State law enforcement deserves the raise
Last week, Gov. Nathan Deal proposed — no, he guaranteed — a 20 percent pay increase for state law enforcement officers and also an overhaul of police training. In his final two sessions, it seems Deal has set about planting his legacy firmly on criminal justice reform and public safety.
The additional four hours of training will focus on the use of force and community policing for all 57,000 sworn officers in the state. These areas are more than appropriate after what we’ve witnessed in Dallas, Texas, Baton Rogue, Louisiana and other cities. The governor is so confident of his proposal, which on average will give the state’s 3,300 law enforcement officers an $8,000 annual raise, that it will begin in January, before a vote is actually taken. Certainly, any legislator voting against the governor’s plan would probably be writing his or her own political retirement plan.
The cost to the state is almost $79 million and includes officers in the departments of Community Services, Public Safety, GBI, Natural Resources, Juvenile Justice, Corrections and Pardons and Paroles.
But there is a dark side as there is in anything. While the governor says he’s tired of seeing some of the state’s best-trained officers leave for higher paying jobs elsewhere, he’s also creating a problem for local municipalities that make up the majority of departments with law enforcement employees. There are only eight local law enforcement agencies, according to the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, that pay their entry-level officers more than the starting salary for a state trooper. The median annual salaries for state officers will be $46,422. So the question: What of the other law enforcement agencies that now have to compete with the state for their best and brightest?
That concern, however, does not outweigh the need for more pay in the pockets of law enforcement personnel. They have tough, hard duty and this jump in state trooper pay will bring, according to Deal, the state from 50th in the nation to 24th, with only Louisiana and Texas ahead of Georgia in the South.
The governor is also giving this raise in the proper manner, unlike his promise to teachers earlier this year that turned out to be empty. He could have, as he is now doing with law enforcement, put teacher raises in his budget. Instead, school board members all over the state had to scramble; and in Macon-Bibb County, turn to taxpayers for a 2 mill increase to fulfill the governor’s promise.
This story was originally published September 15, 2016 at 9:00 PM with the headline "State law enforcement deserves the raise."