Christmas came early for Akron police officers, as Akron City Council approved by a 12-1 vote immediate $4,000 bonus checks and significant raises for the hundreds of members of the Fraternal Order of Police Lodge No. 7 after it reached an agreement with the city on a new labor contract.
Previously, city administrators said the contract terms and the increases in salary the contract contains would lead to significant layoffs of city employees, cuts to city services, a depleted general fund or increased costs to residents.
And while the city filled the stockings of the police union with the largest wage increase for officers in three decades and the highest average wages in the department’s history, the city’s civilian police oversight system was left with a lump of coal and another contract that doesn’t acknowledge it exists.
“You think you’re making progress then, BLAM, you get something like this,” said Independent Police Auditor Anthony Finnell, who said he has no issues with officers getting paid more but major issues with the city agreeing to a contract with so few accountability mechanisms. “The community’s voice was not incorporated into that contract.”
The new collective bargaining pact approved on Monday — the subject of more than a year of negotiation between the city and the police union — incorporated none of the recommendations long sought by Finnell and the CItizens’ Police Oversight Board to decrease police misconduct and allow the board to have more say in how it operates.
Off-microphone at a CPOB meeting last year in the early stages of union negotiations, the Akron law director told the board that the city likely wouldn’t incorporate their input because the union would ask for more money in exchange.
On-microphone in front of a City Council podium last week, the City of Akron’s Rebecca Trudeau, an assistant law director, confirmed that the civilian oversight system had gotten no consideration: “That is not a part of this current contract…. This was a process of long negotiations between the parties, there were a lot of ideas that were exchanged and, as negotiations go, both sides give some things up and then we get other things.”
Some of the things the city got, the attorney said, were additional civilian staffing in the department’s Body Worn Camera Unit (so officers assigned there can be on the street instead), additional staffing in the Office of Professional Standards and Accountability (what the department calls internal affairs), and clearer language in the “management rights” section.
The agreement gives an immediate $4,000 contract signing bonus, 5% raises for 2025 retroactive to the beginning of the year, and 4.5% raises in 2026 and 2027. According to the contract, the base salary for the lowest-paid officer next year will be $72,000 with salary tiers rising to a base of $177,000. In 2027, the floor and ceiling will range from more than $75,000 to $185,000.
The new collective bargaining agreement also requires the city, prior to responding to public records requests, to notify the police union and any officer whose identity could be included in the requested records.
The oversight system and the CBA
The Office of the Independent Police Auditor and the Citizens’ Police Oversight Board were created when Akron voters overwhelmingly passed Issue 10 at the polls three years ago, shortly after police officers killed Jayland Walker. The new city ordinance allowed the board and auditor to independently investigate police misconduct with, in theory, the authority to interview officers and conduct investigations immediately after incidents.
Issue 10, however, included a caveat that states the CPOB can’t do anything if it’s inconsistent with the FOP’s collective bargaining agreement, which has narrow and distinct processes for misconduct investigations and disciplinary outcomes.
After the CPOB assembled in 2023 and began discussing its rules and procedures, the police union fought back and warned that lawsuits and grievances would follow if the board or auditor attempted to compel officers to testify or if it conducted investigations prior to the completion of the department’s internal investigations.
“If you look at the labor contract, it is certainly my position that you have no authority to subpoena a police officer for an internal investigation, and we would go to court and we would try to quash any subpoena to stop that from happening,” the union’s attorney told the board in a heated meeting in December of 2023. “ … You can’t interview a police officer. You don’t have that authority,” he said.
Over the ensuing months, and after a majority of Akron City Council members sided with the police union in opposition to the CPOB’s proposals, the board settled on watered-down policies that the police union approved. Instead of parsing the union contract in force at the time, the board sought input on the terms of the next one, voting on recommendations it urged the city to consider.
“The better course of action is to accept the restriction for now,” then-CPOB member Bob Gippin said at the time, “just as we are accepting the limitation on parallel investigative authority for now, with the hopes that those may be altered, changed, negotiated in the coming collective bargaining agreement” with the police union.
No mention of the CPOB in the contract
As City of Akron officials presented the new contract terms last week to Akron City Council’s Budget and Finance Committee, Council Member Linda Omobien raised the issue about what she didn’t see in it.
“I don’t see where we have mentioned the oversight board at all, even acknowledging that there needs to be a relationship between FOP and the oversight board — just even acknowledging that they’re going to work together,” she asked Steve Fricker, the city’s finance director. “Every time something comes up, we tell the public that it’s not covered by the contract. So this is a new contract, and I recognize that we’re not going to get everything we want, but even just acknowledging that the body exists, that there’s a need for a working relationship. Is that anywhere in the document? I haven’t seen it yet.”
Fricker’s response was simple: “So I don’t believe there’s any language in the contract related to the board.”
Omobien voted to approve the contract on Monday night. Council Member Eric Garrett was the lone council member to vote against it.
“It does nothing to move our community forward,” he said. “The oversight board has no teeth” in the contract.
Auditor: ‘My problem is with what we didn’t receive’
Last year, Finnell sent the mayor detailed recommendations from his office and the CPOB and, last week, detailed in an email to city officials “that the final agreement does not incorporate the core reforms we sought.”
Finnell highlighted:
- There was no extension of the 120-day window to discipline an officer after a notice of an allegation, which he says does not provide his office and the CPOB enough time to conduct its investigations after the internal investigation is complete.
- There is no recognition of the CPOB or auditor in the contract.
- There is no change to the arbitration process for use-of-force cases so that the mayor has the final say in the complaints, rather than a third-party arbitrator.
- Officers are still allowed to review their body-camera footage prior to giving statements.
“I, for one, have no problems with what the police department receives — I don’t have any problems with that,” Finnell told Signal Akron. “My problem is with what we didn’t receive … to find out that wasn’t even on the table is really disheartening.”