San Juan Police Raises...A Dire Step in the Right Direction

According to a report out of The Monitor today, police officers in the City of San Juan will have to wait until the next city council meeting to be held in two weeks to see if their "demands for a twenty-five percent pay raise" will go through. The Monitor continues by stating that the hourly wage of the police officers "has only increased 25 cents over the last three years and leaves them one of the lowest paid departments in the area". How's that for employee morale?

Imagine knowing full well that the same job you're being asked to go above and beyond for is paying sometimes twice as much somewhere else. You're tired, you're stressed, and the only thing you have to fall back on is that you enjoy the city you work for too much to take a chance and try to work somewhere else. You can't even try to convince yourself that the pay makes it worth it, because it doesn't. If only you could get your boss to see that you're worth more than what they're presently giving you. But for the last three years, all the boss cares about is the bottom line when it comes to making a profit, and it's your salary that bears the brunt.

Don't know if local law enforcement feels this way, but I doubt I'm too far off the mark.

In the same report, Sgt. Albino Rodriguez is quoted as saying, "We barely make it. We're pay check to pay check. They (other officers) have friends in other departments who talk about the salary they're earning over there and they try to convince you to leave".

Considering the circumstances, I wouldn't blame anybody for trying to leave. After all, when you're caught between the battle of your employers fiscal responsibility and your own, especially if you have a family to support, the choice is sometimes a no-brainer. The fact that we haven't lost the whole police force because of this, is in my opinion, a miracle. As a citizen, I'm all for putting aside any other issue on the board agenda to make sure we're done with all this 25 cents every three years business.

Let's see what the city council thinks of this in two weeks.