On 03/07/2008 the Monrovia City Council posted a response to the ongoing labor negotiations with the MPOA, on the City of Monrovia website. The City Council made a very accurate statement in their letter, which is as follows: "Our Police employees remain on the job, serving the people and businesses of Monrovia."The MPOA does not know why the Council would think otherwise. The members of the Monrovia Police Department are always on the job. We work 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 365 days a year, rain or shine. There are no hours on our front doors, as there are at City Hall. When you call on the police department we answer, in the manner to which our residents have become accustomed. Please be assured that will not change. We are proud of what we do for our residents.

The City Council also claims the following, "Be assured that this disagreement over compensation does not put our community's safety in jeopardy.  There is no crisis." 

This is the same City Council and Mayor who have held peace rallies, attended school safety forums, held repeated news conferences about the gang violence and recent homicides, and walked in a peace march to stop gang violence.  We would ask if these are the actions of a group of people who honestly believe the city to which they have dedicated so much time and effort is not in the midst of a crisis of public safety.  Either their earlier efforts were reactionary and meant purely for public relations, or their recent comments are revisionist and disingenuous.

The city of Monrovia typically places six patrol officers on each shift.  With two shifts per day, that means an average of 12 Monrovia police officers work each day.  Consider, for the past six weeks, the city has relied on numerous outside agencies to daily field an average of 25 additonal police officers to patrol our Monrovia streets.  These 25 officers are twice the number of officers that the city usually places on patrol on a daily basis.  Do these numbers truly indicate a city not in crisis?  Given the recent upswing in Part I (felony) crimes and gang violence, and the great lengths to which the city is going to field more officers, what can be made of the city's position that "fiscal responsibility" is its number one priority?

In its letter, the city calls its contract offer "very fair and generous," and implies the current incarnation of the MPOA has previously agreed to the survey of 13 cities and compensation components which would make its last contract offer "highly competetive" in comparison to the rest of the San Gabriel Valley.  This is, in fact, far from the truth.  The current MPOA has repeatedly and vocally challenged the formula used by the city to determine the fair market value of its compensation package.  The formula the city is using was created more than 20 years ago, a time when the face of the San Gabriel Valley and the state of police work was so different as to be unrecognizable.  The MPOA steadfastly believes it is impossible to gauge the effectiveness and worth of a truly modern police force, as the Monrovia Police Department strives to be, on standards and measures agreed to so long ago that more than a third of its patrol force were not yet born.

The MPOA's proposal to the city was based on only three quantifiable components - base salary, medical benefits, and education/certificate incentives.  No other measurable component was brought to the table by the MPOA.  It is oft quoted maxim that statistics can say anything you want them to say; pure numbers, however, cannot.  In pure numbers, a top step Monrovia police officer's salary currently ranks 12 out of 13 in our survey cities.  A Monrovia police officer's medical benefits rank 13 out of 13 in our survey cities.  A Monrovia police officer's education/certificate incentives rank 12 out of 13 in our survey cities.  Considering these pure numbers, and considering that only these three components of our compensation packages are in question, the words "very fair and generous" and "highly competetive" lose all meaning.  It is the "very fair and generous" and "highly competetive" compensation package offered by the city that has left the patrol force at a skeleton crew, as hired officers leave for more highly paid departments, and qualified recruits pass the city of Monrovia by with little more than a glance and a snicker.

The department's patrol force is reduced. Officers regularly work 20, 30, even 40 hours of overtime per week to make up for the shortfall. We have been losing and will continue to lose officers, and we have been having a difficult time attracting new recruits. Won't the Mayor, City Council and key City staffers help us do our jobs? Why won't they stop the exodus of our Police Force? We have been patient. We have asked and even pleaded, but to them this seems to be a game of saving a few more dollars. The city leaders are acting as though the money is their own. Well, it's not. The taxpayers, voters and great residents of this town own Monrovia and we are all accountable to them. We know you all want a well trained, motivated and fully staffed Police force! The recent tragedies are proof we are not just a sleepy town and violence and crime is on the rise, as it always is during tough economic times. We can't sit back and wait for us to loose more officers to other cities. The City Council and Mayor can be fair, help the motivation, staffing and get this resolved. Call your Mayor and City Council at 626-932-5550 and please show up to City Council on March 18th and tell them to make Public Safety their #1 priority and fully fund it.

We have heard the city manager and council make the statements "fear mongering" and "scare tactics among other things" in reference to the MPOA's actions.  If this wasn't so transparent and laughable we would respond.  Because they are not interested in listening to our reasonable concerns, and seem able to look us in the eye and attempt to convince us their contract offer is fair and will fix the serious issues at hand, we have no recourse but to present our concerns to you, the community. 

The serious issues at hand must be dealt with and that lies in the hands of our city.