Four-Year Contracts with Raises for Firefighters and Police Officers in Camden, New Jersey

Despite objections by members of a state-appointed blue-ribbon panel, Camden's City Council last night approved four-year contracts for the city's Police and Fire Departments.

The contracts, approved by all six Council members who were present, gives police officers and firefighters a $1,500 raise the first year and an average 4 percent increase each successive year.

The agreements will cost the city an additional $1 million this year and a total of $8 million over the contracts' lives.

The state panel of law enforcement experts and community members was appointed by Attorney General Peter C. Harvey to study the Police Department's problems for 90 days.

Its report to Harvey did not oppose the raises but did call for ending the "outmoded" rotating police shifts.

"How did we get to this sad moment?" panel member Jeffrey Brenner, a Camden physician, asked at last night's meeting. "Everyone here supports steady police shifts, but it's not contained in the contract... . When Camden is listed as the most dangerous city, who dropped the ball?"

Another member, Sharon Miller, also was upset.

"I am very angry because we have not been heard," she said. "We deserve better than this."

But the city's state-appointed chief operating officer, Melvin R. "Randy" Primas, who helped negotiate the contract, said the document gave the police chief the deployment flexibility needed to deal with Camden's crime. He said steady shifts could be negotiated later.

"We're not opposed to permanent shifts. It's something we're moving toward," Primas said.

As the contract stands, officers work four 10-hour days followed by three days off, then four 10-hour night tours followed by three days off, and finally four eight-hour midnight shifts followed by two days off.

The panel cited numerous studies that found rotated shifts were unhealthy for police.

The city's police unions, who said they had requested steady shifts at the start of contract negotiations, said additional officers would have to be hired to make them possible.

The panel wrote that more officers were not needed if the department "assigned more officers to the patrol function and fewer officers to specialized units."

The panel said police departments that have jettisoned rotating shifts had seen marked improvements.

After the Police Department in Abilene Texas, went to steady shifts, it was able to "offer in-service training, reduce overtime expenditures by 32 percent, reduce sick leave, reduce employee turnover and increase officer morale," the panel wrote.

"Steady shifts are an issue that deserves serious consideration," Camden County Prosecutor Vincent P. Sarubbi said yesterday. "I hope that all the parties will be willing to come back to the table to discuss implementing steady shifts as recommended by the state-appointed public safety commission."