NHP troopers driven away

Jen Lawson

Monday, July 14, 2003 | 11:27 a.m.

Dan Larason enjoyed being a trooper with the Nevada Highway Patrol. But last month, he turned in his badge.

Another trooper also quit in June, three more will resign by August, and another is being promoted, leaving the Highway Patrol with 36 percent of its trooper positions in the Las Vegas Valley unfilled.

Las Vegas has the state's largest population, the highest number of fatal crashes and the most traffic, but troopers are quitting faster than they're being hired.

Fewer than 20 troopers statewide have graduated from the Highway Patrol's training academy in the past three years, and troopers say that until the state increases pay and reduces the cost of benefits, the staffing problem won't be solved.

"We're losing these people, we need to hire them now and we need Carson City to wake up," Trooper Angie Wolff, spokeswoman for the Highway Patrol in Las Vegas, said. "I'll tell you flat out -- Metro, North Las Vegas and Henderson are killing us, and we can't compete with their benefits and salaries."

During the swing shift -- 2 to 10 p.m. -- there should be between 20 and 32 troopers patrolling the Las Vegas Valley, Lt. Phil Dart said, but it's not unusual for that number to be as low as nine.

Response times have gone up from 6 1/2 minutes four years ago to just over 11 minutes now, but at peak hours, drivers could wait for as long as 30 to 40 minutes for a trooper to respond to a crash scene or a call for service, Dart said.

Troopers were thrown into a tailspin the morning of July 3 when three fatal crashes occurred within 45 minutes. The day shift was called to work early and the graveyard shift was asked to stay late.

"It was overwhelming," Wolff said. "It's a fluke, but thank God it's a fluke. Our manpower is stretched so thin."

Motorists such as Jerry Foisel say the shortage of troopers has caused a public safety crisis.

Foisel said he used to ride his motorcycle to work from his home in northeast Las Vegas to his job at Mandalay Bay but no longer does because the highways have become too perilous.

As of July 9, the Highway Patrol has handled 54 fatal crashes in Southern Nevada. There were 80 in 2002 and 70 in 2001.

"The Highway Patrol is giving the approval to these road ragers out there," Foisel said. "You have carte blanche to do whatever you want on the road. ... The freeway (has) a Wild West mentality, as far as I'm concerned."

For troopers, the staffing shortage has resulted in low morale, they said, which is driving them away just as much as the relatively low pay.

Larason is heading to the Reno-Sparks area, where he is from and where troopers earn almost as much as officers with other law enforcement agencies. He plans to pursue police work in Northern Nevada.

"There were a bunch of things that just culminated -- the fact that every time we ask for something, we have to deal with the Legislature, the fact that we don't have collective bargaining, and the morale," said Larason, who was a trooper in Las Vegas for five years.

Larason, who was most recently assigned to investigate fatal crashes, said he "decided to go somewhere where people like where they're working."

"I'd rather I didn't have to leave, but I feel like I have to in order to get what I want," he said. "I liked doing the work and I like this agency, but there are too many things working against me."

Salary issues

Entry-level troopers earn about $10,000 less than other police agencies in the Las Vegas Valley. The Highway Patrol's starting salary is $33,136, while Metro pays $44,903, Henderson pays $43,385 and North Las Vegas pays $43,218.

In Northern Nevada, the situation is different. Starting salaries for police officers in Reno, Carson City and Sparks are within 10 percent of the starting salary for troopers, so troopers aren't lured away to higher-paying local police agencies as they are in the Las Vegas area, Dart said.

Every trooper position in Northern Nevada is filled, Dart said. When Highway Patrol officials asked for troopers in Northern Nevada to volunteer to move to Southern Nevada, only two did.

Patrolling Las Vegas is tougher, Angie Wolff said. Last year troopers in Las Vegas handled 12,000 vehicle crashes. Troopers in Reno handled 3,000 crashes.

The Highway Patrol recruits heavily in Northern Nevada and in the Midwest, but not as much in Southern Nevada because of the disparity between trooper and police officer salaries in the Las Vegas area.

As a result most troopers are from Northern Nevada and, even if they're assigned to work in Las Vegas, many choose to transfer back up north after a few years.

Trooper Chris Palma, who has been with the Highway Patrol for more than nine years, said he'd have to work 200 to 300 overtime hours per year to make a decent living.

