Secretary, Sgt. Races
DEA Leader Won't Have Election Foe

By RICHARD STEIER

As expected, Detectives Endowment Association President Michael J. Palladino and most of his slate were unopposed for new four-year terms when the filing of union election petitions closed April 15, leaving just two seats contested.

MICHAEL PALLADINO: Better benefits a priority.

Incumbent DEA Secretary Richard T. Tirelli, who has clashed repeatedly with Mr. Palladino, is seeking re-election against a candidate backed by the union leader, Assistant to the President Ken Sparks. And DEA Sergeant at Arms Cecil Martinez, running on Mr. Palladino's slate, is being challenged by Scott Munro, a union delegate from the Queens Auto Crime Division.

Ballots Out in Mid-May

While the voting schedule has not been finalized, Mr. Palladino said during an April 16 interview that under the union's constitution ballots must be mailed to DEA members no later than May 15 and returned by May 30. They will be counted June 2.

During his first term as president, Mr. Palladino negotiated two wage contracts, and the most-recent one was approved by 91 percent of those who cast ballots. He has also been a highly visible advocate for his three members who are being tried in Queens Supreme Court for the fatal shooting of Sean Bell, holding informal lunchtime press conferences at which he has emphasized weaknesses and inconsistencies in the prosecution's case against them. A verdict by the trial judge is expected April 25.

"The case has been exhausting and totally consuming," Mr. Palladino said. "But you still have a union to run." He noted that it was while preparing for the trial that he negotiated the most-recent DEA wage contract - which provides 17-percent pay increases and runs through 2012 - several months before the old pact was due to expire, and credited DEA Vice President Vic Cipullo for his help in handling union business.

That pact also included an agreement under which 240 of his members who held the rank of Detective Third Grade would be promoted to the two higher levels while boosting annuity and longevity pay and speeding the progression to maximum salary for new promotees to Detective.

Mr. Palladino said he plans to push in the coming four years for a further influx of his members to First and Second Grade positions. At the time that Police Commissioner Raymond W. Kelly took office in 2002, the DEA leader said, only 10 percent of the union's members were above Third Grade. The percentage has since risen to about 25 percent.

"I would like to get close to what we had in the '70s, when 40 percent held either First or Second Grade," he said.

Other Priorities

He also plans to press the NYPD to lift caps on overtime for individual Detectives. Although the wage contract runs through his upcoming term, he said he expects to push for improvements in other benefits, among them health and pension coverage, and will also focus on "the long-term effects of 9/11 and the health issues that have arisen."

Mr. Palladino, in urging members to vote for his running mates, noted that the DEA is "the second-largest police union in the state" behind the city Patrolmen's Benevolent Association and remarked, "I think the DEA today is better than four years ago. And tomorrow's DEA will be better than today's. For that to be so, though, I need the right guys in the right positions."