Chattanooga Pulse

We arrived at work as cheerful as ever to discover the district we would be working for the night—and that with an hour and a half’s notice we would have to start paying $1,950 dollars a year to drive a police car to and from work and use for side employment. Ninety minutes notice after a 17-year run. $1,950 dollars more I would have to earn just to break even.  I found it almost appropriate that my own superiors had learned about something as substantial as this from an Internet(s) press release on a local web site, that being the way our elected officials “Roll.”  And the final insult?  I got a pretty shitty district, too.  (I HATE working “Fox Six”.)

My head still spinning, I bounced the math around inside it and realized this was a more-than-four percent instantaneous pay cut.  Tsunamis give better warning.  I’d grown quite comfortable with the mediocrity of my pay and the concern our elected officials show for us, but while receiving no pay increase in the last three years is one thing, an actual deduction was something I hadn’t considered.

We were briefed (by the media) that this was because of “the economy”, of course.  And while true, it was sadly funny, because that’s what we were told the year before.  And the year before that.  In 2002, it was because of “9/11 and the stock markets”, but the murder of a police officer prompted a raise out of propriety (it, along with money for a police memorial had been denied weeks before her tragic death, then both miraculously appeared).  2003?  Same thing.  2004?  You guessed it.

Now, 2005 and 2006 were technically the greatest boom years in terms of personal wealth the country has ever seen (prior to certain economic bubbles bursting), so the excuse then was, “Ah!  We’re ‘studying’ your pay now.”  And study they did…for two years.  In 2007, they finally adjusted our pay—below their studies findings—and then?  The mayor’s office cut the funding for the raises they had budgeted based on its own independent study, leaving me at a 0 percent change in pay in three years, and only two percent from where I was seven years ago.  I can’t make this stuff up.

I’m saying all of this to paint you a picture, albeit a boring one.  But I understand perfectly that its boring nature is its Achilles heel, because no one outside of the employees themselves particularly gives a shit. I washed my war paint off years ago.  There were no more arguments left; no more windmills to tilt at, so I hammered my rifles into plows and worked more hours on the side to make ends meet.  Then, in its never-ending ability to surprise even a barely functional thug like me, I arrived to find I just got a pay cut as well as losing the ability to make up for the loss on the side—unless I paid my employer nearly $2,000 a year.
That’s MY half of the story.  Still don’t give a shit?  Now let’s tell YOUR half.

This $1.4 million the City is “saving”? Despite the three fatal police-involved shootings just in the last few months and the perception of gang warfare and teenagers shooting into cars on neighborhood streets during a downturn in the economy with unemployment levels at their highest since the Great Depression, your SWAT team members now have to pay $100 dollars a month to respond to SWAT calls with their equipment from their homes. Your afterhours homicide detectives, even your K9 Officers with their specialized “doggie cars”, all have to pay the city no less than $1,300 dollars annually to respond from their homes to our emergencies. To your suicidal gunman situations.  To your traffic fatalities and your murders.  They have taken that marked police car out of your neighborhoods, causing a 50 percent reduction in cars on the street three times a day for shift changes—but I’m sure that won’t hurt response times either.

On the flip side, the city spent more than that $1.4 million dollars it saved to repair the lights and fountains of “The Passage” alley. Over $700,000 on a homeless mall that is just as inoperable as it was six years ago.  $50,000 dollars spent to lease (lease, I said) pieces of “art” for the sidewalks of East Main St.  And my most recent favorite:  A quarter million dollars on a “spray park”, announced the day they cut police equipment.

As for those cops who don’t like the sudden $1,950 (or $1,300 option, in fairness) reduction in pay to maintain the benefits they had 24 hours before? If they quit, the city isn’t hiring more police officers. And when they do?  It takes 14 months to produce each one (from time of application, to passing basic tests, to background psych and criminal checks, to a six-month academy, and four months of field training). And even then, they have to “pass”, and even then, they have to “stay”. And do you know why we aren’t having police academies to replace the 34 officers that have left since January alone? Because it Saves Money.  About half a million dollars, by some estimates.  Did I mention that the city is annexing county property amidst all this?
PRIORITIES, folks. They’re a pretty big deal, and it’s not the cops losing out on this cut, for once.  It’s You.

When officer Alexander D. Teach is not patrolling our fair city on the heels of the criminal element, he is an occasional student at UTC, an up and coming carpenter, auto mechanic, prominent boating enthusiast, and spends his spare time volunteering for the Boehm Birth Defects Center.