re: Regarding this defund the police BS and the BRPD....

quote:

---

I don't understand what you're getting at here...Are you saying they shouldn't be paid for overtime? Or that supervisors shouldn't make more money than the base pay?

I would think it's obvious that the base pay doesn't reflect the actual compensation of every employee because you're going to have higher paid positions and they're probably paying for a ton of overtime if they're 100 officers short.

The implication of low base pay is precisely the fact that they're going to be paying for it with overtime, and the long-term problem if not being able to hire anyone.

---

I didn't realize that someone had replied to my post when I just added an edit, so I'll add it here:

The difference between "base pay" and "gross pay" for BRPD as a whole in 2019 was $10,948,154.73.

Eleven. Million. Dollars.

Am I saying people shouldn't be paid for overtime they work? Of course not.

What I'm saying is that for $11M a year, we could substantially increase base pay *and* hire a bunch of new police officers. The dirty little secret at BRPD is that they don't want to give up their overtime, which is what would happen if more officers were hired. Which is why they keep crowing about being underfunded yet cough and mumble when the topic of overtime is brought up.

quote:

---

And they can and do take side gigs with the cars and uniforms for various security details.

---

They work two jobs because their first job doesn't pay enough?

Wow what an awesome benefit!

quote:

---

and 1 was terminated.

---

So much overtime whether it’s official or a side gig is not healthy.
Officers can easily get stressed out or tired. It could impact their home life, thus creating other issues.

Pay a fair salary, train the cops well, provide quality leadership and cut out do much OT and that would help the situation.

The OT needs to be cut back and the after hour gigs cut back
Pay them more, keep em fresher and happier. Too much OT is debilitating.

quote:

---

By the way, if you think they’re only making $33,000 a year, I have some beachfront property in Colorado I’d like to sell you for cheap.

---

Isn’t this the truth. Both our neighbors are young cops with saltwater pools and almost 100k worth of vehicles in the driveway with stay at home wives. Our attorney and medical professional neighbors don’t have that stuff.

There's officers working 200 to 400 hours of overtime a month which quite frankly sounds like BS if they're doing it consistently every month.

The cop/teacher couples in my neighborhood seem to do well with $400k homes, pools, nice vacations, weekend trips, boats, and nice vehicles. I always think of them when I hear about how low cops are paid but they are probably exceptions to the rule.

quote:

---

I would just like to know in what world does defunding the police seem like a great answer to police brutality?

Anybody who suggests that as an option deserves to take a sweeping paycut in his/her job because one employee had to be corrected. So now everybody pays the price. Is that not the logic that they are going by?

---

No, it isn’t. Their argument is closer to saying that Entergy has done a shite job as a government sanctioned monopoly, so we should replace them with someone/something else.

quote:

---

BRPD overtime

---

Do you do case research and billable hours for free? I didn't think so.

You are painting an entire agency with a broad stroke that isn't fair. I thought you would be better than that, but in today's climate I am not surprised. Manipulating numbers or rare incidents is the woke thing to do.

I have got about 16 years on the job, the City of Baton Rouge paid me 45k last year. I got another 6k from the State of Louisiana for supplemental pay. So 51k for someone with that amount of experience (college educated but that doesn't matter here) is fair compensation for the risk and effort a cop takes? In Baton Rouge?

I work in Investigations so I am required at times to be on call and leave my family in the middle of the night to work a scene. I also have to work football games at my alumni while I watch 1,000's of people who have never went to school there and have no pride or association with the University get drunk and relax. With both of those obligations I worked around 300-400 hours of overtime last year. Again, time spent away from my family, in the middle of the night and on weekends.

My total gross was around 70k last year. Scratching and clawing to provide for my family, when I am home, and live an honest life.

The few outliers you are using with excess of 100k in gross are not the norm. There will always be people who will work as much as they can. Long days, long nights, rinse, repeat. You don't know their situation or why they choose to do it.

As far as hiring new officers, thanks for the simple solution. We've only been trying to increase our sworn personnel for the past 2 decades with no luck. It's not that easy.

No one in this job is asking to be rich. But there is a market value for police officers in a city the size of Baton Rouge and we are grossly below it.

Higher pay will absolutely increase the quality of officers we hire and retain. It will also increase accountability and lower stress do to long hours WORKING on off days.

But I get it, police pay doesn't bring in the votes like kickball, kumbaya, and muh community outreach.

MARKET VALUE.

ETA: Using your 11 million dollar figure, the average amount of overtime for 650 employees is 16k. Real greedy man.