Police Iron Out Pay Raise Contract

The San Angelo Coalition of Police (SACOP) has tidied up some of the language in the contract they hope to ratify and pass for a proposed police pay raise Monday, after a roughly two-hour caucus in which the team re-worked the phrasing of a portion of the first draft.

SACOP tentatively agreed to the conditions of the contract last meeting and have since held a subcommittee meeting to iron out some of the details. Over the next two meetings, SACOP President Sergeant Korby Kennedy said, his team and the city will be fine-tuning the document so that the officers of the SAPD may vote on it.

“The language is important because it is a contract,” Kennedy explained the tedium behind the day’s long caucus. “I think we’re there. I think this is the proverbial crossing your t’s and dotting your i’s part of it. We should have a signed agreement—a complete agreement—in the next couple of meetings, maybe one or two. Then we’ll go to vote to my membership.”

One portion of the draft that will undergo future changes pertains to the city’s proposed physical fitness assessment program, Kennedy said. Initially, the fitness test was to be met with a monetary incentive for officers, however with the bulk of the city’s funds tied up in the pay raise, the monetary incentive will have to be dropped.

“They still want to do it, and I think my side agrees that it’s a good idea, it’s just the implementation of that that could be quite difficult for my chief in terms of manpower and the amount of money it’s going to cost to implement the process,” Kennedy said.

The San Angelo Police Department has never had a physical fitness assessment in place, however it is common among other law enforcement agencies in the state, such as the DPS, Kennedy said. The implementation process will be lengthy, he said, because the chief will have to make arrangements for all 174 officers to take part and allocate man hours to the test. It’s something they hope to implement as soon as possible.

“I think it’s something that we need to bring here,” Kennedy said. “The devil’s in the details at this point, that’s why we’ve got to be very specific on what we do just to make sure that neither side—my organization and the city—we don’t to find ourselves in court some day trying to defend ourselves when the language could be detrimental to our process.”