Only Massachusetts requires police details at road work sites. Boston drivers are from Massachusetts. Coincidence? Risking a lifetime of tickets for riding their bikes on the sidewalks and for missing license plate lights, DLA researchers take a look at paid police details.


A dream police detail:  Ensuring public safety in front of Dunkin' Donuts!
Photo Credit: DLA Labs 

On March 12, justanothertrooper posted this entry on the MassCops.Com blog (a web site for New England law enforcement professionals): “NECN is reporting on detail pay for BPD (Boston Police Department).....can always tell when spring is here!”

Can’t argue with him there. Local and state police salaries, swollen by overtime “detail” pay (directing traffic at street or highway construction, special crowd details, etc.), draw the focus of media and (much less frequently) politicians on a perennial basis. The issue is always simmering in the minds of the motoring public since virtually every trip to D’Angelos Marketbasket includes dodging an open manhole or a DPW backhoe digging up a storm sewer…always under the careful supervision of a state or local police office. But it moves to the front burner with the annual news story reading something like “Police Top State’s Highest Paid List”, or –in the case of the Boston Herald—“Cops Cop Top Take-home!”

And so it was earlier this month when the Globe and other news media, as predicted by justanothertrooper, reported that 108 city employees earn more than the mayor…and 107 of them were police officers. Rank-and-file patrol officers took home an average of $93,085 each, including roughly $14,000 in overtime and $20,500 in detail pay. Those 107 at the top of the list all earned more than $175,000.

Debating the salaries of city and state officials almost always ends in a hung jury. Tossed about as an easy way to reduce highway maintenance costs and town budgets, the police detail issue always looks like a no-brainer…until the real political cost of bucking the police unions is included, at which point the chastised public official suddenly finds other programs that will save a few million. Governor Weld in 1992 tried and caved in under the state-house picketing by police officers. Mitt Romney didn’t even try. And Deval Patrick, still fresh and wide-eyed from his election in 2006, showed he understood the relationship between discretion and valor when, after the Globe ran its usual story last year reporting that 10% of the State Police force earned more than the governor, he said that reforming police details was "not at the top of my list, to be perfectly candid."

In previous years, suggestions that Patrick might look at the police detail issue provoked forceful exchanges on various blogs since no one is undecided on this issue:

        “Sitting on the side of the road is considered a perk? Whenever I drove through states that used cops to sit around at jobsites, I honestly thought they were given those details as a punishment.”

        “I'm stocking up on extra popcorn for this one.”

        “Trying to replace police roadside details with flagmen has been the 3rd rail for Massachusetts Governors.”

        “The over/under when Patrick caves in should be 10 days.”

        "Is (Deval) really this intent on making 100% of the rookie mistakes, or what?"

        “Only Superman can stop a gravy train this big.”

        “Don't be ridiculous. They just sit there and watch the traffic (I'm not joking).”  

        “.. reminds of when I tried to pull a piece of rawhide out of my dog's mouth, not smart and not likely to be done again any time soon!

The police blog postings on this—and previous—media noise about police detail pay were equally uniform and even more entertaining:

        “Media is totally biased, unless they are reporting sports scores. Total BS.”

        “Must be a slow week in the newsroom”

        “Next week it will be pot holes followed by an attack on teachers.”

        “The Boston Globe is nothing more then a pinko palace of left leaning liberals. They push the agenda of lefty liberals like Kerry and Kennedy...” (Ed.: boldface and alliterations entirely his)

        “My big issue with the media, when reporting on detail money is that they never say how many long, cold, wet, Nittwit (sic) encrusted hours one has to put in to earn that extra cash.” (Ed.:Uh…yeah...)

        “The people that are complaining are just jealous that's all. People like this Jackal that wrote the article don't remember the fact that police officers are killed in the line of duty every day even if they are just standing at a hole directing traffic.”

This particular thread really livened up when several posters (presumably police officers) offered that, in fact, paid details were a pretty sweet deal, eliciting some serious vitriol from other posters (presumably police officers):

    “It is also unfortunate that MCAS was not a requirement when you completed your schooling. But keep taking the civil service tests who knows lighting may strike and your 79 might be misread as a 97 one day!” (Ed: Yikes!)

But it lightened up when the discussion moved to how the four hour minimum requirement for details results in the media’s misunderstanding of the actual hours worked since an officer is able to go to his or her next detail while still getting paid for the first. This evolved into a series of can-you-top-this stories from posters who explained how they were able to take advantage of that minimum requirement:

        “I'm proud to say I once collected 28 hours of detail pay for 8 hours of work....in one day ”

…posted clouseau, drawing a round of “huzzahs” and general admiration from his fellow posters.

Must be serious: it takes a Statie and a Boston cop to keep drivers under control at this sidewalk repair project!
Photo Credit: DLA Labs

But it’s 2008 and Patrick has found a change of heart and this week it was announced that he and Speaker of the House DiMasi would push for rules to limit the use of police details. Admittedly, they are using the “camel’s nose in the tent” approach as a way to make inroads on the issue: suggested changes would distinguish situations in which police presence should or should not be used, for example, roadwork on a dead end, residential street and other situations for which even the police unions would be embarrassed to use the standard defense about “ensuring public safety.”

Now, this is front page stuff in Boston, but here at DLA, it simply cries out for coverage...NOT becasue of the salary issue, but when it is also noted that Massachusetts state and local police generate “detail” pay primarily through their “required” presence at highway repair, construction, or work sites….a presence required by NO other state in the nation! Forty-nine other states have determined that “flaggers” can wave motorists past the sidewalk repair job, open manhole cover, or street repaving every bit as competently and safely as a police office. But not Massachusetts.

The scene in the DLA research staff cubby corner was positively giddy: a truly anomalous behavioral/societal practice had been identified in Massachusetts! Ass-like drivers come from the only state in the union in which police details are required to “monitor” traffic every time Verizon wants to put a new cable on a pole! A connection!

A key tenet of behavior modification theory—be it Skinnerian, Pavlovian, or Entenmann's—is that a behavior changes in response to reinforcement: negative (the behavior being reinforced diminishes, often through punishment) or positive (a desired behavior encouraged through some reward). This behavior has been shown to be very effective in all manner of goats, rats, pigeons, and annelids, but—it is believed—fares less well as a treatment for ass-like driving. Some researchers theorize that this is so because ass-like drivers have central cortex structures very similar in size and function to that of drosophila, making them remarkably resistant to most forms of negative behavioral reinforcement, including pain, financial, or public ridicule.

Still, many researchers would like to test the hypothesis that police could be one of our strongest weapons against the proliferation of ass-like driving, providing the appropriate negative reinforcement in the form of citations, fines, court appearances, and the like. Sadly, this remains an unproven theory in the Boston metropolitan area as well as state since the most obvious police presence is not at troublesome intersections but at some hole the NSTAR crew has opened up on some side street in Savin Hill.

But the DLA Research Team has a plan! Using innovative technology and a creative research theory, DLA has developed a psycho-motor test measurement of police detail impact on Boston motorists. In the next edition of DrivingLikeAss.Com: Traffic Authority Figures & Their Effectiveness in the Modification of Ass-like Driving Behavior: A DLA Research Study. Stay tuned.

Enclosure