Raise Cops' Top Pay

To the Editor:

Police Commissioner Ray Kelly laments that the reason for the inability of the NYPD to meet the needed number of recruits is because of the starting pay. I will be the first to admit that 25K is a bad joke, considering what cops are required to do. But let me make this perfectly clear, and every cop knows exactly what I mean, as does every potential recruit. It is not the starting pay; repeat, it is not the starting pay.

Ready? It is the top pay! It is not enough to live on, to raise a family on. A NYC Police Officer should earn about $100,000 per year as his or her base pay. I guarantee that if the top pay was about $100,000, as it is in surrounding police departments, there would be no problem recruiting police officers, no matter what the starting pay was!

How did we ever come to this? How did the highest-paid cops become the lowestpaid cops? Friends like Rudy Giuliani, that's how.

PETER J. KELLY