Page 11 - July2021

SecondVice President’s Report
Effects of constant cancellations
Never have we seen such reckless and wasteful spending by the Department on overtime. Usu- ally, overtime is closely monitored, limited or re- stricted by management because of the associated cost. A fiscally responsible mayor is usually con- cerned with the budget and how much overtime will cost; supervisors are usually concerned with the amount of overtime the unit accumulates in any given period. As recently as the past holiday season, we saw certain detective area supervisors
restrict overtime to one or two detectives on every case, even when they were complex investigations.
Now, money seems to be no object for the City or the Depart- ment. One would think with the way the City is spending mon- ey on police overtime, that reasonable pay raises dating back four years would be agreed to. It is concerning that the mayor is recklessly burning through relief funds instead of using the funds to go toward well-deserved wage increases.
Without any known emergency or anticipated civil unrest, every single full-duty department member gets cancellations of much-needed days off and/or they get forced to work 12 hours straight for days on end with no relief in sight. What is the need for all these day-off cancellations? After all, the crime is not con- trollable with the policies and restrictions on crime-fighting in place. Even with 100 percent of the available workforce on duty, violent crimes are at all-time highs (despite what the superin- tendent feeds the media).
Although dating back to 1988 arbitrators have given manage- ment the right to cancel days off, assign duties and assign over- time, we feel the current cancellations have been unreasonable, and a class-action grievance has been filed. Usually, arbitration takes years to schedule, but because of the volume of griev- ances filed every month, the City has agreed to expedite this one. The arbitration date is scheduled for July 20 (and July 21 if needed). We have identified some officers who have compel- ling accounts about how these unreasonable assignments have affected them. We hope that the arbitrator has an open mind and takes into consideration the human side of the forced labor.
The constant cancellations of RDOs put a strain on officers’ physical well-being and ability to mentally recover from the abuses they receive daily from our lovely citizens. Thank good- ness for having a good medical roll policy. I’m surprised it isn’t used more often.
Additionally, the strain that these duty hours have put on officers’ families is indescribable. I have no children, and I’ve always looked forward to the overtime, but most of it was man- ageable and monitored by competent supervisor staff. I feel it is outright ignorant to cancel days off for every single officer with- out any consideration or accommodations for those who really need it.
I try to imagine if I did have a family at home, especially with young kids or infants. The logistics of the child care must be bur- densome. Doing the math, there just don’t seem to be enough hours in the day for officers to receive a proper night’s rest. Trav- el time, hours in the shift, then stuck in traffic to and from the babysitter’s house, then taking care of home issues, etc. I can
see families breaking up. I can see officers with families receiv- ing three hours of sleep a night. (Thank you, Miss Mayor. Thank you, First Deputy.)
Another reality of the cancellations is that when every officer on any given watch is working at once, they are forced to use broken-down vehicles and there is not enough equipment to go around. Officers must pile into unsafe squad cars three or four officers at a time. Some cars are even flat-out illegal to be on the road. The cars are kept in service because the replacement ve- hicles from the motor pool are even worse. The equipment situ- ation is not much better. The Department only has so many ra- dios, and the ratio of radios to officers is probably 1-to-4. (This is a safety issue; feel free to submit a safety complaint, found on the FOP website.)
What else happens when every officer or detective on any given watch is working at once? A third of the manpower has nothing to do but stand around or sit static on a post and be told, “Don’t arrest anyone, and don’t get hurt.” Is that even a lawful order? What happens if the officer has an unavoidable on-view incident and is ill-prepared to manage the situation? You guessed right: The officer will face disciplinary action, in addition to any injuries the situation may subject him or her to.
From what we see and hear, most of these management plans (or lack of ) are being made by the First Deputy. However, we get reports on a regular basis that lower-level supervisors have no idea what their subordinates are supposed to be doing. We’ve had detectives taken off of their robbery, burglary and theft in- vestigations to report to certain Southside districts, only to be told, “We have no idea why you guys were sent here.”
To make matters worse, the detectives are still being assigned their handout jobs. (Handouts are cases for which no detectives were required to go to the scene; in most cases, these are mis- demeanor investigations.) Does it seem fair or reasonable that detectives are stripped away from their caseload, not allowed to provide victims a service, but yet, continue to receive additional cases to add to their dozens and dozens of cases each detective is already responsible for?
You would think the public would be concerned that their cases go dormant. (Oh wait, most of the public are unaware because the mainstream media has failed to report on this. We note that the only media that we saw report on the topic was the kind folks at CWB.) Needless to say, we feel it is in everyone’s best interest to be transparent with crime victims and let them know that the detectives assigned to their cases have been tak- en away from their robbery case, theft case or burglary case. Af- ter all, isn’t the Department’s newest “mission” to “Rebuild Trust with the Community”?
In closing, the cancellations have affected everyone in one way or another, from the patrol officer to the detective to the crime victim. We hope the arbitrator will issue a favorable award that not only provides us with relief from this forced labor, but perhaps the arbitrator would be sympathetic enough to provide management with guidance as to what is reasonable.
DAN GORMAN
CHICAGO LODGE 7 ■ JULY 2021 11