Body cameras part of undisclosed SOA deal?

                                                                       
                                                                             
                                                                            

Nassau County Police Department headquarters in Mineola

Back in early September, word went around that Nassau County Executive Laura Curran had reached a tentative deal with the county police Superior Officer's Association.

This would be the second labor accord reached by the Curran administration after all five major county union contracts expired in Dec. 2017, just before Curran took office in Jan. 2018.

The Detective's Association last year approved a new eight-year agreement.

Still pending are deals with the Nassau Police Benevolent Association, the Civil Service Employees Association and the Corrections Officers Benevolent Association.

Curran included mention of the SOA deal in her Sept. 15 submission of her proposed 2021 budget to the county legislature.

A week later, the union ratified the deal by a three to one margin, sources said.

But there still has been no press release outlining the terms, nor any official submission to the county legislature, which must approve the pact.

In the past, county executives and union leaders would tout their agreements before the ink had dried, claiming the deals were the best ever reached between unions and management. 

Even the county's financial control board, the Nassau Interim Finance Authority, made reference to the SOA agreement in its recent staff report on Curran's proposed 2021 budget.

It noted that the administration recently "signed a memorandum of understanding with the Superior Officers Association (SOA) delineating the terms for a new contract covering the same period as the DAI contract. The SOA agreement, which was ratified by the union's membership on Sept. 22, 2020, is consistent with the DAI pattern."

Although NIFA for years insisted that it would not participate in union negotiations because it would later have to judge the results, the financial control board jumped feet first into the talks with Curran. NIFA hired a lawyer to represent itself in the negotiations -- the same lawyer, Gary Dellaverson, was rejected by the legislature as too expensive.

The NIFA staff report notes "the administration is requiring that the terms of all new labor contracts be consistent with the pattern established by its contract with the DAI....Consequently any effort by the remaining unions to deviate from the established pattern would exacerbate the projected deficits and likely be rejected by NIFA."

Maybe the SOA terms have been kept quiet because announcing new step and cost-of living pay increases during a pandemic-created budget disaster may be a hard sell to the public. Nassau is running deficits projected in the hundreds of millions of dollars.

The SOA, according to the most recent county finance report, consists of 349 members.  The PBA currently has 1,620 police officers. Mathematically speaking, wouldn't any PBA deal with terms similar to the SOA cost 4.5 times more?

Copies of the alleged SOA deal have been floating around and it allegedly calls for its members to wear body cameras in return for a $3,000 annual stipend. This would be a first for the county police force. Democrats on the county legislature have pushed for body cameras on all police. 

But the SOA consists of commanding officers, the higher echelon in the police ranks, not the cops on the street. By the time SOA members arrive at a crime scene, wouldn't most of the action be over?

Well, that's the talk anyway.