December Newsletter

DC Police Union Newsletter
Volume 1, Number 8
1
CONTENTS
1. AHOD Update
2. DC Police Union and FOP Lodge #1
Moving Forward Together to
Represent a Shared Membership
3. The Manpower Crisis Explained
4. Fact Check on Your Benefits
5. First Annual Coat Drive
DECEMBER 11, 2015 VOLUME 1, NUMBER 8
1
AHOD Update
2007: The first of a series of group grievance
was advanced to arbitration in July after
efforts to resolve the matters with the MPD
failed. The arbitrator ruled in the DC Police
Union's favor
and the Union is negotiating with MPD on
what the penalty amount will be.
2008: An arbitrator was recently assigned
after efforts to resolve the matter with the
MPD failed. The arbitration hearing is being
scheduled.
2009: The DC Police Union filed a Class
Grievance and prevailed in arbitration. The
MPD did not appeal the Arbitrator's decision.
The MPD and the Union are scheduled to
return to the Public Employees Review Board
(PERB), so the PERB can determine what type
of payments should be ordered for the
Enforcement Order in DC Superior Court.
Grievance and prevailed in Arbitration and
was upheld by the PERB Board. The MPD did
not appeal the decision, but refuses to pay the
award and the matter is currently before the
PERB in an enforcement proceeding.
2
Grievance and prevailed in Arbitration
and was upheld by the PERB Board.
However, MPD appealed PERB's
decision to DC Superior Court. The
Superior Court recently denied the
appeal and the MPD filed a notice of
Appeal to the Court of Appeals where
the matter is pending.
Grievance and is scheduled for
arbitration on January 8, 2016.
Grievance and was heard by an
arbitrator on December 4, 2015.
Grievance and was heard by an
arbitrator on November 18, 2015.
Grievance and is awaiting a date for
arbitration.
DC Police Union and FOP Lodge
#1 Moving Forward Together
to Represent a Shared
Membership
By: Marinos Marinos, Secretary
On November 18, 2015 DC FOP Lodge
#1 held its general election for their
Board of Directors for the 2016-2018
term. Members of the DC Police Union
Executive Committee were present.
After the votes were casted, tallied, and
announced the DC Police Union
congratulated a new leadership team
that wants to improve the lodge’s
relationship with the Union and get
more involved with all the affiliated labor
committees.
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Volume 1, Number 8
2
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A major highlight from the election was the
announcement that Andy Maybo will become the
new President the Lodge. Incoming President
Maybo is a former Chairman of the United States
Capitol Police Labor Committee and understands
the importance of helping the affiliated unions.
When speaking with President Maybo, he said, “I
look forward to working with all the labor
committees and will be assisting with any bills that
may be presented by D.C. City Council or the Mayor
that will affect the membership of the lodge and
labor committees.”
The lodge will also have a brand new Vice
President, Michael Murphy. Vice President Murphy
is an active MPD detective and a Shop Steward for
the DC Police Union. Ronald “Keith” Reid is
returning to his position as a Trustee at Large,
Trustee Reid is a retired MPD Detective Sergeant
and is a proponent of working with the DC Police
Union.
After the results were announced Chairman Delroy
Burton met with President Maybo and they are
actively working together to improve the way
members are represented by both the DC FOP
Lodge #1 and the DC Police Union. Chairman
Burton stated, “I am excited to work with the new
leadership team and I believe our relationship
between our two organizations will only grow
stronger.”
The Manpower Crisis Explained
Gregg Pemberton, Treasurer
Since January 1st
, 2014, the Metropolitan Police
Department has lost nearly 800 officers to
retirement and resignations. That’s over 22% of
the rank and file. We are quickly approaching a
14% attrition rate for police officers in DC, which is
causing innumerable problems and complications
in our ability to keep the streets safe. The DC Police
Union took a closer look at how, and why, this is
happening.
There are two groups leaving the force the fastest,
the first group is those eligible to retire. It might
seem par-for-the-course to have officers eligible for
retirement separating from the department, but it
is not.
