FOP Wins FTO Lawsuit

Once again, a bad decision by the command structure comes back to bite the city in the ass:

• In September 2008, the Department changed the Training Districts and required all FTOs assigned to other districts to either, transfer to the new Training Districts, or resign their FTO position and give up the D2 pay.
  
  The Lodge filed an Unfair Labor Practice Charge with the Illinois Labor Board. The Board conducted a hearing and today, March 26, 2010, the Administrative Law Judge issued an order requiring the Department to rescind all the changes made in the FTO program.
  
  This means the new Training Districts go back to the old Training Districts. The forced reassignments and resignations are rescinded and the Department must pay those FTOs who resigned back pay with 7% interest on the D2 pay they lost.
  
  The City has 30 days to appeal, and we fully expect they will. We will notify the membership as soon as we hear more.

Back pay, seven percent interest, a return of the D-2 pay, the stripes sewed back on. We imagine there will have to be a return to old units for FTO's that were forced to make an unwanted bid.

The FTO program, what should be the most important part of training up new officers to be the police, has been beaten, battered, bruised, abused and pretty much treated like shit since its inception. Attempts at making it "legit" were (and still are) undercut at every opportunity by exempts who refuse to allow FTO's to fail or retread recruits. Expectations of surrendering working relationships with partners, forced exoduses from watches and the elimination of legitimate training districts turned this entire experiment into a joke.