Fired Cops Return, Cost City $2.4 Million

Fired cops coming back to the force through arbitration are costing the city millions

The city forked over $2.4 million to police officers who were given back their jobs after being fired, reported the Daily News.

Twenty-four cops got their jobs back after being fired since January 2008, costing the city millions in back pay and lost overtime.

The cost could go up.

Philly police commissioner Charles Ramsey sent an additional 51 police officers to the chopping block since and many of them could get their jobs back with the help of arbitrators, according to the Daily News.

Police union officials said the Ramsey is too quick to pull the plug on police officers. Premature or unnecessary firings mean more spending down the road, police union officials told the Daily News.

Direct-action dismissal should only be used for serious accusations like rape or murder, John McNesby, president of FOP Lodge 5, told the Inquirer. But sometimes the internal investigation process is too slow, Ramsey told the Daily News.

"You can't sit around for two years, waiting for the D.A.'s Office or somebody else to decide whether or not they're going to file criminal charges, because we've got cases now that are still sitting there that are three years old,” Ramsey told the Inquirer.

Ramsey fired 51officers – even though some of them only required minor disciplinary action, according to McNesby.

One of the more notable of Ramsey’s terminations -- four officers were fired two weeks after the Fox 29 video showed them beating up three suspects in North Philly. The officers returned to work March 12.

Ramsey has a reputation for expecting high standards from his officers, which dates back to his days as police chief in Washington D.C.

Out of the 200 D.C. cops who were fired on Ramsey’s watch from 1998 to 2006, 50 were already given back their jobs, Kristopher Baumann, Washington D.C. Fraternal order of police chairman, said to the Daily News.

But Ramsey defended his no-nonsense policy toward police misconduct. On May 1, Ramsey instituted a new disciplinary code that detailed punishments for police misconducts, which ranges from having sex in a patrol car on duty to a fist fight with a fellow officer, according to the paper.

“I think there has to be a higher standard for officers, and I don't have a problem holding them to it," Ramsey told the Daily News.

But the code will “be at the bottom of a litter box pretty soon," according to McNesby. The union wants the code thrown out.

Still, McNesby acknowledged that the police department needed to be improved.

"I'm an advocate for the cop on the street, and he has to answer to the city. It's natural that you're going to disagree." 

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