Today's safest place in Durham: City Hall

Here's an intriguing item from the N&O's Thursday blog coverage of the FY2009 budget work sessions:

Several dozen of Durham's finest are lining the perimeter of City Council chambers to hear discussion of the police department's proposed $44 million budget.

Of major concern is officer pay, among the lowest in the region.

City Manager Patrick Baker said a detailed discussion of pay for police and all other city employees would take place tomorrow morning.

No officers left after that announcement.

I have no idea, of course, whether this turn-out is an en masse spontaneous demonstration of officer concern over this admittedly important topic, or whether there's any nudging going on from department leadership to say, "Hey, stop on by the Council chambers, will ya?"

I'm going to assume the former. Still, don't expect the latter to be far from the minds of Council. DPD Chief Lopez, who's going through his first budget cycle, made a plea for higher salaries in front of Council during a Monday night meeting back in late April (the same session where the Micro Machines DPD Cruiser appeared on the scene.)

That push for higher pay came in the midst of a discussion of the annual crime report -- an interspersing that BCR sources suggested at the time ruffled some feathers on the City Council, which may have interpreted the call for pay equity as a particularly media-savvy upstaging, given that the media are sure to be out in full force whenever crime in Durham is on the Monday night agenda.

It will be most interesting to see Council's reaction to this particular event, methinks.

Comments

[cw]

So, does this mean that DPD officers are eagerly awaiting news of their increased pay instead of patrolling the streets to maintain the decline in crime rates? I hope those are off-duty police officers clogging up Downtown.

[d]

Most of us got off a 12hr shift at 6am and decided to come to the meeting at 9am, then go back to work that night. So many great officers are leaving because pay is so low and Durham is super busy.