New option being tested for cops - part-time work

Before Tuesday, Officer Rita Gysin's wish to spend more time with her aging parents in Missouri seemed out of reach.

Full-time officers with the Colorado Springs Police Department don't get a ton of time off.

But thanks to a pilot program that was launched Tuesday, Gysin will trade in her fully paid benefits and half her salary to work part-time, allowing her the previously unthinkable luxury of visiting her parents once a month.

"I think it is really compassionate for the department to offer this," said Gysin, who has been with the department for 14 of her 21 years as a cop. "I think there are a lot of companies out there that say, ‘You live for us.' And we do. But there are other things in life."

Giving officers the option to tend to life's alternative plans - babies, continuing education and ailing family members, to name a few - all while maintaining employment and certification, was a benefit noticeably absent when Chief Richard Myers took over in 2007, Deputy Chief Ron Gibson said.

The Gazette was told Myers was unavailable for an interview before Aug. 7.

Previous plans to implement such a program were thwarted by Fire and Police Pension Association of Colorado regulations that denied death and disability benefits to part-time police officers, Sue Autry with CSPD human resources said in an e-mail. That policy has changed.

The part-time option is a strategy for retention in a department where female officers such as Gysin are outnumbered by male officers 7 to 1.

CSPD had an average 95 percent retention rate between 2003 and 2007.

But just because the parttime option is available doesn't mean officers are lining up for the opportunity. The department wanted four officers in its pilot program, which is slated to last a year depending on the needs of the force. But at its commencement, only Gysin was fully on board. Another officer signed up and backed out. Another might join, Gibson said.

"We weren't anticipating a large number of officers participating," Gibson said. "For those one to two officers that want to, it is going to be valuable to them."

Though putting two officers on part-time duty is the equivalent of losing one full- time employee, Gibson said the program is not a move to reduce staff and the benefits budget. Rather, if the program takes off and the force needs more manpower, the department would hire more officers, he said.

For the handful of officers the department expects in the program, should it be permanently implemented, Gibson said he doesn't think any single officer would be part-time for more than six months to a year.

"It is difficult," Gysin said. "You look at all the things in your life that you need to do. But then you think, ‘How will I make ends meet?'"

Besides halved salaries and death and disability benefits, part-timers have to purchase the full benefits offered to full-time officers.

There is also a chance the pilot program won't last its full year. The department already has 18 vacancies, Gibson said, and Gysin was told by her superiors at the Falcon Division that if they lose more people, she has to be prepared to come back full time.