Christmas came early for Akron police officers, as Akron City Council approved by a 12-1 vote immediate $4,000 bonus checks and significant raises for the hundreds of members of the Fraternal Order of Police Lodge No. 7 after it reached an agreement with the city on a new labor contract.
Previously, city administrators said the contract terms and the increases in salary the contract contains would lead to significant layoffs of city employees, cuts to city services, a depleted general fund or increased costs to residents.
And while the city filled the stockings of the police union with the largest wage increase for officers in three decades and the highest average wages in the department’s history, the city’s civilian police oversight system was left with a lump of coal and another contract that doesn’t acknowledge it exists…