Maybe it's time for the police union to pay for his salary instead of the city as most of his time is on union business anyway and then hire another officer to replace him and actually do real police work instead of union business.
Wasn't it reported about a year ago that Robert Hamilton worked on police business for like only 7 or 8 days in 2007? If so, he has been paid (not earned) nearly a quarter of a million dollars for like 20 days of work performed on behalf of city residents?
Is this Hamilton guy related to the Michael Hamilton who was on the Schenectady Police Department and who served prison time for tipping off an informant about an FBI investigation?
PBA President Hamilton is a fine and upstanding guy serving the community and protecting the men and women on the Schenectady PD force. Hats off to him! He's also the main reason why that Rhinehart didn't hijack the Conservs.
SCHENECTADY Police chief vows firings forthcoming Chaires: I’m responsible for ‘policy failures’ BY KATHLEEN MOORE Gazette Reporter
After a tense City Council meeting in which the public, the council and the mayor castigated the Police Department, Police Chief Mark Chaires stood up and promised that offi cers would be fi red. “There are some people we will be getting rid of,” he told the council in response to scathing comments about Officer Dwayne Johnson, who was observed spending hours each week in an apartment when he was supposed to be on patrol. Despite supervisors, alleged radio checks and an electronic GPS map showing the whereabouts of every patrol car, no one at the department noticed Johnson’s absences until The Daily Gazette reported it last week. Chaires cautioned that no one should assume Johnson would be fired. The officer had a good record before Chaires learned of his absences and suspended him for 30 days without pay. His final punishment will be determined after an investigation, which now includes the supervisors who should have realized Johnson was missing. Chaires also personally took responsibility for the “policy failures” that allowed Johnson to leave work four hours early nearly every Tues- day for months. “I take responsibility. I felt the officers would know we knew where they are [because of the GPS units]. We thought that in of itself would be enough to deter someone. That assumption turned out to be wrong,” Chaires said. He has now ordered supervisors to track each car through GPS, which they apparently were not doing before. Officers are also now searching through GPS records to determine how often Johnson was missing. The search will catch any other officers who did the same thing, Chaires said. He declined to say whether other officers had been caught, but said he had recently learned to search the GPS database for “zeroes” to find cars that were moving at zero miles per hour for lengthy periods of time. Public Safety Commissioner Wayne Bennett also painted a new picture of the department, saying that he and Chaires are fighting an uphill battle against a police force that disregards supervision. He described it as an “in-yourface attitude of ‘We’re not gonna lose.’ ” “This isn’t going to change overnight. You have 25 years of no accountability,” Bennett said. “One guy had the absolute gall to say, ‘You know, morale is down because it’s not the way it used to be.’ I really wanted to lose my temper and say, ‘You’re the reason it’s wrong here.’ ” Bennett also called former Chief Greg Kaczmarek an “absentee police chief” and said many offi cers hired during Kaczmarek’s tenure were not qualified to do the job. “You’ve got a lot of people working in this Police Department who had no business being police officers. Why? Your background [check] system was terrible,” Bennett said. But he promised that the police culture is changing. “I ask you to have faith in what we’re doing,” he told the council. “It may not seem like it’s changed, but it’s changed. I ask you to believe me on that.” Council members appeared to................http://www.dailygazette.net/De.....amp;EntityId=Ar00102
This is to give my compliments to and express my admiration for your reporter Kathleen Moore. She is the one you described in the Feb. 19 editorial, “In Sch’dy, Car 10, where are you?” as the one who did the detective work to uncover the possible time abuse by Schenectady Officer Dwayne Johnson. I would hope I would have the same courage to “drop the dime” on a police officer and, in effect, the whole department in a city where I worked and/or lived. I assume The Daily Gazette will be following closely any interaction between the department and Ms. Moore. GREGORY P. HOVAK Delanson
SCHENECTADY Officer off 222 days on union work Hamilton paid $129,908 by city BY KATHLEEN MOORE Gazette Reporter
Police union President Robert Hamilton spent all but 12 days working on union business last year. Of the days he did work in uniform, many were holidays, for which he was paid 2 1 /2 times his normal salary. Because he receives full pay from the city while working for the union to fight city decisions, he is annually criticized for not spending more time in uniform. Hamilton, a lieutenant, took 222 days off for union business, as well as 18 vacation days, 10 sick days and one personal day. But he said his only true days off last year were the days he spent working behind the lieutenant’s desk. “Nobody wants my [union] job. It’s terrible,” said Hamilton, who was paid $129,908 last year. His base salary is $70,400, but he received a $10,000 retroactive raise and cashed in overtime credits from prior years. The holidays that Hamilton worked cost the city so much — $88 an hour rather than Hamilton’s normal $35 — that Mayor Brian U. Stratton said the city would be better off if Hamilton never came to work. But Hamilton said he would rather return full-time to his job as a lieutenant than continue running the union. He cited the number of hours it takes to prepare cases for arbitration. “It would be a lot easier for me to just go in and do my job every day, eight hours a day,” he said. “I worked 3,800 hours last year [for the union]. I didn’t go away anywhere on vacation last year, not once. I’m sick of doing it, my family is sick of me doing it, but I ran unopposed the last two times. Nobody else wants to do it.” The city would prefer that he didn’t do it either — at least not so often. Hamilton has taken more union days than any