Articles

For cops, state pay just not enough:
State Patrol, GBI losing trained staff

By Rhonda Cook
Atlanta Journal-Constitution
August 15, 2006

Trained officers are leaving the state's primary law enforcement agencies - the Georgia Bureau of Investigation and the Georgia State Patrol - in droves because of low pay and long hours.

The beneficiaries of this exodus have been rural sheriffs, district attorneys' offices, corporations and federal agencies, according to documents obtained by The Atlanta Journal-Constitution.

The practice is expensive for Georgia residents in more ways than one. Taxpayers fund training for state officers, and when they leave, the state agency has to train another crop of recruits. The state also loses valuable skills and expertise nurtured over years, according to GBI Director Vernon Keenan.

"The agents that are leaving us should be at their highest level of productivity," Keenan said. "But that training and experience makes them a sought-after commodity in the law enforcement field."

Usually, the officers resign to take higher-paying jobs that require less time and effort. The additional Homeland Security demands after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks also have added to their workloads.

GBI Agent Thomas Mitchem, for example, resigned last fall to join the FBI at a salary almost twice what he made after three years with the state. "The reason I am leaving the GBI is because I have two kids in school, and the FBI is offering me a lot higher salary than what I'm making at the GBI," Mitchem said in his exit interview, one of the documents the newspaper obtained.

Agent Mason Schwartz, a 20-year veteran, saw his salary almost quadruple when he took a job as a "dignitary protection specialist" with DynCorp International Security Inc. last summer. He was to be based in Haiti, taking with him his GBI training as a bomb technician, as a field agent and as an expert in surveillance and countersurveillance. Keenan estimates the state spent about $100,000 training Schwartz.

"I think the most pressing need at the GBI at the present time is more agents on the ground working and higher salaries," Schwartz told his exit interviewer.

A new GBI agent earns $34,533 a year. The average pay for an agent with less than 10 years of experience is $43,287. Those with more than a decade as investigators earn about $50,307.

On Jan. 1, entry-level agents, along with new state troopers, will get a 5 percent to 7 percent bump in pay. But they still will be able to make more elsewhere.

Just since July 1, four agents have resigned to take higher paying jobs. Two went to work for the federal government, one to a local government and the other didn't say where he was going, according to their exit interviews. In the past year, 22 agents resigned. Seven took federal jobs and five signed on with local law enforcement agencies. Ten simply retired.

Former agent Mike Pearson, a 10-year veteran with the GBI, resigned from the state last summer to work for Gwinnett County District Attorney Danny Porter; he got a 46 percent salary increase for making the move.

"There's not a lot that I didn't like about my job but it is discouraging when you go to crime scenes and know that your counterparts from local agencies are better paid and, in many cases, better equipped than we are," Pearson said in his exit interview.

This week, Pearson said he's "extremely happy" with his decision to leave; he gets to do "similar type work" but does not have to invest the amount of time in his new job than he did with the GBI.

"My family's happier and I'm happier," Pearson said after being with the Gwinnett district attorney's office a year. "I gave the GBI 10 years and I was a proud GBI agent. I was just going after a better situation."

Prosecutor Porter said he has "more latitude" to offer higher salaries than the state. Also, investigators in his office have fewer demands on their time. Pearson, for example, telecommutes one day a week and is on call only once every nine weeks instead of weekly. Also, Porter adds, Pearson "works a normal day rather than getting calls in middle of the night."

The GBI had 316 agents in 2001 and now there are 262, including the 20 still in training. There are 40 vacancies, but they cannot be filled because no funds are available.

Even as people leave the GBI, the agency continues to be overwhelmed with applicants for agent positions, Keenan said. Recently, a pool of 350 pre-screened applicants were vying for 17 positions.

The State Patrol, however, struggles just to recruit. Not only is there a problem keeping troopers and radio operators, it's hard to find interested candidates upfront, according to Col. Bill Hitchens, commissioner of the Georgia Department of Public Safety.

Almost 20 percent of trooper positions are vacant.

"It's not a problem specifically to us," Hitchens said, adding that agencies like his in other states have similar problems.

It's not just pay, Hitchens said. It's television crime shows that portray other areas of law enforcement as glamorous. Troopers do shift work, he said. "We work weekends. We work holidays, We work midnight shifts."

Joey Brown, with the patrol 22 years and president of the troopers lodge in the Fraternal Order of Police, has watched many leave the department.

"We're creating a continuous vacuum where we're training people and then in five to seven years down the road they're leaving for other employment," Brown said.

Melissa Hinley resigned her job as a State Patrol radio operator in June to work for the Effingham County sheriff's office, near Savannah. "I could not pay all my bills each month," she wrote as her reason for leaving. She loved the "brotherhood within the Patrol" but "there simply was not enough money."

Trooper Jon Wilber went to work for the U.S. Department of the Interior for higher pay. His $60,000 salary is almost double what he earned with the state.

Radio operators with the patrol start at $20,428 a year and top out at $34,000. Troopers start at $31,474 and can earn up to $60,487.

Overall, State Patrol salaries rose 7 percent on July 1 but that was almost twice the increases troopers and radio operators have gotten over the previous three years combined.

The patrol's dropout rate is significant, Hitchens said, with about a third of the recruits failing to survive basic training even though the minimum education and job experience requirements were lowered five years ago.

An applicant for the State Patrol now needs only a high school diploma or GED. A few years ago, applicants were required to have at least two years of college and two years working as a radio operator or driver's license examiner.

A trooper class graduates next Friday. The class was budgeted for 50 cadets but only 35 passed the initial testing and background checks. Of those, only 25 finished the training. At the end of a training session last spring, there were 24 who graduated out of 36 who began seven months earlier.

Copyright 2006 The Atlanta Journal Constitution. More information: www.ajc.com

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