Letters to the Editor
Mayor Can Cure NYPD Blues

To the Editor:

The NYPD is recruiting for some of the most demanding and respected law-enforcement positions in the nation. Basic qualifications, after making it through the civil service examination process, include New York City metropolitan area residency within New York State, a driver's license, and 60 college credits with a "C" average, or, instead of college, a high school diploma combined with two years' active military service and an honorable discharge.

An eager job-seeker may qualify for one of these prestigious and historically coveted law-enforcement positions and thereby become a New York City Police Officer at a starting salary of $25,100.

The NYPD is also recruiting for some of the most exceptional law-enforcement positions in the nation - an "exciting career opportunity" to assume duties in law and regulatory enforcement, according to newspaper advertising. Basic qualifications, in this case, are city residency, a driver's license, and just a high school diploma.

An eager job-seeker may qualify for one of these law-enforcement positions, and thereby become a New York City Traffic Enforcement Agent at a starting salary of $27,013.

Is it a wonder that New York City police recruitment is tanking, or that recruits in training are dropping out, because of the economic absurdity and hardship of Police Officer compensation - not to mention the undervalued occupational risks of police work?

The city's downward crime trends are now imperiled, because enthusiasm for joining New York's Finest is crumbling. The Bloomberg administration remains tethered to an ostensibly lawful Police Officer remuneration plan that, nonetheless, flips public safety on its head, while the way for a collective-bargaining impasse to evolve into a final arbitrated settlement oozes onward.

Mayor Bloomberg, himself, can command an interim solution, and turn things around - but only if he will lead himself away from his trough of privileged and redundant city executives and managers, and personally takes charge of the issue until a more conventional collective-bargaining arrangement can be delivered through intelligent negotiation and/or intelligent arbitration.

" ... [T]he effectiveness and integrity of city government operations" and "such policies and procedures as are necessary and appropriate to accomplish this responsibility" is the Mayor's bailiwick, under Section 8, Subdivision a, of the New York City Charter. A festering public safety exigency does not have to ripen and rot until it becomes an imminent or actual emergency, before the Mayor can reach out with both hands and grab the reins of governance without looking like a mad despot. In fact, in the interest of intermediate- and long-term public safety, the Mayor has a duty to devise an independent plan of action and restore a plausible Police Officers' pay scale, until something better comes along to succeed it.

Moreover, the Mayor could probably command city and union officials to assist him in his quest to expedite a reasonable interim solution to the police pay crisis - and he could probably even impose some form of civil sanction on those duly summoned who might defy his call to help. After all, Section 8, Subdivision b, of the Charter further empowers the Mayor to act as a Magistrate, and Section 8, Subdivision c, grants him the powers of a Finance Board under the state's Local Finance Law.

Though billionaire Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg accepts only a dollar a year in salary, the people of The City of New York never voted to accept only a dollar's worth of chief executive service and leadership in return.

MARK S. TRAVITSKY, Administrative Staff Analyst (Retired)