By Al Baker
NEW YORK — For New York police officers, a day at the firing range has traditionally been a day away from the rigors of patrol. Officers shoot their guns, learn new techniques, meet colleagues and often get to go home a little early, a perquisite known in police jargon as “an early blow.”
Oh, and they get paid, too.
But as of July 1 that will no longer always be the case. Buried in an arbitration panel’s award on Tuesday for the 23,000 members of the Patrolmen’s Benevolent Association is a measure meant to offset some of the costs of their new pay raises: Officers must now use one vacation day a year for mandatory gun training.
Rank-and-file officers are grumbling, calling it a flawed idea that will rob them of precious time off. And some police observers have criticized it as the wrong message to send to officers and the public while the Police Department’s firearms practices are under a microscope.
“This training is very important and it should be held to the highest standard, and to me it belittles it a bit by making it part of a contract,” said John C. Cerar, a retired deputy inspector who was the commander of the Police Department’s firearms training section from 1985 to 1994.
By Al Baker
In January 2007, seven weeks after detectives killed a 23-year-old man, Sean Bell, in a hail of gunfire, Police Commissioner Raymond W. Kelly hired the RAND research organization to review how officers are trained to use firearms and how they actually use them. The study has not been completed.
Three detectives were acquitted in a criminal trial over the Bell shooting, but they face internal charges of improperly firing their guns. Four other officers also face various internal charges regarding the shooting.
Advocates for the family of Mr. Bell and for Trent Benefield and Joseph Guzman — two of his friends who were injured in the shooting — have said that the case underlines the need for increased training in the broadest sense, including in handgun proficiency.
“I think most professions today require continuing education whether you are a doctor, a lawyer, a teacher, a fireman, a pilot, and therefore police officers should, as a matter of policy, receive as much continuing training as the environment that their work demands and therefore they should receive sufficient and adequate training with regard to the use of their firearms,” said Michael Hardy, a lawyer for Mr. Benefield and Mr. Guzman.
“But the training has to be beyond just the use of firearms,” he said. “Because the incident in Bell, in my view, was more a product of a lack of concern for their environment than it was on how they fired their weapons.” Paul J. Browne, a police spokesman, declined to comment.
Officials in the Bloomberg administration rejected any contention that firearms training is being compromised. They said that officers must qualify at the range, at Rodman’s Neck in the Bronx, with their side arms twice every year. That one of those days will be a vacation day means that more officers will be patrolling the city’s streets more often — in line with Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg’s emphasis on productivity gains for city workers. The move will save the city $10 million a year in payroll costs.
“We asked for savings,” said James F. Hanley, the city’s labor commissioner. “This is one of the savings that we had proposed.”
Officials also said the city is in the process of building a new, $1.5 billion police academy that will include a “tactical training village” for reality-based exercises, which is on the cutting edge of law enforcement training.
“The standards have not changed at all,” Mr. Hanley said. “We have not diluted the standards that anyone has to go through at the range.”
Mr. Hanley pointed out that in negotiations two years ago, the union representing roughly 4,800 sergeants agreed to use a day off — not a vacation day — for one of the two range days. He said that two bargaining units representing correction officers also agreed to such a giveback two years ago. “So there’s a history here,” Mr. Hanley said.
The agreement with the sergeants wrought an operational nightmare because many sergeants are off on weekends, when the range is closed. But the department is managing by scheduling sergeants for range work before or after their tours.
And no one is suggesting that rank-and-file officers would refuse to show up for training, though officers do occasionally miss training even when they would have been paid for it.
Still, several officers interviewed said they were uncomfortable with training on a workday. Because of the constant potential liability of carrying a loaded gun, officers said training should not be shunted to off-duty time.
“Going to the range on your day off is kind of ridiculous,” said an officer in Manhattan who declined to give his name because he was not permitted to comment publicly. “My time is my time. I put enough hours into this job.”
Another officer, also in Manhattan, said: “Wouldn’t most reasonable people want to be off on their days off? You tell me. I’m a reasonable person.”
Others raised issues about whether the change violated the federal Fair Labor Standards Act, since it required work during what is normally time off; lawyers for the city’s police unions are researching the issue.
Mr. Hanley said the city was staying within the law by paying sergeants minimum wage when training off-duty and because the officers will be using vacation days, which are paid.
A city official speaking on the condition of anonymity, having been briefed on the terms of the arbitration result but not authorized to discuss it, noted that officers often got to go home early on their range days, making it an easy target for cost savings.
Because of the way time is sliced up in the Police Department, the average officer works about 206 days a year, officials said. “That one of the two qualifications be performed on an officer’s own time does not seem to be an unfair burden, given the other time off they receive,” said the city official.
Copyright 2008 The New York Times