By G.W. Schulz
We usually call this segment “What’s the city’s cop union pissed about now?” But the SFPD doesn’t appear to have a lot to be pissed about these days, if Gary Delagnes is right in promising that San Francisco police officers will be the highest paid in the nation by the year 2010.
Delagnes (pictured right) is president of the San Francisco Police Officers Association, of course, and we like to keep track of what he’s complaining about by reading through the often-disturbing POA Journal, a wonderful place to learn what’s on the minds of the SFPD’s rank-and-file.
In the August issue, Delagnes doesn’t get around to attacking Gen-Xers or deriding “community nut jobs.” He’s too busy promising the fattest paychecks in all the land by the time the union’s current contract expires, for which City Hall recently completed negotiations.
Here’s the money shot from Delagnes:
“It was a team effort and our mission was accomplished. We will now finally approach our mission of 17 years ago when we vowed to be the highest paid major police department in the country. When that last raise kicks in on July 1, 2010, I believe we will have reached that goal.”
There are a lot of things a police department can aspire to, we guess. But nothing could be as important as beating out the other bastards in pay. Delagnes precedes all of this with a stretch of a metaphor. When he played baseball as a young man, he hated to bunt, because, as he writes, he’d much rather clear the fences.
“One time I just ignored the coach’s obvious bunt signal. Okay, maybe it was more than just once … But the one time I do remember ‘missing’ the signal just about cost us the game. My coach at the time made sure I spent the next couple of games on the bench so that I would remember I was playing a ‘team’ game.”
We’re pretty sure Delagnes was trying to say that he couldn’t have whipped the city into contractual submission without the rest of his negotiating committee, whom he goes on to thank individually. You know, teamwork. We think. He commits several column inches to this metaphor, and we’re still not quite clear on it.