We hope everyone had a great Christmas this year and we're looking forward to a safe New Year.
Last Thursday at the meeting VP Brian Morris moved up to the President slot and an election was held for the 1st VP position. Chris Hall was elected to be the new 1st Vice President.
Your current Executive Board consists of the following members:
President: Brian Morris
1st VP: Chris Hall
2nd VP: Clay Houseman
3rd VP: David Williams
Sec/Treas: Neal Armstrong
To help with communicating with the Board we also have new email addresses. LawtonPoliceUnion@gmail.com is still a good general email address. But if you would like to reach an individual member of the Executive Board you can reach them here:
LawtonPoliceUnionPresident@gmail.com
LawtonPoliceUnionVP@gmail.com
LawtonPoliceUnion2VP@gmail.com
LawtonPoliceUnion3VP@gmail.com
LawtonPoliceUnionSec@gmail.com
Arbitration over contract negotiation-impasse is coming up this month! The hearing is open to the public so please make an effort to attend. To avoid any issues with your supervision make sure you are off duty if you come The arbitration hearing will be on January 25th and 26th in the Town Hall building from 8am to 5 pm. We would like to have a good showing from the membership at the hearings. The 26th is the last Wednesday of January's In-Service, so plan ahead if you're wanting to be there. (In-Service is mandatory for Uniform and Non-Uniform, i.e. Legal Update and Mental Health.)
I believe the City just gave the General Employees a 2% raise now and 2.5% more in June (the last month in the fiscal year). The Fire Fighters already received a multi-year contract. Let's hope the Arbitrator sees things our way.
By way of reminder, if you are called in to be questioned over something that you reasonably think might lead to discipline PLEASE HAVE A UNION REPRESENTATIVE GO WITH YOU. We are having newer officers go into these sessions without any rep present. We need to be careful of this because often the officer has no idea what can and cannot be asked in the meeting. By not keeping the Executive Board aware of these investigations it puts us behind the power curve when it comes to defending not only you, but any other officer that may find themselves in a similar investigation. Things develop and counseling takes place in a vacuum and the Executive Board never knows about many of these incidents. We're allowing them to get a head-start on these investigations and to mete out punishments that the Executive Board is not aware of, setting precedents. We need to be careful with this. Remember, your supervisor will ALMOST ALWAYS tell you that you do not need a Union Rep with you, when in fact the opposite is true. It seems like the new officers think that it causes the investigating supervisor to get upset when a Union Rep is asked for so they opt out of having one present as a sign of cooperation and out of an "I haven't done anything wrong" attitude. Here's a newsflash: It's not necessary to do anything wrong to find yourself in trouble in this job. Most the time you're just doing your job when you do get in trouble.
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