CHANGE

Pretend someone who can and would want to make a change actually reads message boards. Rather than complain, put out some ideas, be specific. What should be the responsibility of the agency? Who should run the agency? Chief? Director? Capt? LT? SGT? Should the districts be consolidated? What tools / training do you need to do your jobs? Should you be joined to FDLE? What is the benefit of your suggestion to the officers and the state?

Put out ideas, someone may run with your idea and take credit, but what the hell you may get what you want.

Stop whining, you can make change happen

I agree, let's be productive and add to the solution. I know that the new Director is open to suggestions and will be fair, but firm on adapting/promoting change. Let's get him concrete information that will enable him to make some improvements and boost the morale of the overall organization. He has a proven record of getting the job done.

OK, I’ll play.

1-Get us off the 160 hour pay cycle. No elaboration needed.

2-Get the pay to a point where we can live on it, and be able to save in to a 401K to supplement the State Retirement if we live that long.

3-There needs to be a clear mission statement regarding each of the bureaus. What are patrol expected to do, BEI, BER, and Training.

4-Take the Park Managers out of the chain of command. They do not belong there and we should not be taking orders from non-law enforcement personnel.

5-We need to become full partners in the State Law Enforcement Community and not some red headed step child that is only allowed to come out and play when FEMA is paying . (The only times we go on a 40 hour work cycle)

6-Bureau Chiefs need to understand that Tallahassee is not the center of the Universe. This is a big state and there is a lot to learn form the bigger P.D’s and not necessarily from the Pan Handle Sheriffs. Good grief, T.T proved that.

7-Support personnel are needed at the district level. There are Captains and Lts doing secretarial work, which some use as an excuse for their non-performance as supervisors.

8-Limit the unnecessary paperwork (see #7)

9-Oh yes, if in order to get these things we need to be absorbed by FDLE, where do I sign?

Although some of my comments appear to be written in a lighthearted mode, make no mistake that these things are important to us.
This list took about 5 minutes to compile. I am sure that there will be additions by others that will be equally as important added in subsequent postings. Command and Staff level issues are not listed here as we all know that “You can fool some of the people some of the time, but you can’t fool all of the people all of the time” and our fools will eventually be found out.

I agree with you catalyst. I would like to add something to that list.

That would be a chance for promotion.

There is no place to go in this agency. You used to be able to move into investigations, but that is not an option anymore.

The BEI LT's would rather hire outsiders that have IA's still pending than officers from patrol with the same ,if not more, experience and education.

A little loyalty would be nice.

To whom it may concern.
Florida is HOT and HUMID.
Whose brilliant idea was it to issue BLACK trousers?
If we are part of some “Tactical Special Team” that needs to be stealthy at night, please let the rest of us know, otherwise this infatuation with the color black is NOT cool.

Taser

Tasers

Tasers

There a a much greater chance of recoverig from a taser than recovering from several .45 rounds center mass.

The taser is much safer to use in the crowded parks.

No decontamination, as there is with OC spray.

No cross contamination, as with OC spray

OC or .45/shotgun should not be our only choices.

I'll play too.

1. How about a 10 hour 4 day work week. I feel like all I do is work. Don't say the parks need us. If you have 2 officers rotating in the parks, what difference will it make whether we are off 2 days or 3 days?

2. Get us off the 160 hour schedule. If we were to go back to the 40 or 80 hour schedule, more O.T. would be available. Besides, I tired of DEP making interest off my paycheck.

3. Promote from within. Those of us who have attempted to get into investigations know the real reasons we are getting passed over time and time again.

4. Get us infration tickets. I have a real hard time writing someone a NTA with a large fine for a simple infraction. Most other agenices have them and you will see paper activity increase tremendously.

5. Tasers please. Enough said.

6. Put Investigations with FPP. Most agencies do it this way and it would allow both divisions to see how the other operates. Plus information sharing would be a plus.

7. Get park managers out. I welcome concerns and problems coming from the managers, but they have no right to tell me how to be a cop.

8. Working with other districts. We don't even know who the other officers are in the districts that ajoin our district. Any particular reason for that? Once again, information sharing is the key to security and officer safety.

9. Pay. Pay us more money and you will see people knocking down the door to work here.

10. Outside agencies. Why is it that we can't work with other agencies? Especially when it comes down to officer safety. Try explaining to other agency brass that you can't help them unless you get a "mother may I" approval?

