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NYPD Officers to Picket Arbitrator's Home After Low Pay Raise Ruling

By Murray Weiss | November 4, 2015 4:00pm
 Patrick Lynch, the police union president, outside the Bronx Supreme Court on June 13th, 2012.
Patrick Lynch, the police union president, outside the Bronx Supreme Court on June 13th, 2012.
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DNAinfo/Paul Lomax

MANHATTAN — The city’s police union will protest outside the Upper East Side home of a state arbitrator who ruled that New York’s Finest deserve the same 1 percent raise that the other uniformed services negotiated with the city.

Patrick Lynch, president of the Patrolmen’s Benevolent Association, says he and other union members will march early Thursday morning on the “recently acquired penthouse apartment” of Howard Edelman, chairman of the three-member Public Employment Relations Board panel that heard the PBA’s arbitration case over a new contract with the city.

The PBA, which has been without a contract for five years, turned to PERB in the hope of winning pay increases comparable to those of other police unions in the metropolitan area. 

The state panel was tasked with deciding on a contract covering August 1, 2010 through July 31, 2012.

After months of wrangling, however, Edelman’s panel ruled last Monday that the PBA was entitled to two 1 percent increases — the same as the other uniformed unions that did not roll the dice by going to PERB.

Lynch immediately blasted the decision.

“At a time when police morale is the lowest ever and misdirected anti-police sentiment pervades our streets emboldening the criminal element, this arbitration decision . . . denies New York City’s police officers the fair pay that they have earned and deserve,” Lynch said on Monday.

The union plans to form a public picket line outside Edelman’s home at East 63rd Street and York Avenue.

The PBA has previously appealed to state arbitration in recent years with success, but not this time.

"We recognize that it is a crapshoot, but this decision completely ignores what comparable police forces have obtained, especially when the cost of living is outdistancing our raises," a union official said.

Edelman could not immediately be reached for comment.