In just the past five years, the department has seen
a huge drop in the number of years worked beyond
eligibility for retirement. It wasn’t uncommon, until
recently, to see officers working an extra 3, 5, 10,
or even 15 years after becoming eligible for
retirement. There were a number of reasons why
officers were willing to stay. In the past, maximizing
pension benefits, job satisfaction, and a decent pay
scale were all incentives for officers to elect to
stay. However, after seven years without a cost of
living adjustment, crippling schedules, toxic
management, and horrible deployment strategies,
our most senior officers have decided enough is
enough, and are gladly leaving the day they are
eligible. Many of our best and most experienced
members have countdown apps on their phones
and are quick to tout the time they have left, down
to the minute.
The second largest group that is leaving is those
with between 2 and 10 years of service. These are
our newest officers and represent the future of the
department, but when they arrive here and
discover the brutal reality of the non-competitive
pay, onerous scheduling, the complete absence of
real policing, toxic and inept management, and the
elimination of nearly every specialized unit, the
decision to move to another agency quickly
becomes easily made.
The effects these personnel losses have had on the
department have been devastating.
• Patrol division has been decimated, leaving
fewer officers on the street to answer calls
for service and patrol neighborhoods.
• Patrol officers are discouraged from ‘self-
initiated’ investigations by management in fear
that an arrest would take them away from
‘high-visibility’ assignments.
• Criminal Investigations Division has shrunk
drastically, meaning there are fewer
detectives for follow up investigations and
case closures.
• Our Motor Unit, which provides our world
famous presidential and dignitary motorcycle
escorts, is down from 50 members, to 26.
Recently, the President had to be escorted
with just two motor units—the policy is no less
than three.
• Special Operations Division has also taken a
hit. Special events like Caps’ and Wizards’
games have had to be staffed with skeleton
crews due to lack of manpower.
• Crime scene technicians can take hours to
respond. The city is down to 35 technicians,
there may be only one or two working the
whole city at any given time.

Volume 1, Number 8
3
• The Emergency Response Team responsible
for active shooters, high risk entry, and
barricades was even several members short
on a barricade situation a few months ago.
• Harbor Division, which is responsible for
patrolling the waterways for everything from
boating violations to life saving rescues and
even threats to the city, is often so short on
certain shifts, that protocol prevents them
from taking the boats out to patrol, or even
for emergency calls.
These examples are just a snapshot of what’s
going on all over the city. Nearly every unit across
the District is hurting for more workers. The ability
for the Metropolitan Police Department to provide
top notch service to the city has been seriously
diminished. The workload on the officers that are
left has now become even more burdensome,
severely straining critical resources.
So what is management doing about this crisis?
They will tell you that the answer is easy. They’re
just hiring more officers and shuffling the ones we
have to fill gaps. So let’s take a look at what this
means for the city and for efficiency.
Hiring more officers may seem easy enough, but
the ramifications to this are more than concerning.
• The MPD reports that it costs $95,000 to
recruit, train, and equip each officer. This
means the cost to replace these officers is
$76,000,000 tax dollars.
• Whether an officer has 5 years or 25 years
of service, the amount of experience they
have in understanding the dynamics and
stakeholders of the neighborhood they patrol
is invaluable. Having a new group of officers
every year or so means no historical
knowledge of the problems and less effective
community policing.
• Because of the demand, MPD is now hiring
people within four months of application. In
an environment where most agencies take 9-
12 months to hire, our new officers are
taking jobs here, but leaving when the other
agencies come through with a better offer of
employment, meaning many recruits don’t
even make it out of the academy before
being snatched up.
• To accept that our experienced officers can
be so easily replaced is shortsighted. With
such a high turnover rate, the most highly
skilled field trainers won’t have time to train
all the new officers, leaving many without the
proper instruction on how to best do the job.
• Critical knowledge of the most intricate police
tactics and policies is walking out the door. In
a month like October, where we lost 64
officers, the overall skill and knowledge of the
department took a major hit.
The other half of management’s response is that
the department is ‘managing resources’ or
‘shuffling manpower’. This solution may be just as
bad as the first.
• The department is relying on “Redeployment”,
where the department forces officers,
detectives, and sergeants from the most
technical and specialized units to go back out
to patrol to supplement staffing. The officers
have to leave their assignments and workload
to go back to uniformed patrol on the street
once every six weeks. Like AHODs, officers are
taken away from important and necessary
work. Crime scene technicians, K-9 officers,
Financial Crimes and Missing Persons
Detectives, Centralized Auto Theft, Domestic
Violence Investigators, Emergency Response
Officers, Harbor Patrol, Motormen, and even
MPD’s Internal Affairs Agents. While these
units are out on the street on assignments
they’re not familiar with, none of their
important duties or investigations are being
fulfilled.
