The stakes have never been higher. Every day, Arizona’s troopers are being asked to do more
with less—and it’s taking a toll on their health, their families, and the safety of our state. If the
state continues to fail to act, the consequences will only worsen. The future of Arizona’s public
safety is at risk.
It’s time for our state’s leadership to step up. Arizona’s troopers deserve better. They deserve fair
compensation, better benefits, and the support they need to do their jobs effectively. If the state
fails to act now, we’ll all feel the consequences.
It’s time to invest in the people who protect us. Our future safety depends on it
it’s draining the morale of those who remain. Many troopers are facing burnout, working longer
shifts and more dangerous assignments with fewer colleagues on the road. With more and more
experienced officers leaving, DPS finds itself in a constant cycle of attrition, struggling to fill
vacancies and maintain adequate coverage. ]]>
gap is essential—not just for the well-being of the troopers, but for the safety of every Arizonan.
DPS needs competitive salaries and benefits to attract new recruits and retain the experienced
troopers who are essential to maintaining public safety.
But it’s not just about closing the pay gap—it’s about recognizing the critical importance of the
job. DPS troopers are the backbone of Arizona’s law enforcement system. Without them, our
highways are less safe, emergency response times grow longer, and communities suffer. The
time to act is now.
less than their counterparts in other law enforcement agencies, both in Arizona and neighboring
states. While cities like Phoenix offer additional benefits, such as incentive pay, night shift
differentials, and sign-on bonuses, DPS offers nothing but base pay. This disparity makes it
incredibly difficult to recruit and retain top talent.
For example, Phoenix Police Department offers various benefits, including:
- Bilingual Incentive Pay: $10/hour for officers involved in translation activities
- Sign-On Bonuses: $7,500 for new recruits and laterals.
- Nightshift/Weekend Differentials: $1–$2 per hour for late or weekend shifts
Meanwhile, DPS troopers only receive base pay, making it harder for them to support their families, especially given the rising cost of living in Arizona. The absence of competitive compensation has contributed to high turnover rates, with many troopers leaving DPS for better paying jobs in other agencies.
]]>department is stretched thinner than ever. Arizona’s population is growing rapidly, and with it,
the number of vehicles on the road. Currently, there are 8 million registered vehicles and 6
million registered drivers in Arizona. Experts project that to adequately handle the growth, DPS
needs at least 3,000 sworn troopers. However, the department is drastically underfunded, with
only 952 sworn troopers on the job, leaving a vacancy rate of 28%. In fact, Arizona is the only
state in the western U.S. that does not offer 24-hour coverage from its state troopers.
This lack of coverage is leading to disastrous consequences. In 2022, 745 people lost their lives
on Arizona’s highways—the highest number of fatalities in over four decades. Impaired driving
fatalities increased by 6%, and motorcycle and pedestrian deaths surged. These are not just
statistics—they represent families torn apart, futures stolen, and communities shattered.
the very safety of our state. Years of understaffing, overwhelming burnout, and a glaring pay gap
have pushed DPS troopers to the brink. Despite countless promises for change, nothing has been
done to address these mounting crises. The consequences of this inaction are not just numbers on
a page—they are real, and they are threatening the safety of every Arizonan. The time to act is
now, before it’s too late. ]]>
What is it?
Lorem Ipsum is simply dummy text of the printing and typesetting industry. Lorem Ipsum has been the industry’s standard dummy text ever since the 1500s, when an unknown printer took a galley of type and scrambled it to make a type specimen book. It has survived not only five centuries, but also the leap into electronic typesetting, remaining essentially unchanged. It was popularised in the 1960s with the release of Letraset sheets containing Lorem Ipsum passages, and more recently with desktop publishing software like Aldus PageMaker including versions of Lorem Ipsum.
What do you have to do?
It is a long established fact that a reader will be distracted by the readable content of a page when looking at its layout. The point of using Lorem Ipsum is that it has a more-or-less normal distribution of letters, as opposed to using ‘Content here, content here’, making it look like readable English. Many desktop publishing packages and web page editors now use Lorem Ipsum as their default model text, and a search for ‘lorem ipsum’ will uncover many web sites still in their infancy. Various versions have evolved over the years, sometimes by accident, sometimes on purpose (injected humour and the like).
Where does it come from?
