Mayor Ras J. Baraka and Police Director Eugene Venable announced that the City of Newark is proposing a series of reforms and new policies in the Newark Police Department that will enable the force to save money, increase efficiency, avoid layoffs, and hire 65 new officers in 2015.
The proposed measures include eliminating stipends paid to detectives on top of their overtime payments, shifting workweeks to make weekends part of regular time, and eliminating detective personal car gasoline allowances. The measures planned should save the City more than $2 million annually, which would be applied to hire the 65 new officers.
The most important move in the Mayor’s plans is the restructuring of the non-patrol detectives’ workweek into two blocs: A Saturday to Thursday workweek and a Tuesday to Sunday workweek. The move would thus end the current policy, which makes Saturdays and Sundays overtime days for staff police personnel, and increase manpower on weekends. The measure is estimated to save the City as much as $600,000.
Here are the other highlights of the Mayor’s proposals:
* Elimination of the Detectives’ Stipend, which will save $600,000 annually.
* Elimination of the Detectives’ Monthly 35-Gallon Gasoline Allowance, which will save $450,000 annually.
* Elimination of the practice of assigning department vehicles for 24-hour personal use.
* Elimination of crediting personnel with automatic “on-call” time and service-based compensatory time.
The Detective’s Stipend is presently being paid to detectives as an annual remittance of a flat overtime allowance for detectives in lieu of overtime. The standard practice of compensating detectives at time and one half of regular pay for all overtime shall continue.
The Mayor’s proposals must be approved by the Fraternal Order of Police, as well as unions representing senior officers.
