Eunice police pay resurfaces as an issue

The issue of low police pay resurfaced at Tuesday’s city council meeting when Jack Burson, alderman at-large, mentioned it while also announcing the formation of a master plan study committee.
“We’ve got to come up with some more finances for our city employees,” he said. “We’ve got a third of our city budget right now based on our current income going to police, yet we have the lowest starting police pay in the area by a sad margin. I’m talking about even Basile and Ville Platte that we wouldn’t think would be ahead of us, but they are.”
Eunice Police Chief Randy Fontenot said pay is the critical issue for his department.
“We are one of the lowest paid departments in the area,” he said. “We have smaller and larger departments all around us that their starting pay is substantially higher than ours, which makes it harder for us to attract the best of the best which is what we prefer to have here.”
The complaint about low pay has been made since, at least, Police Chief Gary Fontenot’s tenure.
A Eunice patrol officer starts at $9.75 an hour, Fontenot said. A Eunice police officer would start making $20,280 a year.
“It also makes it very difficult to retain officers after we’ve trained them because once they become trained they become valuable to other departments that pay more,”
The difference in pay is as great as 57 percent for a new deputy at the St. Landry Parish Sheriff’s Office. Deputies start at $15.29 an hour at the sheriff’s office — $5.54 more than Eunice’s starting pay.
Hourly starting pay at area police departments:
— Crowley: $11.51 an hour; 18 percent higher than Eunice.
— Rayne: $12.69; 30 percent higher than Eunice.
— Port Barre: $10.50; 7.7 percent higher than Eunice.
— Jennings: $11.25; 15 percent higher than Eunice.
Trained officers start at higher hourly rates in some cases. At Port Barre, Police Chief Deon Boudreaux said the rate rises to $11.50 an hour for a certified officer, at Rayne the hourly pay jumps to $13.25 for a trained patrol officer.
There are other pay perks for police in the area.
Jennings Police Chief Todd A. D’Albor said police receive a 2 percent annual cost of living raise. D’Albor said Eunice’s starting police pay is probably the lowest in the area.
In Acadia Parish, there is a $100 monthly payment from the parish for law enforcement officers.
After a year of service and successful completion of the state Peace Officer Standards and Training Council training, officers receive a $500 a month payment from the state.
Fontenot said Eunice police receive a 1 percent annual raise.
“I think the pay is very poor for our police officers,” the police chief said. “They put their lives on the line. They are there to handle complaints, protect your property, protect your life. They go into situations that most people run from.”
Police officers are among the lowest paid professionals, he said.
“Police officers are expected to be more than the average, better than the average person,” he said. “We expect extreme professionalism from them. We expect extreme honesty and integrity from them. And we pay them less than a laborer’s wage. If they get in a little bit of trouble they lose their job.”
Fontenot said, “We expect a lot from our police officers and expect to pay them a little for it.”
Eunice police stay on the job for three to four years on average, he said.
“We do have some with as many as 25 years, not many. Where 20 years ago our average tenure was probably running 15 to 16 years, which, if you stop and think about it, in the last five years we’ve probably lost 80 percent of our department.”
In a four period, the Eunice Police Department has lost about 300 years of total combined experience, he said.
Capt. Clay Higgins of the St.Landry Parish Sheriff’s Office, pointed out the turnover issue is a serious one.
“If you just continue to turnover your officers you might think you are saving money because you are not hardly paying them, but you are spending your money on training and you are exposing your municipality to litigation that would not be there otherwise,” he said. “There are all kind of reasons to look at the thing from another angle and see if you pay people decent then you can get good people to begin with and then train them right and you’ve got a shot to keep them.”
The bright spots for Eunice police newcomers are the vacation and sick leave benefits. A new officer gets 15 days of vacation and 52 weeks of sick leave.
And, officers working 12-hour shifts can end up with 15 days off in a month, Fontenot said. But many officers end up working overtime because of staffing shortages, he said.
“Because we are shorthanded they haven’t been able to take all of their vacation,” Fontenot said. “The city ends up having to pay them at the end of the year because they cannot accumulate it.”
Sick leave is monitored for abuse, he said. “If we can see a pattern of abuse of the sick leave then we have remedies to rectify it,” he said.
The number of police department fluctuates, he said, but includes 25 sworn officers, five jailers, three record clerks, four dispatchers and a secretary.
Of the sworn officers, 65 percent are white and 35 percent black; and 75 percent male.