Police chief tries to fix low morale with officers working mandatory overtime

By Rachel McCrary, James Paxson

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    SAGINAW, Michigan (WNEM) — The city of Saginaw is seeing an increase in crime and gun violence amid a short staff, and it is taking a toll on the city’s officers.

Busy police departments like the Saginaw Police Department have many officers working mandatory overtime and some departments are seeing low morale.

Saginaw Police Chief Robert Ruth is working to resolve this issue.

“Any officers working the overtime that we are we get burn out working in the kind of hours we are. And the officers are working a lot of hours and they’re working hard,” Ruth said.

Chief Ruth said he has around 60 officers. He just hired seven people for the police academy that starts in two weeks and three officers currently in a field training program will hit the streets in about a month.

With rising crime and gun violence Ruth said it is not enough.

“Somethings got to be done,” Ruth said.

Chief Ruth said morale is an issue a majority of departments are facing. He said pay cuts and loss of benefits are causing people to avoid the field or prompting officers to leave early.

“Morale is an issue at all departments across the united states. When we were defunded ten years ago our officers didn’t get pay raises. For ten years. ten years! It’s never caught back up. Benefits went away,” Ruth said.

Ruth said he has met with representatives from Gov. Gretchen Whitmer’s Office, state senators and city manager and the mayor to talk about retention of police officers in the inner cities.

He said there has to be a fix to that dilemma because he is losing officers to other departments with more pay and benefits. When it comes to certain contracted overtime with different organizations, Ruth said while some officers are burnt out while some appreciate the extra hours.

“We can get rid of it. If we have to. I don’t want to because some officers want to work it,” Ruth said.

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