Lateral moves pay for police officers approved

By Dana Casadei

Bloomfield Township trustees unanimously approved pay incentives for lateral police officer transfers at their meeting on Monday, August 26.

Police Chief James Gallagher told the board that this idea was brought about after having a conversation with a Michigan police officer who was looking to work in Bloomfield Township and had over eight years of service. 

“We can’t have him start at year one pay here,” Gallagher said. “This candidate didn’t demand anything, but we know he has a family and baby on the way. We knew we had to be competitive.” 

Prior to the approval at the August 26 meeting, there weren’t any pay incentives for

police officers who wanted to transfer from other Michigan communities to Bloomfield

Township and make sure they were adequately paid for their years of experience. 

For example, a lateral transfer who has three years of prior law enforcement experience would be offered a starting salary at year three on the wage schedule, as opposed to starting at year one because it would be their first year with the township.

Now, a lateral transfer will allow candidates to transfer directly into the established wage scale, and that pay will be based on their years of prior law enforcement service. A year of service to qualify for this benefit is defined as a minimum of 2,080 hours worked in only road patrols or investigations. Other law enforcement experience outside of those areas will have no impact on a potential candidate’s starting salary.

Regardless of experience though, no newly-hired police officer will receive a pay that is higher than the top of the current wage scale, something that varies per position within the police department. Those new hires will be considered new in terms of department or township seniority too, and their years of service will not have any impact on the offered pension or retirement benefits for that police officer. 

Given that the police department is currently in contract talks, an agreement with the union, which officials said was very much in favor of this, this approval was required before this came before the board. 

Speaking of the current police contract, supervisor Dani Walsh mentioned that contracts will be open earlier than 2026 when they were originally set to end. They are hoping to open those discussions within the next year.

While clearly in favor of this agreement, trustee Chris Kolinski did ask if the amount of vacation time was considered with this sort of agreement, and when he was told that it was not, he suggested they take a look at that as well in order to be proactive and attract more candidates moving forward. 

Gallagher did say that the amount of vacation time offered was not considered a barrier for working for the township by those he spoke to.

“Hopefully there will be some changes made in the near future with this compensation study,” Gallagher.

He mentioned that surveys recently went out to the Bloomfield Township police department, which will give them a better idea of what type of barriers they face regarding hiring. 

A similar pay incentive was offered to the township’s fire department, which did not think this was necessary at this time because they are fully staffed, officials said.

The board voted 6-0 in approval. Trustee Neal Barnett was not in attendance at the meeting.