Police Union To Advertise Non-City Jobs

The union that represents city police officers is offering to advertise open and higher-paying positions with neighboring police departments for free to its members in an in-house magazine.

"If the city of New York won't pay our members a fair and reasonable salary for the dangerous job that we do, then we will have to help our members find jobs in cities that will appreciate their work and pay them fairly," the president of the Patrolmen's Benevolent Association, Patrick Lynch, said in a statement released yesterday.

The announcement comes as the union is awaiting an upcoming decision from an arbitration board on a new police salary that the PBA has argued needs to include a significant raise.

Describing his constituency as "frustrated and angry," Mr. Lynch pointed out that veteran police officers in many jurisdictions of Long Island and New Jersey are earning between $20,000 and $40,000 a year more in salaries than their counterparts in New York City.

"Our members are sick and tired of the rhetoric that praises us for our work, credits us for making the city economically viable, and then tells us that the richest city in America can't afford to pay its police as much as cities with smaller tax bases and lower property values," he said.

Mayor Bloomberg responded to the advertising idea at a press conference yesterday.

"It is a disgrace. Keep in mind, the low salaries that our police officers get for the first six months and really for the first five years are because the PBA wanted that so that they could move more monies to the more senior people in the agency," Mr. Bloomberg said. "And then to go out and to hurt the city that they supposedly love and -- you know, I don't think that that represents the view of 99.999% of the police officers who dedicate their lives every day to protecting this city. I think that is an insult to them." The PBA will advertise the positions in its quarterly magazine, New York's Finest, and on its official Web site.