Looks like history is repeating itself, with the same police union instigators using the same old tactics (Pat Lynch still runs the Patrolmens Benevolent Association). Time for the rank and file to elect someone who cares about more than police pensions: But when Officer Lynch, 35, and his band of insurgents return next month to the unions Fulton Street headquarters, it will be as victors. After a hard-fought election, Mr. Lynch was elected president of the 29,000-member union this weekend, defeating the unions acting president, James Savage, and two other high-ranking union officials by comfortable margins. Who would have thought that one, two, three guys asking questions and standing up for whats right would one day run the P.B.A.? Officer Lynch asked yesterday. The question now becomes how outsiders like Mr. Lynch and the others on his slate who won positions on the unions executive board will govern once they become insiders. With the citys current contract with police officers set to expire next year, Officer Lynch and his young, largely untested team will need to plot their own strategy for negotiating. His reversal of fortune reflects just how unhappy many rank-and-file officers had grown with the union. Foremost among their grievances, police officers and union officials said, was the unions failure to win more lucrative contracts from the city even as crime has fallen to historic lows. The citys police officers now earn less than many of their counterparts on suburban, and even other urban, police forces. Then came the imprisonment of several of the unions former top lawyers and advisers -- including its chief labor negotiator in contract talks with the Giuliani administration -- who were convicted of Federal racketeering charges last year for their activities at another union, the Transit Police Benevolent Association, which is now defunct. A host of other factors have led many officers to conclude that their lot was not a happy one. Complaints abound about the conditions in many of the citys older station houses. And many officers feel that the image of the department as a whole has been unfairly tarnished by incidents like the torture of Abner Louima, the choking death of Anthony Baez at the hands of an officer and the fatal shooting of Amadou Diallo. Officer Lynch barnstormed aggressively during the campaign, papering muster rooms and locker rooms with his fliers and spending the last days of it sleeping in a camper as he toured the citys 76 station houses at all hours of the day and night in the hopes of reaching officers on various shifts. Mr. Lynch, a 15-year veteran of the force, was a community affairs police officer in the 90th Precinct in Williamsburg, Brooklyn. He and his wife live in Bayside, Queens, with their two boys, ages 8 and 6, who attend the same grammar school he did as a boy. In his inner circle are Police Officer John Puglissi, of the 94th Precinct in Greenpoint, Brooklyn, who will serve as First Vice President, and Officer John Loud, a delegate who works in the 19th Precinct on the Upper East Side and who will be second vice president. Officer Loud had long been a lone voice of dissent at delegate meetings. Edward Hayes, the lawyer, has advised the team since its first trip to union headquarters in February. In their campaign literature, the officers promised to run a more open union, advocate a four-day work week and fight to overhaul the Police Departments disciplinary system. In the last category, they promised to fight to preserve the 48-hour rule, which gives officers accused of departmental misconduct two business days before they can be compelled to give statements to investigators. Mr. Lynch offered no specific details of his plans yesterday, saying that it would be premature to do so until his transition team makes its recommendations. He did not say who his labor negotiator would be, or how many staff members he planned to retain or whether he would keep Worth, Longworth & Bamundo, the law firm the union hires to defend officers, which has a contract until April. It was a tough, often acrimonious, campaign. Shortly before Mr. Savage, the acting union president, took office, his predecessor, Lou Matarazzo, announced a coup: the union had prevailed upon the State Legislature to pass a law that would allow the union to bypass city arbitrators and send its contract disputes to a state body thought to be more generous. Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani has vowed to fight the law in court. But the thought among many police officers was that the damage had already been done: they were under a contract that provided no raises for its first two years, leading to their rallying cry, Zeroes for Heroes. Mr. Savage appeared to gain momentum in April when he orchestrated a vote of no confidence in Police Commissioner Howard Safir, who had been criticized heavily in the wake of the Diallo shooting for his policies and a number of personal actions, including his trip to the Academy Awards on a corporate jet. Yesterday Mr. Safirs spokeswoman, Marilyn Mode, said of Mr. Savage: It would certainly appear that his membership gave him a vote of no confidence. When the votes were tallied on Saturday, Mr. Lynch had won 6,458 votes and his slate, called the Voice of the Blue Line, won all six of the unions top posts. Mr. Savage received 4,528 votes, but many of his candidates won positions on the unions board of directors. Edward Mahoney, the Manhattan North Trustee, received 3,795 votes and James Higgins, the unions recording secretary, received 1,970. Looking back to that day 16 months ago when the insurgents went to the union headquarters to press their demands, Mr. Lynch said with a laugh, Now I can finally look at those financial records. cc: Geoffery Mullings, Azi Paybarah, Ephraim Cruz, Josmar Trujillo, Ritchie Torres, Corey Johnson, Helen Rosenthal, Victor G Jeffreys II, Andrew Tobias, Dylan Anderson
Posted on: Tue, 16 Dec 2014 20:12:50 +0000
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