Upon taking office at the beginning of the year, Atlanta Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms made it one of her administration’s key priorities to increase pay for police officers. With the city’s murder rate trending in the wrong direction and attrition taking its toll on the force, putting police salaries at competitive levels became not just a campaign promise, but a public safety necessity.
Starting on December 21st the first of those pay bumps will go into effect, a month ahead of schedule from the legislation approved by the Atlanta City Council in October.
Said legislation allocated some $30 million to go towards pay increases over the next three years, bringing overall APD salaries in line with those in surrounding markets. Those raises should do much to curb the attrition that the department has seen in recent years, when officers would leave for neighboring departments due to the simple fact that pay was 10-20% higher, even as close as Alpharetta or Sandy Springs.
The raise signals the continuation of an improving relationship between Bottoms and the APD, a stark contrast from the one former Mayor Kasim Reed shared with the department during his eight years in office. Reed publicly feuded with the force, most notably in 2015 when he excluded them from a raise given to over 3,000 other city employees. Under his watch average salaries had fallen to among the lowest in the country for a major market, and the local International Brotherhood of Police Officers claimed 45% of officers hired between 2005 and 2013 had left the force.
Those numbers heavily factored in to the city’s alarming increase in murder rate, which by 2016 had jumped 44% from Reed’s first year in office in 2009. These pay raises should do much to curb that attrition and allow the APD to increase its total number of officers to over 2,000, long a benchmark for the city. Having more and better officers then should pay dividends for public safety, particularly with so many major events, including February’s Super Bowl, bringing the eyes of the world to Atlanta.
Said Bottoms on the pay bump, “The City of Atlanta has a world-class police force and its members deserve to be justly compensated. Atlanta’s security relies on the recruitment and retention of law enforcement’s top talent. Thank you to Chief Erika Shields and the Atlanta Police Foundation for their leadership in helping the City keep its promise to those who make Atlanta a safe and welcoming city.”
