Mayor, Union Prez Ink 6‑Year Police Contract

In a matter of minutes, with two strokes of a pen, a contract that had taken the city over two years to finalize with the police union was finally made official Friday afternoon. 

Mayor Justin Elicker and Elm City Local Police Union President Florencio Cotto signed the contract in front of cameras at a press conference held in the mayor’s office at City Hall.

Negotiations between the city and the union had been delayed for years before breaking down in acrimony late last summer, sending the parties into a binding arbitration process managed by the state and leaving the parties to accuse one another of refusing to hash out terms in good faith. 

On Friday, though, it was all polite smiles and firm handshakes in a short and muted ceremony that brought together staff from the mayor’s office and New Haven Police Department (NHPD) brass. 

“As folks have seen, we’ve invested a lot in public safety over these recent years, a lot in particular in technology, but we also need to invest in our people, and this contract very clearly does that,” said Elicker. ​“And after a lot of lively dialogue with my friend Mr. Cotto here, we’ve come to an agreement that was supported by 96 percent of the officers, unanimously by the Board of Alders, and I think that we can all be proud of.” 

The contract, which the alders approved last November, has a duration of six years, covering the period between July 2022 and June 2028. Among other things, it boosts entry-level salaries by 25 percent incrementally over that time span, from $50,745 to $70,000, in an effort to attract new recruits to the force. Read more about the contract, including its agreed-upon new schedule for officers, here.

Per a Friday press release from the mayor’s office, the NHPD is now saddled with 63 vacancies, out of a budgeted 392 sworn officers.

“The process was a long, arduous one, but one that needed to happen between the city and the union,” Cotto told the Independent. ​“I think both sides, Mayor Elicker and I, both agreed that stability within the department is not only good for just the men and women, but for the city itself.”