If these simple requests were even addressed this would be amazing. Hopefully our director is seems decent will at least entertain these thoughts

We are the only agency that has to write reports on criminal traffic.

It is meaningless paperwork and a waste of time. I spend hours writing reports on criminal traffic when I could be out doing more patrol.

I was told that when this was brought to Captain Gibson and Chief Walls attention, they were going to look into changing this practice.

I have not heard anything more, as of yet.

I agree that writing reports for criminal traffic is a waste of time. We could be patroling instead. Add this to all of the end of the month paperwork that we do and it is a huge chunk of time.


We definitely need to go to a bi-weekly pay schedule.
If we work a lot of overtime at the beginning of the month and then get sick or have to take a day off towards the end of the month, we are penalized and have to back out the overtime.

This is ridiculous. The folks in Tallahassee do not think about it because they are on a 9-5 Monday through Friday work week.

When there is a holiday or special event, my district often works 12 hour days. If you are on weekends off, then your days off are taken away. So you end up working two weeks without a day off. With the mandatory 12 hour days, if you add up the actual hours, it ends up being more like two and a half weeks.
Yes, you can switch your days off because you were forced to work on your regular days off, but you lose alot of money. We do not get paid enough to not care about loosing the overtime.

If we were on a two week cycle then it would be alot easier.

For those in Tallahassee that read this......
With a few exceptions, patrol and BEI are the ones that have mandatory overtime. The days are often hot, long and exhausting. We are pulled away from our families on the holidays and never get to spend it with them. We do not even work a normal eight hour shift so that maybe, just maybe we could spend some time with them in the evenings or mornings on the holidays. We are often gone from sun up to sun down for three to four days on holdiay weekends.
Working a couple or even a few weeks straight sometimes takes a toll and we get sick or one of our children gets sick, or something tears up in our house and we have to take off and then get penalized for it.
Twenty eight days is a long time to go without taking a day off if your schedule is different from most of the people around you.

Yes, I know that we wanted to be police officers and we have to do these things sometimes, but it gets really old to do it year after year after year. That is, if you are loyal and stay with this agency long enough for it to become old.

Other agencies do not run their schedules like we do. I know that we do not have as many officers as the local agencies have. However, this is not our fault.

Which is another point. We need more people. We are stretched too thin.

We were told last year that our pay raise proposals and our request for new positions did not make it to the legislature because the former secretary did not think that it was as important as the other bills.

This all ties into the loyalty problem. There are no incentives to stay with this agency. Former Director Trammel threw us a bone with the meager one time pay bonus. It hardly enough to mention. FTO's train the new officers, but make the same pay as the people they are training. The agency thinks enough of us to train new officers, but not enough to pay us for it. We get 5% when we are training, which does not amount to much. FTO's should get the 5% all the time.
Officers should get a step in pay every year. Period.

Even without the pay issue, there is no incentive for loyalty. The senior officers in the squads get treated just like the rookie. You do not get the better vehicles, the better shifts or anything else that you would get at most other agencies. So why stay? Most agencies keep thier officers because they do not want to loose their senority and pay they have received due to steps every year.

We have great jobs, and work in great places. However, this does not pay the bills. So, we often have no choice but to look for employment elsewhere.
When we have families that we have to support, that has to come first. When you can't pay your bills, it does not matter that you were able to work in a beautiful park all day. The stress begins to outweigh the enjoyment. The stress leads to physical and family problems.
It is a shitty choice to have to make, but we lose good officers everyday because they are forced to make that choice.

Please, care about us enough to do something. Most of us love our job and are passionate about it.

Joining in, you nailed it.

There is also no room for promotion. BEI damn near refuses to hire qualified park patrol officers. They go outside because they have a chip on their shoulder about park patrol.

It would be much easier to stick it out with patrol if there was an actual chance that you could promote and have a better salary and normal work hours. We have seen patrol get passed over time and time again. So, I agree. Why stay? There is no benefit to staying because there are no incentives.


Not to get off topic with BEI. There is another thread for that.

The bottom line is, we are here to pay the bills and take care of our families. This is not a civic club that we belong to. It is a job and a dangerous one at that. It would be nice to have the pay structure that other agencies have.

I hope our leaders are listening to the outstanding ideas that have been posted on this topic. Thank you to all who took the time out to write up these lists. Now let's just hope it doesn't fall on deaf ears.