Letters went out to 47 officers in the Town of Tonawanda accused of an illegal ticket strike. The letters officers received said they would be docked twice the rate of their hourly pay, for everyday the town determined they were participating in what Town Supervisor Joe Emminger has called an “illegal ticket strike”.
Police Club President Andy Thompson, has confirmed that all 47 officers do plan on appealing the deductions. However, Emminger says officers will not start seeing payroll deductions yet, that’s up to the Public Employment Relations Board (PERB).
“The pay isn't gonna be taken from the officers until the PERB [has] made a determination. We're not, you know, we're not taking the payout, you know, next week,” Emminger said.
Thompson, who’s also an active officer, has pushed back on the ticket strike claims. Saying he wrote tickets one of the days he was accused of striking.
“So, mine's even inaccurate, because there's a day where I had a DWI and I wrote three tickets. Apparently, the supervisor came back and said that since that was called in by a citizen, it wasn't self-initiated, so it doesn't count. So ultimately, we're getting charged two hours of pay per day that we didn't write a ticket, even though we showed up to work, we answered all of our calls, we stopped cars. The weather was horrible. The town was out of road salt. You're not going to get a lot of speeders when the roads are icy.”
Thompson also said this is further evidence of a ticket quota in place, despite Emminger denying past accusations.
“They want us to write a ticket a day,” Thompson said. “And they can't deny that there's no quota. And people that don't reach their ticket a day have historically been spoken to by supervision about their ticket counts.”
When asked to show verification of these claims, Thompson deferred. Saying he wanted to “save that for PERB.”
The town board and the police union will have a meeting next week to try to reach a solution. Regardless of how it turns out, Emminger is hoping each side is willing to have some humility and move forward.
“So PERB is going to make a decision, and if PERB decides were wrong I’ll be the first to admit that were wrong,” he said. “And I hope that the police club, if PERB decides that were right, I hope they’ll admit they were wrong.”
The town board will meet on Monday for its regular meeting. Past sessions have been a scene for tensions as of late, as vocal citizens and off-duty officers have packed the meetings. Both Emminger and Thompson have said they do not plan on addressing the topic at Monday’s meeting.
