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EDITORIALDELUDING COPSNovember 19, 2007— If Pat Lynch likes Nassau County so much, maybe he should try to get a job there. Lynch, president of the Patrolmen's Benevolent Association, is making great hay of the news that 45 former NYPD cops are among the 99 new recruits hired this month by the Nassau County Police Department. The reason for the defections is fairly clear: Nassau's veteran patrol officers make more than $92,000 a year, compared to less than $60,000 - not counting overtime - for the NYPD. But Lynch goes further. For him, the gap is proof positive of a fundamental injustice in the way City Hall deals with cops — one that's driving more and more experienced officers out of the force and into the suburbs. It's a tenuous argument at best. The high pay of suburban police departments may be a powerful lure, but city cops also know that it's nearly impossible to make those forces. Nassau's newest recruits - former NYPD officers included — had been waiting for offers since 2003, when they took the department's entrance exam. Even then, they had to beat out some 12,000 other applicants. In Suffolk County, which has a similar pay grade and a similar-sized force — around 2,600 - only a few hundred of the 29,000 applicants who took this year's exam can ever expect a job. New York City, with a force of nearly 38,000, simply can't afford to be that lavish. This is not to say that NYPD cops don't deserve a fair salary — or that the department's recruitment woes aren't real. Indeed, Mayor Bloomberg said as much when he invited the PBA to negotiate in good faith a long-overdue contract for its members. The problem is Lynch himself, who decided instead to force the city into binding arbitration. His take-no-prisoners attitude — not to mention his incessant pie-in-the-sky invocation of Nassau and Suffolk salaries — has created in his members an expectation he can't possibly satisfy. New York's Finest should know that, however much they deserve it, they'll never be paid on a level with their suburban brethren. They should also realize by now that their hope for a generous, reasonable contract is only threatened by their boss's obstructionist tactics. It's high time for the rank-and-file to tell Pat Lynch what's what.
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