Contrary to popular belief, Lorem Ipsum is not simply random text. It has roots in a piece of classical Latin literature from 45 BC, making it over 2000 years old. Richard McClintock, a Latin professor at Hampden-Sydney College in Virginia, looked up one of the more obscure Latin words, consectetur, from a Lorem Ipsum passage, and going through the cites of the word in classical literature, discovered the undoubtable source. Lorem Ipsum comes from sections 1.10.32 and 1.10.33 of “de Finibus Bonorum et Malorum” (The Extremes of Good and Evil) by Cicero, written in 45 BC. This book is a treatise on the theory of ethics, very popular during the Renaissance. The first line of Lorem Ipsum, “Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet..”, comes from a line in section 1.10.32.
]]>Our 29th Annual AZTroopers Memorial Golf Classic was held on September 13th, 2020 at The Legacy Golf Resort located at 6808 S. 32nd Street, Phoenix, AZ. We partnered with Gateway Golf Group again this year and they did an outstanding job as usual.
I want to personally thank our AZTroopers Golf Committee members; Tim Kvochick, Pat Eagan, Greg Girard, Ken Nelson, Dave Dubner, and Denise Wiseman as well as the volunteers who helped with the event. Our golf committee is dedicated to improving our annual event each year and we will be trying different things from year to year as we want our event to stay innovative. After all it’s all about our supporters/participants having a good time, as well as raising funds for our charity involvement.
This year we had the putting contest as players made the turn between hole # 9 and #10, then the final putt off took place during the luncheon/award ceremony. We also kept in place our ability to accept credit card payments for raffle tickets, mulligan and the Super-Ticket during check on the day of our event. The “Super-Ticket” gives participants the option of making one single payment rather than digging in their pocket for each individual event they came upon during their round of golf. This year the Super-Ticket included two mulligans, 10 raffle tickets, Beat the Pro, putting contest, $10,000 cash for a Hole-in-One, Skirt Hole (men could hit from one Ladies tee box of their choice, Women hit zero off one tee box of their choice), card for a free Humble Pie pizza, 15% off at La Sala Tequila Cantina and The Living Room wine cafe & lounge, and the golf ball launcher. The ball launcher shot a golf ball onto the green from the tee box – approximately 350 yards. Super Tickets sold for $60 during check in or $50 if purchased online prior to our event. For an additional $40 participants received raffle tickets as long as their arm span.
All the winning tickets for raffle prizes were drawn while the tournament was being played. The winning numbers were posted near the podium with lists on each table when the participants arrived for the awards luncheon. People with one or more of the winning tickets could then come up and claim their raffle prize(s) at their leisure. This year we had over 100 raffle prizes which included two official spring training baseballs autographed by Willie Mays with letters of authenticity. We also had the privilege of having a Wind-fall Willie look-a-alike participate in our event this year.
The date of our 2021 event will be on Sunday, May 2nd, 2021, so mark your calendars now as we expect the tournament to fill quickly. Next year our event will be at the ?????. When available, there will be a link to register and pay on our website so be sure to visit aztroopers.org/golf , starting in November or December of this year and keep watch in your email inbox for news and updates on the event.
As in all prior years we awarded team prizes for first, second and third in each of three flights – A (US Open), B (British Open), and C (PGA Championship). Flight “A” = lowest team handicap, then “B”, then “C”. Teams are placed in each flight according to their team handicap. In the event of a team taking first place in their flight and returning with the same team the following year, that team will be moved up to the next higher flight.
This year’s winning teams were:
A Flight___________________________________________________
First Place: Mike Rodriguez, Tom Colley, Tony Trevino, Chris Swenson
Second Place:
Third Place:
B Flight________________________________________________________
First Place: Harrison Stewart, Chris Stewart, Dan Montplaisir, Kevin Fitzgerald
Second Place: Shane Travis, Steve Travis, Dan Sifuentes, CJ French
Third Place: Jim Stanton, Jim Bee, Trent Mortenson, Kevin Claridge
C Flight______________________________________________________________
First Place: David Mattingly, Anthony Gagalino, Bruce Feedle, TBD
Second Place: Dave Schroder, Tim Kvochick, Bob Woodring, Ron Reddic
Third Place: Brady Wilkins, Rolly Reed, Mike Harrigan, Randy Bongard
*Each team member of the First, Second and Third Place winning teams received graduating sized (1st place being the largest) etched crystal tower.
Specialty hole winners for this year’s event were:
Closest to the Pin – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – Mike Sterner
Longest Drive (Women) – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – Kim Novotny
Longest Drive (Men) – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – Kevin Rogers
Golf Ball Launcher – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – Kelly Sullivan
Putting Contest – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – — Greg Robinson, Scott Torrey
Beat the Pro – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – Melvin Eso
SPONSORS
Law Offices of Dale Norris
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Right Toyota, Right Honda
Texas Roadhouse
Jackson’s Carwash
Arizona Troopers on patrol in all weather.
