We (officers of the Selma Police Department) write this letter with much respect to all of you and hope that you receive this message in good taste. Many officers of the department have held off for as long as we could for the love of Selma. We formally request a collaborative meeting with the mayor of Selma, all of the Selma City Council members, the personnel director, the treasurer, the city attorney and Chief [John] Brock. This is not a threat, nor do we want you to feel as if this is a threat. We prefer to meet any time during the week of Aug. 8, 2016-Aug, 12, 2016. Times are flexible. We look forward to seeing a memo in reference to a time and date soon. We will follow up.

As you know, we didn’t get into this profession to get rich, but we would like to be compensated for the hard work that we do encounter. We put our lives on the line every day, not knowing if we will be going home at the end of our work day, which could be anywhere from two to 18 hours. We work strenuous hours with minimum manpower and still manage to maintain the standard of policing. Several other cities of our capacity or smaller receive high wages and we are simply concerned that the dire importance of public safety within the city is being overlooked and underappreciated in the eyes of some. Many of the citizens stop us throughout the day and let us know how much they appreciate the work we do and how they keep us in their prayers daily. When someone has plans on moving to another place, some of the first questions asked are about the crime rate and areas and the school system.

We feel that public safety has been in the shadows of many departments in this city for as long as many of us can remember and the time for us to take a stand is now.

There has been a lot of discussion as to what is “in place” and what is “in the process,” but what we are demanding at this point is action be taken to raise our wage immediately. Several of us have families that depend on our income as the primary source to their quality of life, and respectively speaking, it’s not looking good. We joke and say that if you ever leave Selma after working with the police department you will be able to adapt to any other job and that’s because we encounter so much in our small town.

Just to clarify, we do not feel that other departments or professions are not important because everyone has their place in society. We are simply expressing our concern toward our wages. Some individuals have gotten complacent and feel that since things have been a certain way all these years they need to stay that way, but we are in a new age. The officers you see among you everyday are loyal, known throughout the community, and they are here to stay for the most part. If you haven’t noticed, you see new faces quite often because those who were once loyal now have nothing for them to be loyal to.

Regards.

SPD Officers