To the editor:

Recently, the Phoenix featured an article which highlighted four new officers joining the ranks of the Bristol Police Dept., and first and foremost, I would like to wish these new officers a safe and healthy career. In these days where a career in law enforcement is nowhere near as appealing as it once was, it's good to see these four dedicated individuals choosing a path in law enforcement.

Coincidentally, soon after the article was printed, Kevin Lynch, the Bristol police chief took to the airwaves on WPRO talk radio, participating in an interview where he discussed the difficulties that police departments all over the state are having recruiting and retaining police officers. And while recruiting new police officers is a problem all over the state and country, Bristol has been particularly hard hit, since cities and towns in the state began engaging in the relatively new policy of accepting so called "lateral transfers" of police officers from one department to another, without those officers having to go through the cumbersome and time consuming procedure of leaving one police department and applying to work in another.

Under today's policies, police officers can be hired in a relatively low paying department such as Bristol and then "shop around" to other much higher paying departments, where they can bypass the long testing process, and immediately start working, while taking their seniority and pension credits with them. Officers from low paying departments (including Bristol) have been leaving those departments at an alarming rate, with the low paying departments investing a great deal of time and money training these new officers, only to see them leave for higher paying municipalities.

To his credit, Kevin Lynch has been a one-man public relations agency for the police department and the town, but despite his best efforts, police officers in Bristol and elsewhere will naturally migrate to departments offering much higher salaries. And while it's great to work in a police department with a supportive leader such as Bristol, unfortunately that support does not pay for mortgages, groceries, and kids’ college educations, and until our town council gets serious about paying our police officers a competitive salary, the Bristol Police Dept. is simply going to be a revolving door, where officers get hired, gain experience and then leave for other departments offering much higher pay.

It makes complete fiscal sense for these officers, and it's long past time for our town council to address this alarming turnover of our dedicated police officers and offer them a competitive salary, which will go a long way in addressing their recruitment and retention problem.

Mike Proto
245 Chestnut St.