• Redeployment is one of the most divisive
strategies on the department. It causes
officers to be pulled away from their regular
assigned tasks. The work piles up and they
return to mountains of paperwork,
investigations that have gone stale and other
duties to catch up on.
• Officers are usually denied leave when they’re
scheduled for these assignments, and when
they actually are permitted to take leave, the
redeployment week must be made up,
severely disrupting their schedules.
• Again the department is being thoughtless in
assuming ‘temporary’ officers on the street
solve the problem. It may appear to solve the
problem to the citizen, who is worried about
the lack of police visibility, but the functioning
of the department grinds to a halt when many
of these important units shut down for a week
every month.
• This is just a shell game tactic that robs one
unit to replace another. And current
management will defer to ‘high visibility’ over
effective, productive strategy every time.

Volume 1, Number 8
4
The only way to stop the hemorrhaging of
personnel on this department is to fundamentally
change the way it is managed. The onerous and
erratic scheduling changes, non-competitive pay,
years-long battles for fair contracts,
micromanagement of the most basic level decision
making, ineffective deployment strategies that
frustrate and hamstring our members, blanket
policies to not resolve grievances in good faith,
drawn out legal battles, and a complete lack of
understanding that high morale begets high
productivity: all need a complete overhaul—from
the top down. Even the mere suggestion that the
department would consider a retooling and
renewed approach would give our members pause
before turning in their shields for greener
pastures. Imagine the difference actual changes
could make in our skyrocketing attrition.
Fact Check on Your Benefits
By: Gregg Pemberton, Treasurer
There’s quite a bit of misinformation about how
dental and vision benefits are implemented for
members. It seems there is some confusion about
how we got where we are, and why some people
are having issues. It’s important that everyone
understands their benefits and how they work, or
why they don’t.
One of the biggest misconceptions is that your
Union dues pay for your dental and vision coverage.
They absolutely do not. The Union does not pay for
dental or vision insurance, and the costs are NOT
deducted from your paycheck. In fact, members do
not contribute at all for this coverage. Both dental
and vision are Employer Paid Benefits. These
benefits are paid for solely by DC Government and
the amount the department contributes is
negotiated through the Collective Bargaining
Agreement (CBA) in Article 31 (Dental Insurance)
and Article 32 (Vision Insurance). The CBA states
that although the government will pay for the
benefits, the Union will have to administer them.
The Union agrees to administer the benefits to
minimize expenses to increase the buying power.
Here is Section 1 of the Article:
ARTICLE 31 DENTAL INSURANCE
Section 1. As of Fiscal Year 2004, the
Employer agrees to contribute no more
than $13.84 per month as the
premium for self coverage and $29.67
per month for the premium for family
coverage in an approved dental plan;
and increase the contributions on
October 1 of each successive year of
the agreement by the same
percentage as the CPI-W for the
Washington Metropolitan Area
published by the Bureau of Labor
Statistics, United States Department of
Labor, for the preceding year.
In order to increase the amount that is paid by
MPD, it must be negotiated and agreed upon
through collective bargaining. The only exception is
that members who elect to have the dental PPO
over the DHMO pay an additional $6.67 for single
coverage, on top of MPD’s coverage.
When our last contract expired in 2007, the Union
began to negotiate a new contract. Both Article 31
and 32 were on the table for bargaining and the
DC Police Union pushed for increased coverage as
insurance costs were becoming more expensive.
The Union stated that $13.84 was not enough for
both Vision and Dental. MPD’s position was that
the members did not need any increase in
coverage and the 2007 amount was more than
adequate. As you’re all aware, those negotiations
broke down over several issues and the contract
went to arbitration.
The DC Police Union cited that MPD’s contribution
had not gone up in years, and was only within
industry standards in 2007. The Union used the
Bureau of Labor Statistics and the Department of
Labor’s CPI-W (Consumer Price Index) for
insurance in the DC area to argue to the arbitrator
that MPD’s contribution was inadequate. Here is
the exact language the Union provided:
“FOP points out that MPD has not
increased its contributions to Dental,
Optical, and Employee Assistance
program premiums since the last CBA
expired.