other union president in the city’s history. Stratton called it an “abuse” of the city’s union privileges and dismissed Hamilton’s claims of being sick of his job. “That’s $25,000 a day. That’s a great job,” Stratton said, referring to the number of days worked in uniform. “He’s run several times for it — he obviously doesn’t think it’s that terrible a job.” Stratton also questioned whether Hamilton is actually working on union business every day. “He expects us to believe he’s working 222 days? That’s crazy,” Stratton said. By state law, the city can’t ask Hamilton to describe his activities. All he must do is say that he needs union time. So last year Stratton asked for a restriction on union time in the new labor contract — but then refused the union’s only offer on the subject. Hamilton said he was willing to restrict union presidents to taking only 75 percent of their year for union business. Overtime work might also have been prohibited. “There were a series of givebacks,” Hamilton said. “All we wanted was the fi refighters’ deal [4 percent raises for 5 years]. And they said no, no, no, we need much more back from you than from the Fire Department.” Stratton laughed when asked why he didn’t accept Hamilton’s offer. “It’s ludicrous,” Stratton said. “He’s saying, ‘Listen, instead of being absent 95 percent of the time, I’ll reduce my absences to 75 percent of the time, what a deal!’ That’s crazy! Why doesn’t he come to work?” Stratton now wants the union to pay Hamilton’s salary. “Then there’s no expectation for him to come to work and there’s no further public embarrassment,” Stratton said. Other local departments — including Albany — are members of Council 82, in which representatives are paid by the union to work full-time on negotiations, disciplinary problems and any other issues. Hamilton agreed that if his police joined Council 82, they would no longer need him. “If I were part of Council 82, I could just pick up the phone and say, ‘Hey, we have an issue, take care of it,’ ” Hamilton said. But the Schenectady police chose years ago to form an independent union so they could fight grievances that Council 82 and other large organizations might consider minor. “Parent organizations can decide which grievances to fight. Our members wanted to make that decision ourselves,” Hamilton said. That means Hamilton and his part-time attorney must file grievances, court briefs and other complicated paperwork themselves. “We put almost 100 exhibits into the interest arbitration [for the labor contract]. I personally did almost 80 of them,” Hamilton said. “It took months upon months to prepare.” He also filed a 50-page brief opposing Public Safety Commissioner Wayne Bennett’s assumption of disciplinary authority. The state Public Employment Relations Board will soon rule on the issue. Hamilton said the amount of legal paperwork led him to consider hiring a full-time attorney, but.............http://www.dailygazette.net/De.....amp;EntityId=Ar00901
..............$25,000 x 12 days = $300,000 doesn't it Mayor Stratton? Damn, no wonder the city is in the shape it's in. You're off by 250%! It is a mere $10,000 a day or $2500 an hour if you want to look at it in that manner. I guess you should have taken the deal for a 25% reduction in the last round of negotiations and went for another 25% this time and you might have had a 50% reduction in PBA time. Instead, it looks like you got nothing in return except your annual play to the media about how crazy it is and how outraged you are.... that the PBA gets as much time for union business as it has.
You guys realy got to stop bashing PBA President Hamilton. Kathleen Moore must have a problem with him. You tried to get him in trouble last year two. I found the smae attack story from last year.
Unions = conservatives is an oxymoron. You can not be a union employee and yet be conservative. Unions are a huge cost to the taxpayer. It makes for larger government. Something that 'true conservatives' are against. Historically, unions were formed by liberals. Unions and liberals walk lock step in ideology. They are just the same side of a different coin. IMHO
When the INSANE are running the ASYLUM In individuals, insanity is rare; but in groups, parties, nations and epochs, it is the rule. -- Friedrich Nietzsche
“How fortunate for those in power that people never think.” Adolph Hitler
..............$25,000 x 12 days = $300,000 doesn't it Mayor Stratton? Damn, no wonder the city is in the shape it's in. You're off by 250%! It is a mere $10,000 a day or $2500 an hour if you want to look at it in that manner. I guess you should have taken the deal for a 25% reduction in the last round of negotiations and went for another 25% this time and you might have had a 50% reduction in PBA time. Instead, it looks like you got nothing in return except your annual play to the media about how crazy it is and how outraged you are.... that the PBA gets as much time for union business as it has.
I am comforted now to know that it is only $2,500/hr and not $25,000/hr. phew!!
When the INSANE are running the ASYLUM In individuals, insanity is rare; but in groups, parties, nations and epochs, it is the rule. -- Friedrich Nietzsche
“How fortunate for those in power that people never think.” Adolph Hitler
Good thing we're looking at consolidating police forces...looks like Rotterdam cops are SIGNIFICANTLY underpaid. Well then, wait. If the same cops are going to cover Rotterdam too, then won't it cut into people's overtime? We won't be able to pay one cop more than 3 times his base salary (or whatever it was)? What's wrong with this system?
Coming around the first turn it's Hamilton....right on his heels around the second turn it is Dagostino....oooh,,,,Buffardi has fallen by the wayside now no jockey in sight.......it's...it's... a photo finish for the tax payers and it really doesn't seem to matter to any leadership from the feds to the state to the local yokels.......troopergate is just passe........
...you are a product of your environment, your environment is a product of your priorities, your priorities are a product of you......
The replacement of morality and conscience with law produces a deadly paradox.
STOP BEING GOOD DEMOCRATS---STOP BEING GOOD REPUBLICANS--START BEING GOOD AMERICANS
Logged
He's still on the payroll? The Mayor's done a great job at reforming the police department-lol-
