Durham officers protest pay scale

DURHAM -- Police officers filled the City Council chambers half an hour before the council's meeting tonight, to protest of their pay.

Upset about a salary study earlier this year that showed their average pay is more than 20 percent lower than the average salary paid police officers across the Triangle, an estimated 250 officers and their family members marched to the council chambers from the Durham Public Library.

They arrived about 6:15 p.m. in a line that stretched from the City Hall entrance to Roxboro Street. They filled every seat — after they made room for a visiting Cub Scout troupe — and stood along the walls until council members took their seats just after 7 p.m.

Upon opening the meeting, Mayor Bill Bell declared their numbers violated fire regulations for the room and asked Fire Chief Bruce Pagan to reduce the crowd.

Those standing left at Pagan's order, but watched through the room's glass doors. Most of them left soon after the meeting began, but promised to be back.

“This is only the beginning,” said Sgt. David Addison, a spokesman for the group. “We're going to continue to sit in at city council until we get a hearing.”

At issue is not only the pay scale, but also a policy of “compression” under which some new officers are paid more than some officers with years on the force.

Police pay is “an issue we need to be addressing,” city council member Diane Catotti said Monday, before the meeting. The addressing, though, should be “in a different form,” she admonished.

Addison said police employees have been trying to get a hearing from the council for months, without success. The city reviewed police pay and made some policy changes earlier this year, but department employees had no chance to participate.

“It was all behind closed doors,” he said.

Plans for a Monday protest had percolated since last week. City Manager Tom Bonfield said Monday afternoon that he had seen e-mails regarding the demonstration, but was not aware of anything more than that some officers planned to attend the council meeting.

City council member Eugene Brown said, earlier in the day, that he thought the demonstration was a mistake. “Number one, they're not on the agenda,” Brown said, “and, number two, they need to go talk to [Police Chief Jose Lopez] about this.”