AKRON, Ohio (WJW) – After he officially takes office in January, Akron’s new mayor, Shammas Malik, will preside over the selection of a new police chief and later next year will help negotiate a new union contract for the rank and file officers.
On Thursday, Malik shared his thoughts regarding the recruiting and retention of police officers with FOX 8, just days after Cleveland City Council formally approved incentives to help keep officers there from going elsewhere for more money.
During his campaign, Malik says he spoke of safety for residents of Akron as a top priority. He told FOX 8 that is something he will continue to talk about after he formally takes office.
The mayor-elect says he wants to work on a plan to either renovate or rebuild the city’s police department headquarters, currently the only occupant of the aging Harold K. Stubbs Justice Center.
On Tuesday, he released a statement that said, in part, his administration would be working with the department to review its policies and procedures.
“There’s a lot I would like to do to focus on both retention and attraction, acknowledging that other departments from across the state and around the country are doing what they can to attract officers, trying to lure them away from departments like Akron’s,” he said.
Malik said among his ideas is a grassroots effort to help create a “pipeline” that brings Akron school children into public service occupations.
“One of the things we really want to focus on is getting a better pipeline program, so… people are able to be hired at 18 for fire and then 21 for police and making sure that we have that pipeline. Maybe if they are in high school and college, they are able to work at a city job that’s not safety forces, working at the 311 call center, working parks and rec and keeping them kind of in the hemisphere and then bringing them in,” said Malik.
He is also aware that the City of Cleveland this week offered raises to officers there in the middle of a 2022-2025 contract.
Akron FOP President Clay Cozart says it shows that you do not have to wait until an expiring contract is negotiated to find ways to help retain officers.
“Each of the last three years, to include this year, our department has lost nearly 20 officers with 10 years on or less. That’s not including retirements. Just 20 officers who have chosen to leave the department to go to other departments that pay higher wages and have better work environments,” said Cozart.
“We have had a couple get out of the law enforcement profession, but for the most part, they are going to other departments for much higher wages,” he added.
Cozart says while work environment and other incentives are nice, when it comes to officer retention, the most important thing for his rank-and-file is pay.
Malik says he is willing to see what the city is able to do, understanding he and council have to be good stewards of the city’s tax dollars.
“Everyone deserves fair pay for the work they do and obviously we have to look at the city finances over all, right? We have employees in our service department, in finance department and law department and all across the board, but we want to make sure our safety forces are well-compensated so we are going to go into those labor negotiations and if we see what they are doing up in Cleveland,” said Malik.
Malik says one of his favorite things about local government is that they can look at what other cities are doing and replicate it if they are able to do so.
“There is a variety of things we can do so that the day-to-day work is more fulfilling and more functional and not as stressful and heavy as it really is. I mean, pay is going to be a critical piece of it, so that’s where we have had pay increases over the past three years under the current contract and the current contract is up in 2024,” said Malik.
Cozart says the FOP is always willing to sit down and talk over its concerns, noting that he and the mayor-elect essentially have the same priorities and neither wants an adversarial relationship.
“We will begin negotiating in the summer hopefully or early fall and last year we did receive a generous wage and also some bonuses, but after I signed it, I looked at the city’s side and I said I didn’t know if this is going to be enough, and it proved not to be enough because again 20 officers a year resigning with less than 10 years on the job,” said Cozart.
Akron has a lot to offer, but you have to put pay and working conditions in with that and just because Akron is a nice area, that’s not enough to attract people,” he added.
Malik says after he is officially in office, he plans to hire a police strategist as a liaison between the police department and his office and he will include both the police and fire chiefs as a part of his cabinet.
“We have amazing public servants. They deserve to be compensated for it. I want to have their back and we want to be collaborative in this. It’s not a race between all of us. We are not going to win everything by just competing over a smaller and smaller pool,” said Malik. “If people don’t know anything else about what we are doing in Akron, I want them to know we are making this community safer.”
