LAPD Morale Rests on a Base of Respect

People love to complain. That’s a fact of life. But complaining and low morale aren’t synonymous. At the Los Angeles Police Department, morale issues in many ways boil down to a matter of respect.

The public expects police officers to treat them with respect. Rightly so. Police officers expect the same from the public and from police management. Sometimes it’s just not there.

The LAPD is as professional a police organization as exists anywhere. We are a world leader in performance and productivity, training and tactics. While we have earned great respect from our counterparts across the nation and even around the world, here at home this isn’t always the case.

City management sometimes forgets that we are people--people with families. Like everyone else, our kids have dentist appointments, ballgames, school plays and other events we should be attending. We need departmental policies that reflect these needs and respond to them.

Our job is different from most in many ways. Working the streets of Los Angeles requires that we gear up physically and emotionally in ways civilians never experience and high-ranking police brass may not remember. What looks like an eight-hour day is often a 10- to 12-hour commitment, with time to unwind after a stress-filled watch adding another two or three hours.

We have repeatedly asked the department to consider giving us what many other police departments offer: a compressed work schedule. We believe 10-hour or 12-hour shifts not only make more productive and efficient use of our time but also would contribute significantly to the opportunity for a decent family life.

Firefighters don’t work standard 40-hour work weeks, and for good reason. Police officers, whose jobs are at least as stressful and dangerous, deserve the same consideration.

Respect also means competitive salaries. We police some of the toughest turf in America. We deal every day with the kind of challenges that confront police officers in other places sometimes once or twice a year. We do this willingly, and with great love for the job. Yet we have families to raise, futures to prepare for, kids to send to college. Basic respect dictates that we be paid salaries at least competitive with those in nearby jurisdictions. It’s tough to feel appreciated when you are earning significantly less than your colleagues at other departments whose jobs are nowhere near as difficult.

And respect means being treated with basic dignity in dealings with the department. Officers expect to be held accountable for their job performance and welcome a strong and fair disciplinary process. At the same time, we insist on being treated with dignity and due process. We should not and will not acquiesce to supervision that treats us with less respect than what we strive every day to deliver to the general public.

I am in my 14th year with the LAPD. I’ve served through some great times and some not-so-great times. I remember as though it was yesterday the pain we all experienced in the wake of the Rodney King incident, bitterly tough police funerals, the Northridge earthquake and, most recently, the wrenching Rampart scandal.

Through it all I was sustained by the amazing quality of the people who work as officers for the LAPD. Not only is the department more diversified than ever before, it now also includes a higher-than-ever percentage of college graduates. As we have become a more professional organization, we’ve developed what may well be the finest generation of police officers ever to serve our city.

But morale matters. And morale isn’t good. Many of our most experienced long-service officers are taking retirement as soon as possible. Many of our finest young officers are moving to higher-paying departments in the suburbs and elsewhere. Every year the LAPD loses millions of dollars worth of training and experience to other departments that lure our officers away with higher pay, compressed work schedules and better pensions. Police agencies across the nation are eager to hire LAPD officers because they know our men and women have had the best training and experience available.

Let’s put a stop to this drain of brains, talent and experience. Let’s address the issues that hinder morale, give our police officers a family-friendly, flexible, dignified and fairly paid work environment. Officers of the LAPD are there for the people every hour of every day. It’s time the rest of us are there for them.