Volume 1, Number 8
5
FOP represents that, despite the lack
of any increase in these fringe benefit
premium contributions, optical and
EAP providers have continued the
same benefits level, while the dental
providers recently reduced their
benefits somewhat. FOP argues its
fringe benefits LBOs [Last Best Offers]
are the more reasonable as well
because it must plan 10 to 20 years
ahead to maintain its reputation, to
make its providers whole, to establish
credibility in the market, to forge long-
term relationships, and to ensure
providers’ loyalty through times of no
premium increase. FOP argues that
MPD’s fringe benefit LBOs provide, by
contrast, no cost-of-living adjustments,
except prospectively, which FOP argues
is unfair and unreasonable. It asserts
that MPD offered no testimony in
support of its LBOs and no explanation
for ignoring the uncompensated FY09-
FY12 premium increases. FOP
contends that MPD’s LBO will short-
change FOP and its well-meaning
providers as a consequence of the
drawn-out negotiations. For these
reasons, FOP asserts that its LBO on
dental, optical, and EAP benefits LBO
should be adopted.”
MPD argued vehemently that our members did not
need additional coverage and that the Union’s
position of having MPD pay more to providers was
a violation of DC Law. MPD’s argument was that
the Union’s position on Articles 31 and 32 were
just too expensive for the city. Here is the
department’s posture to the arbitrator:
“MPD argues that FOP’s fringe benefits
LBOs will cost $1,098,874 more than
MPD’s fringe benefits LBOs.”
“In addition, MPD argues that there is
no documentation to support FOP’s
claim that benefits were reduced for
Dental benefits. MPD argues that
FOP’s fringe benefit LBOs will result in
MPD paying additional money to
providers, but employees will receive no
new (or retroactive) services or
benefits. MPD maintains that, as a
result, FOP’s LBOs advance the
providers’ - but not the employees’ -
interests.”
After a long battle for these benefits, the arbitrator
favored MPD’s position. After a long battle for
these benefits, the arbitrator favored MPD’s
position. The ruling was that our members do not
need or deserve the same benefits they had, since
the policies had become more expensive. Here is
the arbitrator’s decision on the matter:
“For all these reasons, I find that
MPD’s fringe benefits LBOs are the
more reasonable, under the applicable
statutory standards, achieving a
prompt and fair settlement of the
dispute.”
Our last hope was that the D.C. Council would
reject the contract when it was brought to them
for ratification. The Union lobbied the D.C. Council
members in an effort to convince them of the
problems the arbitrator’s decision would create;
however, only two of them agreed. Here is how
they voted to ratify the contract as the arbitrator
ruled:
So what does this mean? The amount that MPD
had agreed to pay in the 2004-2008 contract was
no longer enough to continue to pay for the same
coverage. The Union argued that the contribution
should go up so our members could be well
covered and able to maintain their health and that
of their families. The MPD argued that members
did not need an increased contribution and it would
be a burden to the city, suggesting we find new
coverage that was cheaper. Ultimately the
arbitrator, David Vaughn, sided with MPD and the
government. The Union had to find the best policies
we could. Shopping for insurance in 2014 with a
2007 budget is not easy, especially in the wake of
new federal mandates for health coverage.
The way we’ll have to fix this problem moving
forward is through contract negotiations. We must
insist that MPD contribute enough to cover
adequate insurance for our members.

Volume 1, Number 8
6
The DC Police Union will continue to fight for better
benefits and attempt to improve the services we
now have. Please call or email us with specific
questions or issues. We have already found
solutions to problems for a large number of
members. We are here to help and look forward to
working with you.
First Annual Coat Drive
By: Marinos Marinos, Secretary
During the DC Police Union’s October Executive
Council meeting, the Council approved a request to
spend up to one thousand dollars in winter apparel
for needy DC students on behalf of all Union
members.
OPC Representative Ucrania Paniagua, 3D Chief
Steward Ben Fetting, and Youth Division Chief
Steward Ron Palmer worked together and
identified the best place to purchase the winter
apparel and the students who needed the apparel
the most.
The DC Police Union is happy to announce that we
donated twenty-five winter jackets to students at
Moten Elementary School in Southeast on
November 24, 2015.
We hope to make this a yearly event and to
continue building our relationships with the
community.
If you have any suggestions about how to improve
community relations, please contact email
upaniagua@DCPoliceUnion.com.

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