A Look At Police Contract; City Pays $86k To Buy Suits For Cops

With the City of El Paso looking at every dollar it spends, ABC-7 uncovered a few expenses that taxpayers might find surprising.

Among them, paying for suits and uniforms for El Paso Police detectives and officers.

“Law enforcement is organized very well,” City Rep. Steve Ortega said. “They get concessions that other municipal employees don’t get.”

In the police association’s current contract with the city, one of those concessions is an annual $450 clothing allowance for detectives and every police officer, regardless of rank, who is required to wear business attire on a regular basis. The cost comes to about $86,000 this fiscal year.

“I think we did go overboard and, no, I don’t think it’s a fair use of tax-payer money,” City Rep. Ann Morgan Lilly said.

Lilly, who voted for the police contract more than a year ago, said at the time she thought it was reasonable.

“But since then, the economy has just tanked,” she said of why she has changed her mind.

Ortega was one of two city representatives to vote against the contract.

“Yeah, I personally think there are a lot of questionable provisions in the union contract,” Ortega said. “I need to temper that by saying I understand and appreciate that these men and women put their lives on the line for the community.”

City Council asked police officers to delay their raises last year and in turn the city extended its contract with the officers’ association to 2014.

A police officer’s salary starts at $35,000 and without a promotion can go up to $56,000 in an officer’s first seven years.

The president of the El Paso Municipal Police Officers Association stated in a letter to the association’s membership that their pay is justified because they put their lives on the line.

“We get paid what we do because people out there want to KILL us… That’s why we get paid more than city employees,” Ron Martin, the police association’s president, wrote in the letter.

“You can’t continue to pay officers more and decrease the tax rate and so we’re trying to find a happy medium,” Ortega said.

The city evaluates police officer salaries in seven regional cities as large as Phoenix and Dallas and tries to offer the median salary.

Police association officials did not return ABC-7 calls for comment on these topics.