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Study On Pay Increase For Police Underway

Erin Keever
/
WFAE
Mayor Vi Lyles talks about police pay, retention and recruitment on Charlotte Talks.

Charlotte Mayor Vi Lyles says she expects a formal study of CMPD compensation will result in the city doing a better job of retaining and recruiting officers.

CMPD currently has about 200 vacant positions. The Fraternal Order of Police has asked for a 15 percent raise. Speaking on Charlotte Talks Thursday, Lyles says a long-term solution is more complex.

“It’s where you are in your career path and it’s where your rank is,” Lyles said. "All of these things are important decisions and you can’t just say it’s just 15 percent and it may be appropriate in some places and not in others, so let’s wait until we get our study back on compensation and let’s look at where our key points of rank are and how long it takes you to get there. All of these are things we are going to do.”

Starting pay for a new CMPD officer is just over $43,000 a year. In Raleigh, they make between $47,000 and $55,000. In addition to the pay increase, FOP officials are asking that officers who live in the city be allowed to take their cars home. They also want better health care, health care reinstated for retirees hired after 2009, shift differential pay for those who work second and third shifts, and overtime when officers work on holidays.

Lyles says she welcomes the FOP's requests to improve conditions for police officers in an effort to make their jobs more attractive for recruiting purposes. She says their suggestions will be taken into consideration during budget talks.

"Whenever we 're dealing with compensation issues, we don't do this in a vacuum," she said. "The police department will have representatives to work with the city manager and all of it is on the table.

"So I expect in the budget we'll have a robust discussion, but that discussion has to include the (police) force."

Gwendolyn is an award-winning journalist who has covered a broad range of stories on the local and national levels. Her experience includes producing on-air reports for National Public Radio and she worked full-time as a producer for NPR’s All Things Considered news program for five years. She worked for several years as an on-air contract reporter for CNN in Atlanta and worked in print as a reporter for the Baltimore Sun Media Group, The Washington Post and covered Congress and various federal agencies for the Daily Environment Report and Real Estate Finance Today. Glenn has won awards for her reports from the Maryland-DC-Delaware Press Association, SNA and the first-place radio award from the National Association of Black Journalists.