Photograph by Shayne Gastelum via AZDPS
Craig Fernandez
Editor, Arizona Trooper Magazine
Those within the Law Enforcement community have seen this day coming and even predicted it, but we have all tried our best to avoid it. Yet here we are.
We are sure you have seen the latest political ads showing someone calling 911 for assistance and getting a voicemail recording. As farfetched as that seems, we are headed in that direction whether by choice or not. It begs the question, when we need law enforcement the most, who will answer the call?
Recent surveys by organizations like the
Police Executive Research Forum (PERF) have proven what many departments throughout the country have foretold. Police officers are leaving the job, they are retiring sooner, and recruitment is becoming practically impossible.
At police agencies across the country, they are having trouble keeping and hiring police officers. The PERF survey described above showed three areas confirming the trend, a decrease in applications, early exits and higher rates of retirement. Agencies have reported that there has been an over 60% decrease in new applications. Hiring non-white/minority applicants and female officers have proven to be the most difficult. Believe it or not, there are less full-time police officers across the country today than in 1997.
“Police officers are leaving the job, they are retiring sooner, and recruitment is becoming practically impossible.”
Officers are retiring sooner and leaving for other careers. 29% of those voluntarily leaving do so within one year of joining and another 40% leave within five years. With all the time and money invested in training officers and getting the right candidates, this is at the end of the day a losing battle. Younger people today see the hours that come with the job as long, erratic, and frankly dangerous. This perception has steeply increased after street protests over police shootings and the media coverage that comes with them.
Is there any doubt why recruiting has become so difficult? With today’s constant negative media focus, introduction of stricter policies, body cameras, and higher rates of stress and PTSD than ever before, it is a wonder anyone wants to be a police officer today. The sense of service and higher calling that once drew people to the field simply does not exist as much in today’s generation of instant gratification and ‘what have you done for me lately’ mentality. Today’s youth have been projected to have 14 different jobs by the time they are 30. Staying the course in a field with lower than average pay and high stress is not likely.
Not only is there a price to be paid within the policing field but it affects all our communities as well. Due to the increased scrutiny over the most recent years and negative media attention, officers are less willing to put themselves in the cross hairs on a daily basis. Research across the country has shown officers are making fewer public contacts and stopping less suspicious persons. In turn, crime is rising, and public confidence is falling. How do we stop this?
All of these are simple, reactionary solutions that do nothing to solve the larger issue. We, as a society, need to fix this problem. We created it and it is up to us to correct it…
“The American policing profession may be facing the most fundamental questioning of its legitimacy in decades,” said Chuck Wexler, executive director of the Police Executive Research Forum, in a 2017 organizational newsletter. “The very essence of policing is being debated in many cities, often because of controversial video recordings of police officers’ actions. Community trust has eroded, and the professionalism of the police is being questioned.”
In my humble opinion, we are simply projecting our failures on to others and making them responsible for solving them. The real solution is easy, the question is do we all have enough of a sense of self-responsibility to own the problem and do what is necessary to fix it?
At a societal level, we need to stop looking at police officers as the hall monitors, we all love to hate. The ones that keep us from doing all the fun things that are against the rules. We need to stop telling our kids to behave or we will have that cop arrest them. We need to start handling our own family problems like adults and stop asking police officers to handle them for us. We need to start looking at them once again as the people voluntarily standing between us and the chaos and evil, we all know exists. It is not a fairy tale; the data proves this every day. If all of us were as great people as we think we are, then we would not need them at all, would we? We need to respect them, help them be better, give them the tools they need to do the job that quite frankly we asked them to do and more importantly we need them to do.
At a governmental level, we need to stop allowing politicians to use them as pawns to get quick political points and leverage their support for political gain. Law Enforcement needs to be appreciated and shown that they are, with appropriate priority in pay as part of local budgets and recognition of the role they play in not only helping us design our laws properly, but how we apply them to the public at large.
“They see the worst in us every day and we usually only see them when we are having our worst day.”
They exist to help us and protect us, when we realize that and see them properly, we all succeed. Once we can do these things, even if it’s only with our local government, we will see a change in ourselves and our youth. After all, they learn how to see police officers and how to treat them from us. Once they again see them in the right light and their profession as a noble one, then maybe more of us will want to be one of them. It will take a long time, maybe a generation or maybe decades, but if we do not start, it never will.
They see the worst in us every day and we usually only see them when we are having our worst day. We need to recognize that and look at ourselves in the mirror more often.