How it happened

Some of the staffing problems can be traced to the suspension of the patrol's training academy in early 2002. No new recruits joined the Highway Patrol during that time because the curriculum was being revamped, Col. David Hosmer, the agency's chief, said.

"We were seeing large tort claims, lawsuits and citizen complaints. You have to hire the right person for the job, train them and supervise them in the field," he said.

"When the Air Force crashes more than one airplane of the same type, they ground the entire fleet," he said. "This is what our philosophy is like."

The Highway Patrol's academy used to be more of a traditional police academy, but it inadvertently served as a training center for local police agencies in Nevada.

This made it easy for troopers to leave for jobs with higher-paying police departments, where "they can literally walk across the street and make 25 percent more," Capt. Chris Perry said.

The curriculum of the training academy before it was suspended "wasn't as complementary to a traffic-based organization," Perry said. The new curriculum is being designed to prepare recruits for careers in the Highway Patrol rather than a career in generalized police work.

"When I say I don't want to train people to be city police officers, that doesn't mean they shouldn't be trained in how to handle situations like domestic violence because they could encounter a domestic violence incident driving down a road," Hosmer said. "But I want the focus to be on highway safety."

Newly minted troopers who complete the revamped academy will be able to analyze traffic problems and figure out how to solve them rather than reacting to problems when they happen.

"We taught them how to write a citation and handle an accident, but we never really taught directed enforcement -- figuring out where your accidents are happening and why they're happening," Hosmer said.

Highway Patrol officials hope that change will improve the retention rate, Perry said, because recruits who sign up for the Highway Patrol academy are more likely to be committed to having a career as a trooper.

The turnover rate for police officers across the country is about 8 percent, Wolff said. But for troopers in Las Vegas, the turnover rate is 18 percent.

The training academy, a 22-week session held in Carson City, is scheduled to begin Nov. 3.

Two back-to-back "lateral" academies, with 20 trainees each, begin this summer. Lateral academies are designed for people with a police background who are then trained in Highway Patrol procedure. Some of those signed up currently work in other Department of Public Safety departments, such as parole and probation or the Nevada Division of Investigation.

The overwhelming majority of those who complete the lateral academy are slated to fill trooper positions in Las Vegas, Dart said.

"It will help us cover attrition, but it still won't get us to where we want to be," he said.

Possible solutions

While academies may help fill some positions, it's not a long-term fix, Gary Wolff, Highway Patrol Association spokesman, said. The key to attracting and keeping quality troopers is increase their salaries.

In 2000 the Highway Patrol joined the Teamsters Union, but state employees don't have the right to collectively bargain pay raises as other police agencies do.

Gary Wolff, the father of Highway Patrol Trooper Angie Wolff, said the Highway Patrol joined the union in order to use its political clout to pass legislation that would raise salaries for troopers and lessen the cost of medical benefits, which can eat up $200 to $300 of a trooper's monthly salary.

But so far, pay parity bills for troopers haven't been successful, the association spokesman said.

"They can run academies until the cows come home, but that won't stop people from leaving," Gary Wolff said. The state has given troopers small raises over the years "to stop the bleeding," Wolff said, but, he said, "you have a year where (the state) can't even pass their own budget. How can they give troopers a raise?" The state Legislature recently passed Assembly Bill 555, which will give state workers a raise in July 2004. But at just 2 percent, troopers consider the raise a joke.

"We can upgrade to a 'biggie meal' now at McDonald's," Trooper Angie Wolff said.

Another possible solution would be for the state to offer a pay differential of 10 percent to 15 percent for troopers in Las Vegas, similar to how FBI and DEA agents get a cost of living adjustment based on their assignment, Dart said. That, coupled with the lure of a take-home car, could make Las Vegas more appealing to troopers.

But, Hosmer said, these solutions are not within reach at the moment.

"None of these things can happen until the next legislative session. There's just no way," he said. "I look forward to working with the (Nevada Highway Patrol Association) and some of the legislators who have expressed interest in helping us with pay parity, but that's 20 months away."

In the short-term, Hosmer is planning to recruit in Oregon, where more than 100 troopers were laid off earlier this year due to a state budget crisis, and in California, where more than 400 troopers could be laid off for the same reason. He said if he could hire 50 and send them through the lateral academy, "the vacancies could be filled in no time."

