02-03-11, Paul Sysco Outraged by Out of Control Glendale Police Pensions

----- Original Message -----

From: Paul Sysco

To: halweber@earthlink.net

Sent: 2/3/2011 12:45:47 PM

Subject: Glendale's Out of Control Police Pensions

I'm glad I found the "Comments Received Regarding The Glendale California 100K Club" on the internet. Below is the copy from an email I sent to the John and Ken show regarding some things I found out about Glendale Police pensions, almost by accident. Runaway pensions everywhere and Glendale is totally out of control when we see regular cops retiring at age 51 or 52 what have you and they are set to collect over $100K a year in retirement salary, not counting their insurance and everything else. Wish I'd had found your materials sooner. You can reprint my message, email to KFI, anything.  

Thanks, 

Paul

Here's the email I sent to KFI in hopes of making this type of problem more public:

Hi John and Ken,

You guys should do a show on out of control police pensions, not only in places like Bell, but in cities like Glendale. I don't want to pick on law enforcement, it can be a very tough job in parts of California. Not so tough in others as you know.

The other day I'm reading a story about Randy Adams, the disgraced Bell Police Chief and the story mentions that before Bell he was the Chief of the Glendale PD. I know some guys in the Glendale PD and I've never mentioned the Bell story to them, but this time I decide to get their take on it. Might be interesting, right? A few days later I'm speaking with them about Adams and others and the whole salary/pension thing comes up, and during the course of the conversation they let me know that all of them are in line for pensions of over $100,000 each! (They are all 50 and up, ready to pull the pin) They tell me that's the way it is, and they're all having a good laugh over it. Then they tell me they didn't like "Randy" (Adams) bringing attention to this stuff, meaning the pensions. I told them this isn't right, the deals they had when they signed on should be honored, which is something like 25% (maybe 35% max) of their salaries and so on with insurance covered. Then they got serious. Deals a deal. That's the way it is. I tell them there's no money to pay some guy 51, 52, 55 years old $115,000 a year for possibly 20 or 30 years while not working, no one gets pensions like that outside crooks in D.C. and high level CEOs, and they shouldn't get those deals either. I said there's no money anywhere to pay for this and it's not fair for the rest of us who are likely to be taxed to death to cover impossible deals. They told me that's too bad, you should have been a cop, the public owes them for the deal, you take what you can get, on and on. I tried to say the public owing them anything is meaningless and has nothing to do with the situation. No one should get their full salary or more forever after once retired. They didn't want to hear it. None of these guys are management either. They are regular cops, not Asst. Chiefs or anything like that. Things got more heated, two of them starting telling me that they spent years risking their lives and that it's only fair. At this point I should mention 3 of the 4 spent most of their careers behind desks, that includes the two remarking on risking their lives. Then they said that people who didn't like it were jealous, implying I was jealous.

I'm not jealous, neither are a lot of people. We aren't jealous, we're outraged that police and other city employees are handed pensions that are criminal, that are designed to ruin the state, ruin the economy. We're disgusted and angry that when news of their contracts hits the airwaves, it's always about a 2 or 3 % salary raise, while the doubling and tripling and more of their pension payments is ignored. We're outraged at the sense of entitlement these officers and so many others like them in civil service have developed. I've been friends with these gentlemen for a long time and I still am. But this is unbelievable. How deep and how far does this go?

You should run a show on the Glendale PD and use that as a lead in to the whole city government there. Where do they think the money is going to come from? Is the same going on in other cities surrounding Los Angeles? Cities that supposedly have their acts together? Burbank? Pasadena? Santa Monica? Torrance?

It's probably best to not use my name if you read this on the air. Or maybe it's best to just check in on Glendale, a surprise visit, ask them about Police Pensions and go from there. It's unbelievable, and the story is far bigger than just Glendale.

Thanks for your time,

Paul