Finally, we all need to learn that we need to hold ourselves accountable for our own behavior before we can ask others to be responsible for theirs, let alone enforcing ours.
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Annual Report on Personnel and Compensation
September 1, 2019
INTRODUCTION
Arizona Revised Statute 41-751 (D) requires the Department of Public Safety to prepare an advisory recommendation on salaries of its personnel. The recommendations for Fiscal Year 2019 support several compensation objectives essential to maintaining the current service levels provided to the citizens of Arizona. The objectives include:
- Narrow the difference in compensation between department personnel and overall public and private labor markets in Arizona in an effort to become a competitive employer.
- Reduce the costly effects of turnover by providing monetary incentives that encourage employees to remain in state service.
- Retain sufficient personnel to provide ethical, effective, efficient, and customer oriented state-level law enforcement services to the citizens and visitors of Arizona as outlined in the department’s mission.
- Increase the department’s ability to compete with local agencies for qualified applicants, where municipal agencies have attractive monetary incentives to entice applicants who would otherwise consider the department as a career.
Recruiting and retaining the most highly qualified employees for the Department of Public Safety are critical to these objectives. Research and surveys confirm department employee salaries are still well below their market competitors and continue to fall further behind.
CURRENT STATUS
As of July 1, 2019, there were 1 ,920 full-time employees with the Department of Public Safety of which 1,127 (59 %) were sworn and 793 (41%) were professional staff (civilian).
Based on the most recent salary survey conducted in August 2019 (see Appendix A), the average department sworn salary is 15.1% behind market competitors. Only twelve of the 42 law enforcement agencies surveyed statewide have officer salaries below the department’s maximum trooper pay.
A salary survey conducted in August 2019 on a sampling of professional staff classifications within different job families shows that professional staff salary levels would currently require an average increase of 17.9% to reach their market competitors (see Appendix B).
Due to salary levels, the department is experiencing significant difficulties filling a number of critical vacant positions within the Information Technology Bureau, the Telecommunications Bureau. and the Operational Communications Bureau. The department is continuing efforts to employ new state troopers to reduce the 16% vacancy rate in the Highway Patrol Division and the 18% vacancy rate in the Criminal Investigations Division.
TURNOVER
In FY 2019, the department experienced a turnover rate of 7.4% for sworn personnel and 12.9% for professional staff. There were 185 employee separations from the department, including retirements, of which 86.5% were regrettable attrition (see Appendix C).
There were 83 separations of sworn personnel during the fiscal year, of which 45 (54%) were a result of retirement. The sworn regrettable attrition rate was 86.7%. The professional staff regrettable attrition rate was 86.3%; of the 102 separations during the fiscal year, 29 were retirements.
Public safety services have a significant impact on the welfare of the state and its citizens, requiring employees to have a considerable amount of training, knowledge, and experience. The experience required to become fully proficient normally takes employees three to five years to acquire. During this past year, employees with more than three years of employment represented 56 (50.4%) of all non-retirement separations, thus requiring the department to rely on a less-tenured employee population to service the growing and diverse needs of the state. The retention of experienced employees continues to be of significant concern to the department and will require additional resources to reverse this trend, promote internal equity, and to meet the staffing needs of the department.
COMPENSATION
The department’s sworn employees received a 10% adjustment for FY 2020. At the same time sworn salaries of competing agencies around the state have continued to increase with no reductions. Department sworn salaries would need an average increase of 15.1% to reach market in terms of base pay. As shown in Appendix D, the cost to bring sworn salaries to market levels in FY 2020 is $28.73 million.
The department’s professional staff received a 5% salary increase for FY 2020. As with all state employees, compensation was reduced by 2.75% in FY 2011 with the elimination of performance pay. The department estimates professional staff would need an average salary increase of 17.9% to achieve market pay. As shown in Appendix D, this increase would cost a total of $11.3 million in FY 2019
OVERTIME
Given the current sworn and professional staff salary base, the department would require an additional $11.9 million (including Employee Related Expenditures) in FY 2020, after the appropriate market salary adjustments, in order to reach an industry average overtime budget of 4.8% of total payroll.
CONCLUSION
The Department of Public Safety is unable to offer competitive salaries which directly impacts the retention of current employees and the recruiting of highly qualified new employees. Department pay is more than 16% behind the compensation objective of paying competitive salaries at the market rate. In the long-term, the department seeks the ability to make small, regular adjustments to employee pay to meet increases in the cost of living. In the short-term, the department is optimistic that the state can provide a modest pay adjustment to prevent salaries from falling even further behind.
Appendix A
Appendix B
Appendix C
Appendix D
