Police Deserve more Pay

We extend our condolences to the friends and families of Nicholas Pekearo and Eugene Marshalik - the two volunteer auxiliary police officers who were gunned down by a murderous gunman in Greenwich Village recently. Both young men - Pekearo was 28 and Marshalik was only 19 - gave their lives while protecting their community.
Police work is always dangerous!
In addition to the deaths of the auxiliary police officers on Wednesday, March 14, an unarmed undercover cop was shot on Saturday, March 10 during a wild melee at a Brooklyn nightclub. Police Officer Robert Tejada was shot twice in Harlem by a suspect brandishing an illegal automatic weapon on Tuesday, March 13. And Police Officer Angel Cruz, with only 15 months on the job, had his face slashed by a man who then plunged a hunting knife into his head. The suspect, an illegal Guatemalan immigrant who sneaked back into the U.S. after being deported for attacking six cops in New Jersey, had been smoking on a subway platform on Tuesday, March 13.
On Tuesday, March 27, Police Officer Rory Mangra was shot in the ankle in Park Slope, Brooklyn by a suspect who was observed allegedly smoking marijuana joints.
We must pay our police higher salaries.
Period. No excuses. No buts.
If we want to continue to attract the brightest and the best, we must not insult them with our pay scales. We must not make them buy their own uniforms and equipment at a cost of several thousand dollars in their first year of service.
Police may not join the force for the money, but salary is always a indication of respect. We must respect our Finest and their families.
On Tuesday, March 27 City Councilmember David Weprin, chair of the Council Finance Committee introduced a plan - the “Auxiliary Officers Assistance Plan” - that includes legislative items and requests for protective equipment made by the volunteer Auxiliary Officers to provide them with greater protection while they serve our city.
Mayor Bloomberg announced on the same day that the City would issue bulletproof vests to all Auxiliary Police.
We applaud Weprin’s plan for the volunteer cops to be issued bulletproof vests, be allowed to carry mace and use it, be issued expandable nightsticks, protective masks and equip their Auxiliary Police Service Units with defibrillators.
The time has come to grant these volunteers New York City Special Patrolmen status thereby increasing the penalties for attacking or injuring an Auxiliary Police Officer.
We fully support the provision of Weprin’s plan to allocate appropriate benefits for disabled Auxiliary Officers and their families.
Even if we cannot pay them, we must train them in self-defense and equip those brave men and women who voluntarily put themselves in harm’s way for us.
We can no longer sit back and ignore the elephant in the room. Our cops are underpaid - embarrassingly so. Our volunteer police are under equipped, under trained and often under appreciated.
It is time to end these wrongs.