01-25-2007, 09:49 PM
greetings Brothers & Sisters,
I work at Tampa & perused the Lakeland site & this caught my eye.
Just wanted to give you my support - your mayor & chief obviously don't realize that Lakeland is not a small town anymore & hasn't been for about a decade... They really don't have an appreciation that you are UNDERSTAFFED and UNDERPAID! (I do - I live there)
But don't hammer one guy for that. It has taken TPD THIRTY YEARS to get our contract as good as it is, to get ourselves politically positioned so that the contract can be so good. We're getting 17+ % in 3-years! Only 5 years ago we were getting 8 - 9% in 3 years, and that was under Greco (and with a different President)!
Step up. Don't ***** about the news... make it. Give them stories. Your bosses making you write a "quota" of tickets? That's news... Your bosses making you patrol an area that requires 10 officers, but you only get 2? That's news! You have to run code across 10 miles of rush-hour traffic from the Southside because your city administrators didn't realize that building 2000+ new homes in a year on the North end would cause a workload increase? That's news...
We are united so we have juice. If you show that you are divided, your mayor has you by the bizungas...
Good luck. I hope you get a real mayor & a Chief who'll fight for you as hard as the PBA fights. You are new players, but I can assure you, if you haven't been by their offices and met them personally, or seen the work they do, you don't have a clue how hard they work. And for those of you who may forget, Kevin has been a cop for longer than some of you have been alive. He's a detective and he knows what kind of compensation cops should get.
Give them a chance.
Respectfully,
your cousin in Tampa
I work at Tampa & perused the Lakeland site & this caught my eye.
Just wanted to give you my support - your mayor & chief obviously don't realize that Lakeland is not a small town anymore & hasn't been for about a decade... They really don't have an appreciation that you are UNDERSTAFFED and UNDERPAID! (I do - I live there)
But don't hammer one guy for that. It has taken TPD THIRTY YEARS to get our contract as good as it is, to get ourselves politically positioned so that the contract can be so good. We're getting 17+ % in 3-years! Only 5 years ago we were getting 8 - 9% in 3 years, and that was under Greco (and with a different President)!
Step up. Don't ***** about the news... make it. Give them stories. Your bosses making you write a "quota" of tickets? That's news... Your bosses making you patrol an area that requires 10 officers, but you only get 2? That's news! You have to run code across 10 miles of rush-hour traffic from the Southside because your city administrators didn't realize that building 2000+ new homes in a year on the North end would cause a workload increase? That's news...
We are united so we have juice. If you show that you are divided, your mayor has you by the bizungas...
Good luck. I hope you get a real mayor & a Chief who'll fight for you as hard as the PBA fights. You are new players, but I can assure you, if you haven't been by their offices and met them personally, or seen the work they do, you don't have a clue how hard they work. And for those of you who may forget, Kevin has been a cop for longer than some of you have been alive. He's a detective and he knows what kind of compensation cops should get.
Give them a chance.
Respectfully,
your cousin in Tampa