Ed Hudak says city can be a ‘transfer portal’ for cops
The city of Coral Gables and it’s police union might be headed to an agreement after the 38 vacancies were discussed during Tuesday’s commission meeting and the mayor and commissioners agreed that filling those positions and approving a contract were priorities.
“The contract is obviously part of the issue,” Chief Ed Hudak said, citing other reasons, like officers who move for family reasons. But he’s also pretty much given up on retention.
“The way to recruit is to handle this as a transfer portal,” he told the commissioners.
That means he’s okay with hiring police officers and training them for three years so they can go to another department. This way, the Gables Police will soon have no senior officers.
Hudak also said that he is recruiting retired police officers, like those who are working traffic patrol in the mornings and afternoons. “We’re going after people who are going to retire but don’t really want to hang it up,” the chief said.
Read related: Coral Gables FOP blasts police chief, mayor about 37 vacancies, low morale
He stressed that the vacancies have not cause any gaps in police coverage. “Not one shift has gone short because we have always covered,” he said. They have paid a lot of overtime, but Hudak said the department has used the savings from the unfilled positions to pay for that. There are some days when there is more than one event — Carnaval on the Mile is an example — and every single officer is out.
“We had everyone on shift,” Hudak said, adding that they are watched closely to “make sure no fatigue sets in.”
At the meeting, among the residents who spoke, Miami-Dade Sheriff candidate Ignacio “Iggy” Alvarez, whose law firm is also in the City Beautiful, said he was concerned the extra shifts are going to cause unsafe conditions for the officers and the community. “They are picking up the slack and there comes a point where they can’t do that anymore,” Alvarez warned.
Commissioner Melissa Castro put the item about the vacancies on the agenda after the police union posted a video on the web last week that counted the losses and blamed the city, saying that the chief and Mayor Vince Lago had been lying to the community about the shortage. Lago and Gables Fraternal Order of Police President Chris Challenger, exchanged some words.
“I know you are trying to achieve a goal here. You have an agenda. But to scare the residents,” Lago asked, calling the video distasteful.
“Those videos, they don’t help the cause. I think the effort is to scare the commission. I won’t raise taxes,” the mayor continued. “I don’t think it’s going to move me one way or another.”
But the video is what got the item of the vacancies on the agenda and, Alvarez said, it is how he learned about the situation. Because the city sure is doing everything it can to hide the shortage.
Read related: Coral Gables police, fire union: Lying Vince Lago is no pal of public safety
“The video is not to scare, it’s to state facts,” Challenger said at the meeting. “If I don’t make that video, I’m not here right now.”
Lago told him to visit him on Fridays when he has his open hours. “I have no choice but to meet with you because it’s open hours. I can’t not see you,” he said, leaving out the bit where he makes people he doesn’t want to talk to wait for hours outside his office.
“We feel that our voice is being ignored,” Challenger said, adding that he warned of this exodus a year ago. He also said the chief lied about an officers leaving to the Coral Springs department because he moved to Broward. The officer already lived in Margate, Challenger said.
“He didn’t move,” the union president said. “I talked to him on Thursday, before he also day. And he told me ‘I didn’t want to leave. But Day One at Coral Springs I’m going to get a $10,000 raise and in three years, I’ll be making $103,000.”
Challenger, who has been a Gables Police officer for 22 years, makes $98,000 annually. He previously told Ladra that the city’s offer — a whopping 19.8% raise over three years — is just catching up after years of zero to 2% raises. He also said the city has been dragging its feet on the offer and counteroffer.
The exchange between him and the mayor got testy when Challenger brought up that he had stopped Lago’s friend, Manny Chamizo, on the day Lago was first elected mayor in 2021. He wrote an incident report and told the mayor it could have been worse. “You looked at me and you said, ‘Thank you.’”
Lago refuted that and remember the incident differently and said Challenger was doing him a favor for brownie points. “What you did was you tried to intimidate me to think that I owed you a favor,” the mayor said. “I have been very clear. If anybody breaks the law, hold them accountable.”
It was a fascinating little side chat that needs further investigation, especially since Chamizo, the mayor’s appointee on the Waterway Advisory Board currently facing a felony stalking charge, is know to be one of Lago’s trolls on the platform formerly known as Twitter. But let’s get back to the vacancies.
Hudak blamed the union for the low morale in the department. When Castro asked what was the number one reason that officers are fleeing the Gables, he didn’t say it was the compensation. “It’s the visceral conversations within the organization,” Hudak said. “It’s a trust thing.
“The only rhetoric we have out there that says we suck is our own union,” the chief added.
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