City cops struggle compared to suburban colleagues

Pension roll-backs, pay pit police against City Hall

So you want to be a cop in Baltimore City?

Your $42,289 starting salary will be competitive compared with those of your suburban neighbors — slightly higher than in Anne Arundel County, but a few thousand dollars lower than in Baltimore County.

But just for the moment, think ahead.

In 10 years with the city, your salary as a city beat cop will top out at just under $60,000. Your friends on the Baltimore County force will be pulling in more than $68,000 a year. Stay for 20 years? You'll be earning $65,000 in the city while friends in county will be taking home $84,600.

And that's just the start.

In nearly every category — from allowances for cleaning uniforms to getting reimbursed for college classes to health care — benefits in the city pale in comparison to those in most neighboring jurisdictions.

That's despite the harsh day-to-day working environment in Baltimore, the most dangerous jurisdiction in the state, as I've heard from countless cops and experienced myself on a ride-along a few months ago. Cops respond to an overwhelming number of emergency calls for shootings, stabbings, domestics, drugs and murders in cruisers with broken air conditioners, busted headlights, torn seats and battered suspensions.

Add to that a constant pressure to reduce crime numbers below the historic lows recorded in the past two years, an unrelenting scrutiny by a distrustful citizenry and skeptical news media, and police commanders who get pinched from City Hall every time another body drops..

Back in the 1990s, city cops, then earning a starting salary of just $28,000, making them among the lowest-paid officers in the state, sported T-shirts that boasted: "Real police work in the city." Their colleagues in the 'burbs countered with a shirt of their own: "Smart police work in the county."

The fight being waged now over benefits and how to fix the floundering and underfunded pension system for cops and firefighters could spark a return to those days. The City Council is poised to vote Monday on a bill to change the pension plan to make up a $65 million shortfall.

Benefits would be fixed at 1 percent a year for officers under the age of 65 and 2 percent annually for those over, and no longer tied to the fund's performance. Contributions would jump 50 percent. And police officers would have to work 25 instead of 20 years before retiring with full benefits. The bill would make this rule apply not only to new hires, but to officers who have been with the department 15 or fewer years.

To Baltimore's labor union, the Fraternal Order of Police, the retroactive change is illegal, a breach of contract. They've already filed a lawsuit in federal court arguing that the city purposely underfunded the pension plan, which the mayor's office vehemently denies.

Each side has stacks of documents, letters, actuarial tables, charts and diagrams that could brighten the heart of the most solemn accountant. Meanwhile, rhetoric over the pension and the future of Baltimore policing is reaching staggering levels, and any goodwill between rank and file law enforcement and City Hall is quickly dissolving.

Police union president Robert Cherry told television stations early last week that anyone who wants to be a cop shouldn't apply in Baltimore because City Hall lies.

"How else do you describe it?" Cherry told me on Thursday, saying he wished he had used different words but refusing to back away from his message. "You expect the cops to go out there and tell the truth and do their job, but when it comes time for City Hall to put up, they go back on their word. City Hall has just turned its back on police. We're prepared to turn our backs on City Hall."

The mayor's spokesman, Ryan O'Doherty, throws it right back, countering that the new plan saves the mismanaged fund and saves city taxpayers from having to bail it out. Cherry's comments "certainly aren't based in fact," the spokesman said. "We feel very confident that the plan that was worked on with City Council members is a fair, dignified and affordable retirement plan that is competitive with other jurisdictions."

Said O'Doherty: "The mayor has just raised taxes and fees on the citizens of Baltimore to help pay for the pension system and not lay off a single police officer. It's disingenuous to say that she doesn't care about public safety."

None of this back-and-forth gets us anywhere. We'll see in months or maybe even years whether the changes decimate the force and undercut recent achievements in reducing crime.

The union constantly floats rumors that hundreds of angry city cops are about to quit in and bolt in an exodus across the border to Baltimore County. The city's labor organization says that up 200 county cops are about to retire due to expiring retirement benefits and that the chief plans to steal officers from neighboring jurisdictions.