Union chief: Detroit losing officers at alarming rate
DETROIT MI July 6 2018 — Detroit officers are leaving the force at an alarming rate, according to the president of the city’s largest police union.
Mark Diaz, president of the Detroit Police Officers Association, said the union has lost 117 officers since Jan 1., which averages to about 4.5 per week, according to the Detroit News. As city officials and the union negotiate a contract extension, Diaz said many officers are leaving to other cities for higher pay and better benefits.
This special coverage series takes an in-depth look at recruitment and retention challenges and potential solutions.
The union president said the union and city are negotiating to extend a contract, which expires in 2020, that was signed during the city’s 2013 bankruptcy. Diaz also said he wants to restore some benefits lost during the city’s bankruptcy, including restoration of holiday pay and longevity pay, which was about 1 percent of senior officers’ base pay.
“We also lost 40 hours of sick time,” Diaz said. “We used to be able to bank sick time if we didn’t use it. Policing is a high-speed job, and when officers go down, they go down hard. We had a sick bank that was built in, but we lost that during the bankruptcy.”
Since 2014, the city has hired just under 800 officers, but Diaz added that the city has also lost more than 800 officers during that time. He said there were about 2,000 in the union in 2014, but that number has now been reduced to 1,624.
Diaz said while he’s glad the city is hiring more officers, replacing seasoned officers with inexperienced ones is not the answer. He said about 800 Detroit officers have less than five years of experience.
Diaz also pointed to an officer, a 19-year veteran of the Detroit Police Department, who left to work for another city’s department. He said the officer was making $57,000 at the Detroit PD, while the other department offered him $78,000 “off the bat.”
Another issue the department has is officers leaving shortly after graduating from the police academy, Diaz said. According to Bridge Magazine, 19 percent of Detroit police recruits hired from 2015 to 2018 left the department within three years of graduating the academy.
“By not giving Detroit police officers a reason to stay here after the academy, the city is exacerbating the problem by having to train new officers,” Diaz said. “The city has to stop looking at DPD as a training ground for other police departments.”
