PAX Centurion - January / March 2016

www.bppa.org PAX CENTURION • January/March 2016 • Page 5 Vice President’s Message: Michael F. Leary, BPPA Vice President W e’re in like Flynn and cookin’with gas! The new BPPA building is finally opened and occupied. The process of moving in is gradual and slow, as every desk, chair, file cabinet and shelf that was moved from the old building has to be set up in a new place. Bulletin boards, pictures and other fixtures are being screwed and hammered into place, largely by ourselves, so please excuse the chaos if you stop by for a visit. It will take months to find the best place for the desk or chair and to get comfortable, so please be patient. 295 Freeport St. is a great facility, and most of the membership has been very pleased with the new site. The possibilities for facility improvement and expansion are being explored with an eye towards 10 or 20 years in the future. As we’re moving, we’re also trying to stay ahead of a hectic grievance and arbitration schedule. There are many grievances which have aged (and not gracefully…) awaiting an arbitrator to be assigned, and other arbitrations which have required rescheduling due to situations beyond our control; i.e., attorneys or arbitrators having to re-schedule, sickness of witnesses, etc., etc. – a wide variety of factors. Scheduling an arbitrator is not easy and can sometimes extend many months into the future, which impacts (once again) witness availability, vacations, etc. etc. Some grievance hearings and arbitrations have had to be combined because they relate to similar issues. Arbitrations can be costly too; remember that our Attorneys’ fees and one-half the arbitration costs are borne by the BPPA. (Example: In a recent termination-arbitration case, BPPA (½) costs for arbitrator alone (not including our Attorney fees), were $8,750.00) We’re doing the best we can to hold the City’s feet to the fire when it comes to these hearings, but sometimes scheduling conflicts can’t be avoided. Many an officer is consumed with dread for the approaching spring/summer season, anticipating copious but unwanted tours of mandatory, ordered overtime. Most normal people look forward to the warmer weather and the lazy, hazy days of summer. But over the past few years, summers for BPD officers have been misery, and this one is shaping up to be another doozy. The lack of manpower has created a situation where officers can almost expect that every regular tour of duty will be followed by a mandatory, ordered shift of overtime. Officers often find themselves in the position of “working in order to avoid being ordered to work,” in other words, making sure that they work a voluntary detail or overtime shift before their regular tour in order to avoid being ordered for an unwanted mandatory tour afterwards. Coming into work like a “virgin,” for lack of a better term, almost ensures that, during the summer, you’ll be staying overnight… Notes and thoughts from all over… Arbitration, mandatory OT, and current events It’s nice to have overtime when you need it to help pay the bills, but it has really gotten ridiculous here in Boston. Officers, too, have personal lives; weddings, graduations, birthday parties, barbeques and social events they would like to attend. Even in November and February, officers I talk to report being ordered for mandatory overtime due to short-staffing – and sometimes three tours in a row… even in winter! Many officers report being denied an accrued day off on an obscure Tuesday in January or a Sunday in February. It is downright dangerous to have officers driving cruisers and responding to calls with little or no sleep, but the department seems incapable or unwilling to admit to, or deal with, this situation. In summer, our workload increases exponentially, with marches, road races, special events and our own vacations which need to be backfilled and covered by other officers. Hiring 50 or 60 new recruits a year simply isn’t cutting it . All I can say to my fellow officers is this: remember what’s important. Graduations, weddings and birthday parties come only once in a lifetime. Moving your freshman daughter or son entering college into their dorm room may very well occur during Caribbean festival week, or during the March against this, or the Road Race for that, but you’ll never forget one and never remember the other. Plan ahead, for sure, but remember what’s important… Officer Ashley Guindon was killed in the line of duty inVirginia on her very first day on the job, responding to a domestic violence call. She was 28 years old, and her family hailed fromMerrimac, N.H. and the Springfield, Mass. area. It is sad, and infuriating at the same time, that yet another police officer has been killed in this country, and to what amounts to a collective shrug of the shoulders from many in the general public and the major media. A sick attitude, a demented mindset has taken hold of many in this country who believe that they have a right to confront police officers, both verbally and physically to challenge their authority. Our job has been made infinitely harder by those who criticize our actions and second-guess our split-second decisions on freeze- frame, cell-phone camera videos from the safety of their living room. (It may be one reason why so few new recruit officers are signing up and mandatory overtime is foisted upon an aging patrol force.) In Chicago, the police force has been castrated by the political establishment, the media and radical groups. They now complain that homicides and shootings have gone up by 100% while street-stops by patrol units have decreased by 80%. Geez, we wonder why???..... Be careful out there, and please, stop over and see us – it’s YOUR building to be proud of.