Public Safety Providers Form Committee To Address Issues, Sheriff Says Pay Study After Pay Study Has Taken Place Without Fixing Problems
Over 35 Public Safety professionals gathered at the Rome Western Sizzlin Saturday to form what organizers are calling the Concerned Public Safety Professionals Committee.
Officials with the committee say that the reason for this first meeting was to organize and lay a framework for future progress and discussions.
Floyd County Sheriff Tim Burkhalter said he supports the officers and deputies 100%. He said he hopes the formation of this committee will bring about change that will allow local public safety agencies to be competitive with other departments in terms of pay so Floyd will not be a training ground for other agencies.
Sheriff Burkhalter said for over 25 years he has seen “pay study after pay study conducted without any significant movement in addressing the problems.”
He said he believes the current commission will address the issues but solving them will be difficult due to years of neglect.
As reported in a previous story, one of the issues for the CPSP committee is retention of officers.
The Floyd County police department alone has suffered a near 100% turnover in the last several years. FCPD Sergeant John Blalock said “Ten percent of the department walked out the door last year.”
Departments such as Cedartown, Taylorsville and more are pulling officers away from the Floyd County department. FCPD officers say, the surrounding departments are using Floyd County as a training ground for their police departments at the expense of Floyd County taxpayers.
Documents also show that the Floyd County PD is severely shorthanded, with officers working extended amounts of overtime to simply keep the county covered. Due to lack of officers, there are some instances where only 3 officers are patrolling the entire county. Officers say, situations like this leave citizens potentially in a dangerous situation and put the police themselves in situations where backup may be as much as 20 minutes away.
Documents obtained by RomeNewswire show that Floyd County Police officers and Floyd County Sheriff’s deputies have similar top out pay to the Rome City police department, however, Rome City officers will reach their top pay in approximately 10 years, while FCPD and FCSO officers have to work 30+ years to reach top pay.
RomeNewswire spoke to Floyd County manager Kevin Poe recently and Poe pointed out that pay has increased 48% on average since 1997 for Floyd County officers. However, our investigation has revealed that the 48% increase has not kept pace with surrounding agencies and that inflation has increased over that same time frame by 31%.
Floyd County officer Chris Fincher says the main goals of the committee is to 1)remedy the low morale of the public service agencies. 2) Work on the problem of retention of qualified officers and 3) Attract quality officers.
Fincher said, as an officer he does not live an extravagant lifestyle. “I have a normal house, a normal car” and says it’s still tough to make a living and make ends meet. “I want to stay in Floyd County, but I also do not want to have to struggle to make a decent living.”
Officers are also concerned about the citizens. One officer said, “It is getting to the point where this places the public in danger.” “If you have an officer who is working a double shift because there is no one else, combined with the having too few officers patrolling, then someone is going to get hurt or worse.”
The CPSP members are planning to meet again in about a week.
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