Cop pans SHOPO
aid of ‘exodus’
He says the union shouldn't
By Mary Adamski
be helping recruiters, but
SHOPO says it's just
informing members
Star-BulletinHawaii police union is taking heat for helping recruiters from the Pacific Northwest who are here this week seeking to lure local officers to the mainland.
"SHOPO shame on you," said Wahiawa Officer David Yomes in a flier being distributed at the Honolulu Police Department. "Can you believe our own union is encouraging a mass exodus to the Northwest?"
Rick Wheeler, Oahu chairman of the State of Hawaii Organization of Police Officers, said SHOPO officials permitted a room at the union's Kalihi Kai offices to be used for testing, and also distributed information on recruiters' schedules for a job fair and testing this week on Oahu.
He said a Sept. 17 notice that was posted on SHOPO bulletin boards was in response to members' questions about the planned recruitment drive by Washington state's King County Sheriff's Department. "We made our members aware because we had an obligation to do so."
Wheeler said yesterday that former HPD officers, now recruiting for the Portland Police Department, "asked to use our conference room to give a test.
It is a central location, people know where it is. My feeling is these people who took the test would have left anyway."
The Portland recruiters presented their offers of higher pay and lower cost of living last night at a job fair at the Outrigger Prince Kuhio Hotel. The Washington State Patrol, Multnomah County (Ore.) Sheriff's Office and Oregon State Police Department joined in the joint session, with another scheduled today at Pearl Harbor. Testing of applicants is planned for tomorrow and Friday.
SHOPO President Bennie Atkinson said at least 225 Honolulu officers have signed up for testing by the recruiters. "We were inundated by guys calling . . . the secretaries were getting killed on calls. All we do is give information to the troops. If the members want something, it's a service to the membership. I'm not going to decide on what we give them or not give them."
Atkinson said no one complained to him about the SHOPO assistance to recruiters.
The issue has provided fuel for a different sort of recruiting effort -- an organizing drive by a rival police union which seeks to replace SHOPO.
"I have never heard of a real union that would allow its own union hall to be used by an outside employer to recruit its members away," said Dave Nulton, field operations director of the International Union of Police Associations. The AFL-CIO union began about two months ago to seek members for the Police Union in Hawaii Local 808.
"We have had a high rate of interest," said Nulton, a former Texas police officer. "There is disappointment, disgruntlement, a great number of officers believe they are not being properly represented by SHOPO.
"What you have now is a rank-and-file union (that is) supposed to be representing people in bettering their pay, benefits and working conditions, and they are actively pursuing the idea that officers should go elsewhere. I don't follow that logic," Nulton said.
He said Local 808 is presenting its case to local officers at meetings around the state. If it gets enough police officers from the four county departments to sign representation cards, it can launch an effort to replace SHOPO.
By law, if more than half of the state's 2,600 police officers sign up, the state Labor Department would be required to hold an election to decide union representation.
"We don't come out of the woodwork," Nulton said. "Before we get going, we have an invitation to come in." He said IUPA represents members of the Secret Service, Los Angeles Sheriff's Department, New York State troopers, the Boston, Cleveland and Dallas police departments and other agencies in the United States, Canada and Mexico.
Nulton said this is the first time the 50,000-member organization has attempted a membership drive in Hawaii. "This has nothing to do with raiding," he said in response to a question. AFL-CIO unions agree not to raid each other's membership, but that doesn't apply since SHOPO is an independent union, he explained.
SHOPO was organized by local officers in 1971 and since then has represented the police of four county departments in collective bargaining.
Yomes, an unsuccessful candidate for SHOPO president in the 1997 election, said in his flier that the organization "has proven over the years to be a weak and dysfunctional union with in-house chaos of police officers who think they know how to run a union."
He praised Local 808, but said in the flier that "the other option is vote for me in the next presidential election. I will make things right and get a professional staff to do the job."
Yomes did not respond to a request for comment.