Some stay, some leave

The troopers who have stayed have done so because they enjoy patrolling the highways. They encounter different people every day and make the freeways safer by arresting drunken drivers. Some said being a trooper was a childhood dream.

Angie Wolff said she always wanted to be a trooper like her father, who was a sergeant in the Highway Patrol before retiring and working for the Highway Patrol Association.

Dart started his career at Metro in 1984, worked briefly as a corrections officer then joined the Highway Patrol in 1985. At the time the Highway Patrol paid comparably to the local police departments. The Highway Patrol gave troopers a car they could drive home, which Dart saw as a plus.

But several years ago Dart said he toyed with the idea of jumping ship and took a test to be an officer for the Henderson Police Department. The chief of the Highway Patrol heard he was thinking about leaving and came to see him.

"He specifically asked me to stay," Dart said, and he stayed.

"I believe in the mission of traffic safety," he said. "A lot of things you do in law enforcement, you don't seem to make a difference. But I find I can affect things. ... Every time you take a drunk driver off the road, you know you're saving someone's life."

As he drove down U.S. 95 to a crash at Lake Mead Parkway, Trooper Ervin Raab, a seven-year veteran of the Highway Patrol, said he "wouldn't want to work anywhere else."

"To tell you the truth, I really like my job," he said. But when he sees police officers at the local police departments who "get paid more and don't have to work as hard," it affects morale.

Jeremy Elliott, who was a trooper in Las Vegas for eight years, left his job last month to move to Reno to be with his family. The lack of troopers is forcing those on the job to work harder and harder, he said, which causes burnout.

"I don't think we're doing a very good job with on-view patrol and writing citations because we're out there handling accidents," said Elliott, who plans to stay within the Department of Public Safety system. "I don't think we're doing a good service to the public because we're being more reactive rather than proactive."

About a month ago the Highway Patrol leadership decided to change the troopers' schedules from four 10-hour days to five eight-hour days in order to make sure enough cars are on the roads. It was not a change many troopers welcomed.

Trooper Angie Wolff said she was part of a team that came up with a scheduling strategy for troopers to maintain their four 10-hour days, but it was shot down by higher-ups.

Raab called the change "the biggest kick in the teeth."

"Because this is such a stressful job, the four (10-hour days) gave them three days off to allow them time to decrease their stress level," Dart said.

But Hosmer pointed out that the "four tens" schedule "is a benefit to the employee. It really is. It's not a more efficient way to run a police agency."

Troopers have the opportunity to make some overtime pay by stationing themselves at construction zones a few times a month. But now that they are working five eight-hour days, if they wanted to earn overtime, it could mean just one day off.

Hosmer said: "If we get these positions filled, we'll try to go back to the four tens. It's a morale boost and I think I have an obligation to look out for their morale."

On the other hand, he said that troopers "are doing more with less, and they're working hard, but isn't that what the citizens pay them to do?"

Palma decided he's quitting his job later this year, after he receives a master's degree in public relations.

"I don't want to," he said. "But I'm not getting support, I'm dealing with second-rate equipment, and I'm thinking, 'What am I doing?' "

Troopers cited "a dysfunctional leadership" as one of many factors contributing to low morale within the ranks.

Last month the Federal Communications Commission discovered that the Highway Patrol had been illegally using radio channels for troopers without approval.

Highway Patrol officials never obtained proper licensing, and the Highway Patrol was facing stiff fines. The state Senate agreed to a $16.5 million bailout of the Highway Patrol in late May.

Palma said a few years ago, he was chasing a car when his radio died and he couldn't communicate with dispatchers. He had to use his cell phone.

"I'm in a pursuit and I'm on a cell phone? It's scary," he said. "As an officer, you accept the dangers, but you want me to rake a yard of leaves and you give me a broom to do it with."

"NHP could be better if troopers were treated fairly and we had better support from the state," he added.

Since most of those who have signed on to go through the academies later this year are slated to fill slots in Las Vegas, Perry said there is "a pretty good chance" of shoring up the staffing problem, but the long-term future is uncertain.

"We really don't know what will happen. We'll continue with the academies," he said. "I think there are always going to be people leaving the Highway Patrol."

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