Fans of ’70s pop hits can tell you that fighting the police is a bad idea. The band Paper Lace’s No. 1 hit “The Night Chicago Died” tells the story of how gangster Al Capone “called his gang to war with the forces of the law.” It doesn’t end well.
But it’s precisely Baltimore City’s strategy to handle our men and women in blue. As the city struggles with a budget crunch, it has decided to take it out on the police, while limiting their ability to make up the difference doing outside work.
In a few short weeks, the city has gone after the pension funds for retired police officers and firefighters, cut overtime pay and has announced plans to keep officers from working jobs with businesses that have liquor licenses while they are off duty. Some of it is designed to make up for the $37 million gap in the city’s fiscal 2009 budget. The rest is just government overreach.
Individually, some of those actions might even make sense. As a group, they represent an all-out attack on the men in blue by the city.
First, there are the pension funds, which for city employees have lost hundreds of millions of dollars in 2008 from more than $2 billion.
The most recent tally is $190 million down, and that is before recent market slumps. When the pension fund dips, the city is left holding the bag.
To fend that off, Mayor Sheila Dixon wants a 1.5 percent cap on annual pension payment increases. That way the city gets a better shot at knowing what it owes each year.
But the other idea makes less sense. The city wants to limit overtime for officers as a cost-cutting move. A recent Examiner article says the following: “A staggering caseload, decade-old cars that frequently break down and restrictions on overtime that prevent detectives from working continually on cases have contributed to both low morale and a low closures rate, the detectives say.”
Everyone wants good police protection. But if government cuts overtime, it shouldn’t limit where off-duty police officers can work.
Add it all up and it stinks. No wonder they call some police officers “beat cops.” They weren’t “beat” until they worked in Baltimore.
