Oklahoma City Approves Pay Raises For Police To Help With Recruitment, Retention

The Oklahoma City Council has approved a collective bargaining agreement that includes significant pay raises for police officers and recruits to help attract candidates and retain hires.

Mayor David Holt explained that in accordance with state law, the city must negotiate with the Fraternal Order of Police on a CBA. The City Council passed the agreement on Tuesday.

Under the CBA, which retroactively went into effect on July 1, 2022 and will remain in effect through June 30, 2023, all ranks of police officers (not including recruits), will get an eight percent raise. In addition, officers of all ranks (except police recruits) will get a one-time two percent stipend

Police recruits will get a 24.6 percent pay increase.

"We're looking, obviously, at what similar-sized department around the country are paying," Holt said. "But we're also having to look at what competitors here in Oklahoma are paying. It may be a much smaller department. But if it's in our backyard and they're paying more, especially for new officers, we have to be cognizant of that."

Holt said the raises can help fill some much-needed positions.

"I think one of our chief issue right now that we're challenged by is a general labor shortage that everybody's having to deal with in every sector," Holt said. "And the way it's impacted our police department is we have over 150 vacancies. There is a lot of ways that we're trying to meet that need. But one of them certainly ties back to salary, especially with the inflation that we've seen in the last couple of years."

Holt said recruitment is especially important, given that in 2017, Oklahoma City voters passed a sales tax to add more than 120 new officer positions.

"We've basically never quite filled those new positions and actually have even a few more vacancies on top of that," Holt said. "Obviously, that's still a high priority. We want to fulfill the promises that were made in 2017. But it does take two. I mean, we got to find the people to fill these jobs.

Holt and five council members voted in favor of the CBA, but three council members present at Tuesday's meeting abstained.

"As we look at this FOP contract, I want to also keep in mind the other bargaining agreements that we have in place and set aside so that we have for FOP, I would expect that we continue to maintain the same work with our other bargaining, collective bargaining folks that also want to see these types of agreements and improvements with their contracts," Ward 7 Councilwoman Nikki Nice, who abstained from voting, said.

News 9 called the three council members who abstained to ask why they did not vote, but we did not hear back from them as of Wednesday evening.

The city said the estimated cost of the agreement, including roll-up costs for FICA, retirement, and overtime, is about $9,435,918 above current costs.

Holt said City Council also recently approved a seven percent raise and a three percent stipend for the Oklahoma City Fire Department and all city employees.