IUPD raised its base pay. Now Bloomington PD is lowest paying agency in Monroe County

Editor's note: This story has been updated with the proper spelling for city council member Isabel Piedmont-Smith .

Bloomington Police Department (BPD) is now the lowest-paying police department in Monroe County, after the Indiana University Police Department raised its statewide base salary nearly $7,000 — an increase city officials worry will exacerbate the difficulty BPD already has with recruiting and retaining officers .

BPD is authorized to hire 105 full-time officers, but currently has only 89 — nine of whom are in field officer training and can't work solo patrols.

Desiree DeMolina, communications director for the city of Bloomington , says a major reason the department is understaffed is wage competition with neighboring and statewide police forces.

Bloomington PD's base wage falls behind other departments in state, county

BPD's base salary for both probationary officers and lateral transfers (officers who transfer from one department to another) already falls below many other similarly and smaller-sized metro areas and departments in the state. BPD, which serves a population of approximately 79,000 people, pays its probationary officers $63,683 a year. Lafayette, with a population of 71,216, pays its probationary officers $68,112 a year, and Columbus, at 51,552 people, pays its officers $70,000.

Across Indiana, and indeed across the country, police departments are facing a shortage of recruits. That's stiffened competition as BPD loses officers and potential recruits to well-paying cities like Carmel and Zionsville.

But with the latest wage increase from IUPD, BPD now faces direct competition within Bloomington for what's already considered a safer and easier beat.

BPD was already among the lowest-paying police jobs in Monroe County, with a lower base salary than Monroe County Community School Corp .’s community resource officers, ($82,500), local Indiana State Police ($70,000) and officers for the Monroe County Sheriff’s Office ($64,980).

“We’re dead last in the county," said city council member Dave Rollo. "That’s very concerning to me."

Bloomington police pay compared to other Indiana cities

At a recent Bloomington Rotary Club meeting, Mayor Kerry Thomson said the city council would need to discuss BPD's police pay in budget planning to remain competitive with IUPD.

“We’re going to take a hit again. A lieutenant in the IU police, which is lower-risk policing and, frankly, less work, a lieutenant there is now making as much as our chief,” Thomson said. “We’re going to need to do something about police pay. It’s just that simple.”

IU Superintendent for Public Safety Ben Hunter said IUPD's increase to $70,325 a year for probationary officers — which was set for officers across all nine of IU's campuses — was necessary to remain competitive with wages in the Indianapolis metro area including Westfield and Carmel, which threatened to attract officers away from IU’s Indianapolis campus.

“The market that drove the increase was really Indianapolis,” Hunter said. “Westfield has officers starting in the $70,000+ range, and over a period of three years, the $80,000+ range. It makes sense that they’re going to attract our already-trained officers.”

At the Rotary Club meeting, Thomson said she'd already exhausted the "free" options she has for making BPD more attractive to prospective officers, including offering take-home patrol cars for officers. Thomson said the city council will need to take action for the city to remain competitive.In a written statement, DeMolina said the city was working with Crowe LLP , a public accounting and consulting firm, to review and update its compensation structure for all employees in the city, including police.

“This effort aims to ensure fair and equitable pay for all employees, with an emphasis on addressing and correcting salaries,” DeMolina said in the statement. “Additionally, the city is analyzing turnover rates to create a more sustainable and attractive compensation system.”

City officials say they're open to alternative policing approaches

Police pay and approaches to policing remain a controversial issue in the Bloomington City Council.

Many in the city council and city government, including former Mayor John Hamilton, have been supportive of exploring policing alternatives, such as Hamilton's 2023 proposal to hire five non-sworn officers for the police department using funds allocated for unfilled police positions.

Rollo has historically expressed strong support for police and raising police pay, and said he'd support future resolutions to increase wages in the upcoming budget. But city council members like Isabel Piedmont-Smith, Matt Flaherty and Kate Rosenbarger, who make up a more progressive, left-leaning flank of the council, have been more wary of directly endorsing police wage increases.

Piedmont-Smith has formerly said police salaries and police union negotiations were the "domain of the executive branch," not the council, and has stopped short of expressly endorsing raises.

Rosenbarger has also expressed doubts about raising police salaries and encouraged a more comprehensive approach towards police retention, stating in 2021 she was "not confident that more money means more officers."

Flaherty said in a 2021 vote on police pay that he didn't necessarily think that "public safety means police," and encouraged a more comprehensive approach.

Rollo believes that as competition increases across the state, however, not increasing police pay all but guarantees the police force will decline in quality and community relations and is functionally tantamount to defunding the police.

"If you want to defund the police, which I've always been opposed to, you're going to get the police force that you deserve," Rollo said. "We need the proper number of officers so that they're not overworked , so that we can retain the best quality people who are well-trained."

BPD has a $27 million budget for the 2024 fiscal year , the city’s third-largest expense, at 8.81% of the overall budget.

During her talk at the Rotary Club, Thomson said the city needs more officers and more designated community service specialists (CSSs), officers who respond to minor issues like welfare checks or street outreach and do not carry guns. BPD currently has 10 CSS staff members.

“We do need more police, and quite frankly, we do need a mix of the type of police that we have,” Thomson said. “We have very few downtown resource officers who do the on-the-street ministry, mostly to unhoused people.”Rollo said he’s open to considering “other forms of public safety,” especially in regards to homelessness issues, including hiring more CSSs, having more officers carry Tasers instead of guns and establishing a comprehensive drug detox program.

“It needs to not just be a punitive approach in jail,” Rollo said. “Our social service funding is part of the package.”

Rollo said neglecting the police budget could lead to worsening relationships between police and the surrounding community and more staff would contribute to improved relationships.

“If we have higher numbers of police, they can spend more time interacting with the public, which is a key component of good policing,” Rollo said.

In his work with IUPD, Hunter said he’s found that wage competitiveness remains the top factor in retaining officers.

“When we do our exit interviews, what we find is that our officers love IUPD, mainly because of our academy setting, our campuses are gorgeous, and IU has great benefits. But it’s hard to compete when you have agencies like Westfield and Carmel in Hamilton County that are paid in the market,” Hunter said.

Hunter said especially as public perceptions shift around policing and fewer recruits enter the field, remaining competitive is essential.

“As an industry, we’re seeing less and less people wanting to get into this field, and for that, we’re demanding a more professional police officer,” Hunter said. “Because we want the best of the best, we have to remain in the market.”

Rollo said IUPD's increases put the city and city council at a breaking point for retaining and recruiting officers, and he believes compensation is the first step for improving both.

"I think we need to make hires and keep the force that we have," Rollo said. "That's absolutely essential right now." Reach Brian Rosenzweig at brian@heraldt.com . Follow him on Twitter/X at @brianwritesnews .

This article originally appeared on The Herald-Times: IUPD raised its base pay. Now Bloomington PD is lowest paying agency in Monroe County