6.7%!

I've heard a lot of excellent suggestions in the last few days that offer some very reasonable and practicle solutions and/or concessions to this threat; both layoff and pay cut wise. We all have to realize we are dealing with 5 unreasonable people and 3 supporters on Council. Not great odds I know but there is hope.

Monday night we all need to put aside our personal agendas and speak openly and freely as Officers/Detectives/Sergeants and let our FOP Board Members know we are looking for answers and solutions. It is really up to the membership to clearly let this Board know what we need!

Airing your ideas, complaints, and gripes in this forum is only going to hurt each and everyone of us, our familys, and our civilian co-workers, and supporters. Those who hate us, the media who called us "Defiant", and our local politicians regulalry look at this and perception seems to be most of these people's reality lately.

We need to watch out for all brothers and sisters in blue and those that support us in our critical tasks day to day. Please bring some of these ideas to the table Monday! If you are not quite sure how to present an idea come see me and I'll help you put it together. If you can present yourself to the public and take care of business you can do it in your FOP meeting. Most importantly take care of each other and be safe.

Well, last night was a complete waste of FOP funds! I was expecting our union board to have some type of plan but boy was I ever wrong. Once again, it consisted of people running their mouths without any factual basis to support the ignorant things they were claiming. Surprise, Surprise!

As always, I find it humerous to sit back and watch a bunch of know nothing know it alls shoot their mouths off then sit around and cry about a potential pay cut. Here's a thought, maybe if u did not use your home as your personal ATM machine you would not be in the situation you currently are in. If I am wrong, lets here it?

I was also surprised to here some of our upper echelon claim that we are now pretty much getting what we deserve after treating people so bad for so many years. Come on, are you serious? Let's see, it is 0300 hours and a single officer is doing a traffic stop in the middle of no where in Gator Circle when another vehicle pulls up and two people get out and run up to the vehicle. Are you telling me the officer shouldn't be concerned about their presence and should put Officer Safety aside in order to great these people and "educate" them on how their 16yo is out violating traffic laws at 0300 in the morning? WOOOOOOOOOWWW!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

After all, if middle management did their job correctly and monitored those that work under them I don't believe half of the screw ups would occur. I think the BW and JV relationship is a perfect example of that. Where was the progressive discipline there? Could have it all been prevented if middle management did what they where suppose to do?

Yours truly,
LEO AFFAIRS ROOKIE, LONEGUNMAN

With regards to the union meetings not saying much, knowing the Pres. he couldn't have much (except for rumor and anger-inspired thoughts) to bring forth at this time...Kurt is very in tune. All I know is that all the entries on these differing blog posts speak in half-truths or out-and-out lies; in all fairness, nobody knows any different way to behave around there. As going back several years to the "Letter", no one puts there actual name to anything either. The first thing in taking a stand for something is letting everyone know who it is that's doing the standing. I no longer have any influence on what goes on around there, but my retirement could not have ended the ability for others to do so. I've seen postings of "blue flu" and the such (threats), to be perfectly honest, you do not in any way have the people in authority that would back your play. If you want to do different things (maybe as RayRay suggested), stand forward, take the heat (which will come covertly and overtly) and bring your allies with you. We had to fight some good fights back in day, we all came through (some scathed more than others), and built what your going to have to fight for now. Please don't forget ALL the DIFFERENT types of retirees out there...help those you can, hopefully you all will benefit from it in the future as well.

Build your TEAM, struggle and fight for your TEAM and when it's over (good or bad) learn and move on as a TEAM.