I have to agree, the average officer makes a pretty penny. To hear them complain that they cant make a living is pretty sad. Police officers are in a unique and protected class in our society. They certainly do a difficult and thankless job but at least in Boise, they are among the highest paid civil servants in the state.

For the fella who equates this to firemen? When is the last time you saw a fireman deprive someone of their freedom? According to the law or not, we give officers the right to violate some of the basic tenants of our society in the course of their duties. To make that comparison is an apples and oranges statement. We grant them powers that go way beyond the powers of a normal citizens.

If you really believe that every citizen holds the same police powers, try making a citizens arrest some time. Try making a traffic stop. Try writing that ticket WITHOUT the officer there to deliver it for you and cuff the guy, see what you get.

I have the utmost respect for them and their profession but I think there are serious ethical questions that go along with “Rent-A-Cop” programs. I find it interesting that in Iraq people take great offense to Mercenaries, and look down on them, but if a cop does the same thing, its cool. We entrust both soldiers and police with lethal force, just food for thought.

Below is a posting shown on the BPD web site.

From the page http://www.cityofboise.org/Departments/Police/NewsReleases/2006/page10965.aspx

# Sworn personnel with less than 3 years of previous full time law enforcement experience will start at the Probationary Officer pay grade – $2,795 to $3,085.
# Sworn personnel having 3 years, but less than 5 years of previous full time law enforcement experience will start at the Police Officer I pay grade – $3,326 to $3,606.
# Sworn personnel with 5 years or more of previous full time sworn law enforcement experience will start at the Police Officer II pay grade – $3,459 to $3,739.

So if you work for BPD and have been a cop for at least three years but less than five, you’ll make a hair under $40K (and that’s with no overtime).

When someone making $40K a year for three years experience is UNDERPAID, they don’t need another job, they need to budget their money.

I think Curious George should be actually called, Curious Guardian. He writes with a great balance on all subjects here at the Guardian.

Boy, they just must LOVE working more than full-time and spending time away from their families. It certainly seems that there’s no shortage of off-duty police to fill the ranks of private security firms.

I have to think that if we valued the efforts of our community police, and paid them well enough to raise their families, there wouldn’t be a problem with putting a “non-compete” clause in their labor contracts.

If the subject of a non-compete clause has never been brought up in labor negotiations then it seems pretty clear that the municipality accepts that private-sector security employers will be picking up the slack for less-than-adequate wages. If you can’t find out whether such a clause has been discussed – you could infer that the subject is taboo by seeing if there are administrative rules in place to punish an officer for using public resources while working off-the-clock.

Seems to me that since officers do feel the need to work extra jobs, and that there are (at least some) prohibitive rules regarding the use of government resources, the municipality has already tacitly agreed that moonlighting is a “fact of life” (i.e., “we” won’t pay our police officers enough to live a decent life).

“When is a cop not a cop?” – When they’re paid poor wages.

John obviously has a personal vendetta against the BPD. His comments about “ethics violations” and “crooked cops” really rankles my fur because I know a lot of cops personally. These men and women are hardworking, sincere and dedicated to the neighborhoods they serve and its scandalous that they get paid so poorly that they have to moonlight at all.

John, shut up.

This in turn likely results in more complaints, not ethics violations. Ethics violations are something else completely. So if you are going to make these generic uninformed statements, be prepared to be made to look foolish. At least do you homework, choose another agency that is similar, maybe Nampa. Realize that ethics violations and officer complaints are two different things. And the Ombudsman was simply a knee jerk reaction of a weak mayor (Coles) and council that were too spineless to defend their police department in front of the public. Creating his office was simply a way to relieve them of any political heat.