I overheard some interesting statistics yesterday regarding the City of South Miami police department. This 2.5 square mile city has a police department that consists of 35 officers and detectives, seems a bit much for such a small city, but whatever. What's interesting though is that recently, three of those thirty five have left and six more have applied for work in different police departments. A quick glance at the Leoaffairs.com South Miami forum shows several thread topics where cops are discussing looking at work in other departments.
So what's the deal here? Based on these stats nearly 26% of the pd is either gone or about to leave, that doesn't say much about the pd and those who lead it. Could it have something to do with the Chief's overreaching political machinations or just low moral based on the poor leadership under the current administration?
Regardless, whenever you have a quarter of your police force heading out the door, that kind of turnover is never good for the city...
Mikey, Mikey, Mikey,Mikey...Again, the Chief is to blame for Global Warming!! Your Pulitzer Prize is being sent to you as we speak. Please Sir, and I say this with all due respect..but please take your head out of your nether regions.
ReplyDeleteNo Pay Raises in years, No Step Raises because it was not in the Police Contract and the City (Not the Chief)was cutting the Budget and they basically did a Bait n Switch on the Rookies coming in, Cutting down of Overtime...Etc!!
All those decisions are initially beholden to the Tax Rate and the Tax Money coming in. Who decides that Mikey? The Chief? No! The City Commission and the Mayor set the Tax Rate, but because they want to get voted in again and again they keep lowering it. Citizens are happy, Commission is Re-Elected...Whats the Problem??
You get what you pay for Mikey,Very Simple. And with Tricycle Bob looking to Outsource the Police Dept.,How Do you think Morale is at The City Of Pleasant Living? But, of course, blame it on the Chief and his "Leadership" Great Journalism on that one Mikey.
The Chief should stand up for the troops.He gets a big paycheck and its obvious he only cares about himself.
ReplyDeleteBoth commenters have valid points. City step raises were frozen in the budget crisis that hit after Mayor Julio spent the city into a hole on his way to the legislature. When we got Mirabile a former cop for a city manager, we thought things might improve, but unfortunately he advocated against unfreezing the step raises. Chief came back in with big support from the force because he promised to help, but he has done nothing to unfreeze salaries for the rank & file. Instead he worked to boost his own salary from the $100k in his contract to a whopping $125k in just 2 years. Even worse, Chief actually worked against raises for the guys - he rigged the PBA rep election to get his "bitch" into a PBA rep position. The bitch did nothing to press for salary increases during contract negotiations because dear "Papa" told him not to. So, yes it's about the salaries, but it's also about morale because we see the leader is only looking after himself and crapping on us (well not all of us - the bitch got a cushy detective assignment and a nice black SUV to drive). You can hang in for a while, knowing it always gets better eventually. But after long enough you lose hope for an improvement. When you hear over and over that "Orlando isn't going anywhere", then who can blame you for applying elsewhere? South Miami is a nice town, but the force is small so there are more promotion opportunities in the County, Miami, and the Beach. And if morale sucks? 1+1=2.
ReplyDeleteDon't believe that "Orlando ain't going nowhere" bullshit. I sincerely doubt he'll make it till the end of the month.
DeleteWhy is it with a force of 50 full-time sworn officers South Miami can only get 60% of them doing routine patrol? we field on average 5 patrolmen or sergeants on our streets at any one given time, and add the two motormen working 40 hours M-F. Even though we have the Williamson neighborhood and are bisected by US1, why do we have 8 detectives (16%) of our force. We have 6 zones to patrol, but when 3 officers are enforcing the 20 MPH limit on Sunset, that leaves 2 officers to cover the 5 remaining zones, and you know what happens when you don't play zone defense: the other side scores. Do we need 22 officers each working 8 hours on a DUI checkpoint that can't bust a single drunk driver, or 10 officers on a DUI saturation patrol that also comes up empty handed
ReplyDeleteThe mayor raised salaries 2% this year and lowered pension contributions the year before last. While the private sector was hemmoraging jobs in the great recession at least the nations PD's didn't fare the same fate, because like it or not local governments have the ability to say, "Give us money or we will take your house away"! Please bring up frozen step increases to the mayor and if revenues increase salariy increases may follow. With the new PD hires why did we only get one Anglo and no women or Blacks?
DeleteAventura has 80 officers. The City is 3 square miles and has about 28 thousand people.
ReplyDeleteGreaat reading your blog post
ReplyDelete