Tulsa police officers will see a sizable increase in their salaries over the next year, thanks to a deal struck between the Mayor’s Office and union membership.
Mayor G.T. Bynum signed the collective bargaining agreement with the Fraternal Order of Police Lodge 93 last week, giving current full-time officers about a 12% pay raise in three separate 4% increments in January and July of this year and January 2023, a city spokeswoman said.
“It has never been more challenging to recruit men and women into the law enforcement profession,” Bynum wrote in a Facebook post then. “As we pursue unprecedented measures to attract new officers to the Tulsa Police Department, we also want to do our best to retain officers already serving.”
Tulsa police officers are salaried according to a step pay chart. Beginning with an out-of-academy salary of about $59,100 at step zero, they typically move up one step a year — dependent on an annual work evaluation — until they max out at the highest salary available for their respective ranks. An officer’s maximum pay was formerly about $81,600 at step eight.
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The process over the next year will be similar, but contract negotiations added three steps to the top of each rank’s pay range and accelerated step movement three times as fast, meaning employees will move up not one but three pay steps in this contract period.
For some, especially those who were near-to or had already maxed out their pay steps, that will mean a sizable salary boost. The increases to annual salaries, depending on rank and current pay step, will range from nearly $8,000 to $18,500 overall, according to Tulsa World calculations. The maximum pay for an officer is now about $91,700 at step 11.
The full agreement can be accessed online at bit.ly/TulsaCBAs.
The department’s 2021 pay raise mostly focused additions to the lower spectrum of the pay steps for purposes of recruitment, said Lt. Patrick Stephens, chairman of the union’s board of directors, whereas this year’s zeroes in on retaining more senior officers.
The Mayor’s Office officially began negotiations with the FOP after the union pitched the idea in an unofficial brainstorming breakfast, Stephens said, making for an early start to counter the police pension’s upcoming extra 2% offer for officers who retire before the end of May.
But retirement isn’t the only wrench. The city is paying for the increases through salary savings from attrition, a spokeswoman said.
“We’re having a large number of officers from that five- to 10-year period leave,” Stephens said. “The officers that are eligible for retirement, a city can tolerate that, but once you lose your middle core group, you’re just training up these people to work for someone else.
“When officers see the city investing in them like this mayor has, it makes it easier for them to stay here instead of taking a job at another department or agency.”
Over the past couple of years, TPD has consistently operated about 150 officers shy of its authorized strength, 943. In the absence of manpower, the city has pursued investment in a Real Time Information Center and recently began offering a $15,000 starting bonus to new police recruits.
In the most recent academy, funded for 30 positions, only 11 candidates met TPD's high standards. "So, we have to do more," the mayor said.
“I want to thank the leadership of the Tulsa FOP for working with my administration to take this important step in addressing our manpower challenges,” Bynum said.
Stephens lauded the willingness of the Mayor’s Office to prioritize public safety.
“Not only did (Bynum) come up with an incentive to recruit, but he also took care of the people who are here, and that means a lot to the officers who are here,” Stephens said. “I can’t say enough about working with this mayor and with Cascia Carr, the deputy mayor. It’s been a great experience.”
Stephens said the changes make TPD more competitive with departments of other similarly-sized cities, but it’s still too soon to tell whether the raise will be enough to affect staffing.
“I know that there are some people who are now re-thinking their plans,” Stephens said. “But officers tend to keep those plans close, so we won’t know until May.”
The collective bargaining agreement between the Mayor’s Office and the Tulsa Fire Department’s union is still in the works.
Tulsa Firefighters Local 176 President Matt Lay said members were “optimistic” when they learned months ago of the early start on negotiations with TPD but find themselves only one meeting into their process.
Although TFD is not currently in a staffing crisis, Lay said firefighters remain committed to “meaningful and sustained investment in the personnel, positions and equipment that save lives and protect our community” and would “greatly like to avoid the pitfalls that came from being reactive, like being in the bottom of our market in wages or a fire truck fleet in disrepair.”
The city said it held its first contract negotiation meeting with the firefighters’ union last week and has another scheduled for later this month, which it noted is also ahead of schedule compared to previous years.
