Letter: Higher pay for police makes solid fiscal sense

Posted 1/5/24

It makes complete fiscal sense for these officers, and it's long past time for our town council to address this alarming turnover of our dedicated police officers and offer them a competitive salary.

This item is available in full to subscribers.

Please log in to continue

Log in

Register to post events


If you'd like to post an event to our calendar, you can create a free account by clicking here.

Note that free accounts do not have access to our subscriber-only content.

Day pass subscribers

Are you a day pass subscriber who needs to log in? Click here to continue.


Letter: Higher pay for police makes solid fiscal sense

Posted

To the editor:

Recently, the Phoenix featured an article which highlighted four new officers joining the ranks of the Bristol Police Dept., and first and foremost, I would like to wish these new officers a safe and healthy career. In these days where a career in law enforcement is nowhere near as appealing as it once was, it's good to see these four dedicated individuals choosing a path in law enforcement.

Coincidentally, soon after the article was printed, Kevin Lynch, the Bristol police chief took to the airwaves on WPRO talk radio, participating in an interview where he discussed the difficulties that police departments all over the state are having recruiting and retaining police officers. And while recruiting new police officers is a problem all over the state and country, Bristol has been particularly hard hit, since cities and towns in the state began engaging in the relatively new policy of accepting so called "lateral transfers" of police officers from one department to another, without those officers having to go through the cumbersome and time consuming procedure of leaving one police department and applying to work in another.

Under today's policies, police officers can be hired in a relatively low paying department such as Bristol and then "shop around" to other much higher paying departments, where they can bypass the long testing process, and immediately start working, while taking their seniority and pension credits with them. Officers from low paying departments (including Bristol) have been leaving those departments at an alarming rate, with the low paying departments investing a great deal of time and money training these new officers, only to see them leave for higher paying municipalities.

To his credit, Kevin Lynch has been a one-man public relations agency for the police department and the town, but despite his best efforts, police officers in Bristol and elsewhere will naturally migrate to departments offering much higher salaries. And while it's great to work in a police department with a supportive leader such as Bristol, unfortunately that support does not pay for mortgages, groceries, and kids’ college educations, and until our town council gets serious about paying our police officers a competitive salary, the Bristol Police Dept. is simply going to be a revolving door, where officers get hired, gain experience and then leave for other departments offering much higher pay.

It makes complete fiscal sense for these officers, and it's long past time for our town council to address this alarming turnover of our dedicated police officers and offer them a competitive salary, which will go a long way in addressing their recruitment and retention problem.

Mike Proto
245 Chestnut St.

2024 by East Bay Media Group

Barrington · Bristol · East Providence · Little Compton · Portsmouth · Tiverton · Warren · Westport
Meet our staff
Jim McGaw

A lifelong Portsmouth resident, Jim graduated from Portsmouth High School in 1982 and earned a journalism degree from the University of Rhode Island in 1986. He's worked two different stints at East Bay Newspapers, for a total of 18 years with the company so far. When not running all over town bringing you the news from Portsmouth, Jim listens to lots and lots and lots of music, watches obscure silent films from the '20s and usually has three books going at once. He also loves to cook crazy New Orleans dishes for his wife of 25 years, Michelle, and their two sons, Jake and Max.