Tacoma approves 7% wage increase, retroactive pay for police starting 2022
Tacoma Police Department officers will see a 7.1 percent pay increase starting 2022, costing the city about $6.8 million.
Tacoma City Council approved a three-year contract agreement with the Tacoma Police Union Local 6 on Dec. 14, outlining the pay increase for more than 300 full-time positions.
The new contract also includes a retroactive pay increase for officers of 6.1 percent for 2021 at a cost of about $3.8 million.
Starting in 2023, wages will be increased by 100 percent of the June-to-June Consumer Price index for Urban Wage Earners and Clerical Workers (CPI-W) for the Seattle-Tacoma-Bellevue area, with a minimum increase of 1 percent up to a maximum of 5 percent, totaling about $9 million.
Wages for the Professional Public Safety Management Association (PPSMA) Local 26 members will also increase, totaling about $1 million for 2022.
Another change to the agreement removed contractual language so that purging of discipline from employee disciplinary files is no longer allowed. They also changed the agreement to clarify that citizen complaints may be anonymous.
The city and union have been bargaining over various new changes to police department policy, including the implementation of body worn cameras. All officers who interact with the public are now wearing body cameras.
The union and city also bargained and implemented the “8 Can’t Wait” initiatives, a national campaign meant to bring change to police departments. The eight initiatives — banning chokeholds, requiring de-escalation, requiring a warning before shooting, exhausting all alternatives before shooting, requiring officers to intervene if they see excessive force used by another officer, banning shooting at moving vehicles, creating clear policy on using force, and requiring comprehensive reporting — have all been bargained and implemented, according to city documents.
There’s still more policy bargaining to work through, including the implementation of dash cameras, location tracking technology policy and schedule changes to adjust for shift coverage and mandatory overtime.
For the first time, the city has included community involvement in the bargaining process. Tisha Marie Wosencroft, founder of Tacoma’s LegallyBLACK, and Will Hausa, a member of the Tacoma Pierce County Black Collective, sat in on police union bargaining for a community perspective.
At the Dec. 14 council meeting, Hausa and Wosencroft both said that they were pleased with the new agreement, but that there is still more work to be done.
“I do think that we have made extreme strides to help build that gap of mistrust between the community and this particular contract,” Wosencroft said, later adding: “Please know that if you’re not 100 percent satisfied — neither am I. But I am hopeful in the coming years we will get there.”
City Council members spoke in support of the agreement at the Dec. 14 meeting and thanked city staff, the union and Hausa and Wosencroft for their work.
“We’re just now trying to set the new normal where everybody is confident in policing in our community,” Thoms said.
Mayor Victoria Woodards said all parties bargained in good faith and the new agreement will help set up new Tacoma Police Chief Avery Moore for success.
“With the passage of this we now give our new chief a firm foundation to focus on transformation, having more police officers hired, and increasing morale in our police department, and more support for our police,” Woodards said.
This story was originally published December 20, 2021 at 12:53 PM.
