not. Using himself as an example, Tedesco explained that some officers are better as street cops — as he said he was — while others more suited to be investigators or to serve in other roles, but he has no authority to move officers around.
“We have a tremendous pool of talent here that we can’t put in the right positions,” he said.
The chief pointed out that even in the case of the six suspended drug and weapons unit members, he couldn’t simply assign them to desk duty or move them to another unit while the case is investigated. Instead, he said, he was forced to put them on paid leave for the course of the investigation, having to use other officers — with help from state police and the Rensselaer County Sheriff’s Office — to handle those duties, with the already shortstaffed department having to dip into its overtime budget to pay to put additional officers in the city’s North Central neighborhood, where there was a fatal stabbing and two shootings in the past two weeks.
“I do not regret spending the money,” he said, pointing out that he approved 86 overtime requests just over the past weekend, “but I do regret the lack of ability to deploy resources in a more efficient and effective manner.”
Tedesco pointed out as a specific example a grievance filed by the PBA after he put out a directive ordering officers to return business calls made to their city-issued cellphones within 30 minutes of receipt. He said investigators were refusing to answer their cellphones — which many also use for personal calls, he said, despite the city paying both for the phones and service — because a clause in the current contract had expired.
“In the last seven years that I have been chief of police — and before that, as an assistant chief — this has been an issue, yet the issue today remains unresolved,” he said of that specific problem. “I simply cannot accept paying an officer to answer a cityissued cellphone that is [also] enjoyed for personal reasons without cost, yet [the Public Employees Relation Board] rules that my practice is improper. We have to negotiate the issue of when you’re going to answer a telephone.”
Tedesco said he was heartened after meeting with the city’s new labor attorneys from Goldberg & Segalla — which replaced another Albany law firm, Goldberger & Kramer, earlier this year — in saying they showed a willingness to fight for things the chief said are necessary, specifically in disciplining officers. He said the city has not held an actual disciplinary hearing in at least two decades, with past city officials preferring to negotiate settlements, a process that can be long and costly in cases that have dragged out for years in some instances.
“The city made mistakes in the past at the bargaining table,” Tedesco said. “I’m just asking that this council doesn’t make any more of these mistakes.”
Tedesco also denied a rumor that he planned to announce his retirement at Monday night’s meeting, explaining that while he does expect to step down in the near future after 41 years on the force, he still has more he wants to accomplish.
“I want to leave [the department] better than when I came,” he said. “That’s why I’m here tonight.”