PHILADELPHIA (KYW Newsradio) — SEPTA is losing police officers quicker than they can recruit, leaving only several dozen transit officers to patrol rails and stations throughout the city each day, according to transit police union officials.
There are currently 210 police officers, but only about 120 or so are assigned to patrol areas like the Broad Street and Market-Frankford lines and all major stations. That number is then broken up into three shifts and three different patrol divisions.
There are about 50 vacant spots in the department.
“One of our biggest issues in terms of recruitment and retention [is] not just pay,” said SEPTA Police Inspector Charles Lawson, who leads patrol operations. “We are a specialty type of policing, and generally speaking, young officers who want to get into this profession do so because they want to be law enforcers. What they find when they get here is that a large portion of their job responsibility is directed toward really social service type of issues, and so a large portion of their day is involving members of the vulnerable community. They are addressing addiction issues, homeless issues, mental health crisis.”
The union, however, argues police nationwide have to deal with the same sort of social issues, and that it does actually come down to pay and benefits.
“[With] the Philadelphia police, you are talking about a gap of $10,000 on average, and from there it just gets worse,” said Omari Bervine, president of the Fraternal Order of Transit Police Lodge 109. “When you start looking at similar departments like the Delaware River Port Authority or New Jersey Transit Police, now you are talking about a $15,000 pay gap on average. You start looking at some of these county police departments and you are not even in the same ballpark.
“These are the departments that we are in competition for when it comes to these young candidates that are applying to be police officers,” he continued. “We are even in competition to keep our own officers, because we have lost 100 officers in five years — 90% of them have gone to other police departments.”
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The union sent a letter to SEPTA leadership asking for help retaining the current officers they have. Bervine said since they sent the letter last week, another officer has resigned.
“We are about 30% under [our budgeted head count], which is outrageous,” Bervine added. “I wouldn’t even say we have a staffing shortage. I would say we have a staffing crisis.”
The union is working with City Councilmember David Oh to propose an amendment in the budget to withhold $10 million in city funding from SEPTA “unless they agree to use those funds to hire more police, to make the salaries and the benefits more competitive.”
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Bervine said they have heard from SEPTA’s Labor Relations Department about meeting to work on recruiting and retaining more police officers.
SEPTA is budgeted for 260 police officers, and about 50 spots are currently open. Lawson said the department welcomes increasing that number even more.
“Our issue is getting to that number, that top-end number,” he said. “If we are consistently hitting 260, I am positive we could advocate for even more.”
SEPTA police urge the public to use the app SEPTA Transit Watch to help riders report what they see on the lines or in stations.
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