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CHICAGO LODGE 7
Official Magazine
President’s Report
FRATERNAL ORDER OF POLICE CHICAGO LODGE #7
EXECUTIVE BOARD
KEVIN GRAHAM
President
PATRICK J. MURRAY
First Vice President
Martin Preib
Second Vice President
Jay R. Ryan
Third Vice President
Greg Bella
Recording Secretary
Michael P. Garza
Financial Secretary
John Capparelli
Treasurer
Dean C. Angelo, Sr.
Immediate Past President
Sergeants-at-Arms
William Burns James Jakstavich Michael Mette
Trustees
Harold Brown Andrew Cantore Mark Donahue William Dougherty Pat Duckhorn Sergio Escobedo Fernando Flores Joseph Gentile Danny Gorman Ken Hauser Rick King Frank Quinn Carlos Salazar Ron Shogren Mark Tamlo Daniel Trevino Michael Underwood
Field Representatives
Robert Bartlett Rich Aguilar
Getting the picture on contract negotiations
As I write this, we have another contract negotiation meeting scheduled with the City in two days. At that time, I am hoping the City will tender its proposal to the FOP so that we can further negotiate. Up until now, most of the negotiations have consisted of discussions about body cameras. Although body cameras are important, officers need to have rights about the release of their images.
According to section 6.4 regarding Photo Dissemination:
No photo of an officer under investigation shall be made available to the media prior to a conviction for a criminal offense or prior to a decision being rendered by the Police Board, except where required by law.
Officers have rights to their images beyond what is captured on body cameras, including rights when their image is caught on someone else’s camera. We are fighting the City on the release of our images and our names.
Getting back to the negotiations: we intend to strengthen our contract rights regarding offi- cer-involved shootings. Recently, we successfully challenged COPA’s right to even investigate police shootings when a state board declared that it does not.
We want to put a leash on COPA investigators, who have proven time and again that they are, at the least, overzealous and, at the worst, completely biased. We also want to make sure that COPA is held responsible for the actions that they take against officers.
Wages and benefits are also a key point of negotiation, of course. The job has changed over the years. The City is asking us to do a lot more, so we should be paid more. We also intend to lower the age for insurance to make it affordable for those people who want to retire after age 50.
Additionally, we will have a proposal on the table to allow members to sell back some of their comp time at the end of the year. And, we will be asking for additional pay for special certifications and qualifications needed to perform various department functions, much like firefighters have.
We will also be asking for a change so that officers who have not been receiving duty avail- ability for the first 42 months would be entitled to it. Lastly, an increase in the uniform allow- ance and in duty availability will be proposed.
We believe we are in a very good position to get an excellent contract. The things we are asking for are not unreasonable. Although the City has not given us its proposals, there has been an indication of wanting to change the discipline procedure or articles of discipline in our contract. It is important to remember that the provisions in the contract do not give us an advantage. They only try to make a process fair to the officer.
We want to make sure the police officers are not railroaded. Any proposals that the City makes to change discipline will need to have justification and there will need to be proof that our system is broken. As far as I can determine, our system is not broken. We simply have pol- iticians who want to fire police officers at the drop of a hat because they don’t care about right and wrong, only about elections.
As I have already stated, I believe we have put ourselves in a good position to get a very good contract. However, this does not mean that arbitration is out of the question. I think there are many items that the City and the Chicago FOP are very far apart on.
KEVIN GRAHAM
CHICAGO LODGE 7 ■ FEBRUARY 2019 5