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Campbell: Not surprised.
As many as 15 New Haven cops are looking to Yale to pull them away from the city’s ranks.
Yale’s police force has three, maybe four, current openings for patrol officers, according to Chief Ronnell Higgins. He said over 300 people have applied for those positions — including up to 15 New Haven police officers. (He didn’t have a precise number.)
New Haven Police Chief Anthony Campbell said he doesn’t blame them.
Just look at the numbers, he said. The city starts cops at $44,400, the lowest level in the state. Yale starts cops at $67,000, with better benefits; that starting salary is to rise to $76,300, with top patrol salaries at $96,000, according to Higgins. That’s more than any other department pays. Plus, Yale offers better benefits, including financial help buying homes in the New Haven and paying their kids’ college tuition.
So many New Haven cops were interested in applying that the rumor around 1 Union Ave. was that up to 100 had applied, he said. He noted that his cops are choosing between the lowest and the highest salaries in the state.
Campbell said he worries about a continuing shortage of New Haven cops, as his officers work under a contract that expired two years ago. A new contract is now the subject of binding arbitration; New Haven is making the case that it lacks the money to pay cops enough to compete with suburban departments. (Click here and here for previous stories about suburban departments’ success in luring city cops.)
The department has 495 budgeted positions. The number of filled positions is officially down to a little over 400, according to Campbell, but that figure is a “misnomer”: It includes more than 20 cops currently in the police academy, and others who are off the street on injured leave or administrative duty, or manning the formerly state-run prisoner lock-up.
And given the discouraging contract prospects, Campbell said, he envisions as many as 50 more cops leaving the department in coming months.