Columns & Opinions

The lack of leadership at Shreveport City Hall has prevailed once again. Only a few weeks ago the City’s CAO, Tom Dark, confidently stated in the local media that there would be no employee pay raises in 2026. SPOA took Mr. Dark at his word. He is the person that has repeatedly taken money from the Shreveport Police Departments budget. He managed to get away with three million dollars in the 2024 budget cycle. The Shreveport City Council required him to leave 1.5 of the original 4.5-million-dollar heist for overtime. Overtime that will never end due to over 150 vacant positions within the police department. Instead of looking for the many ways to provide a retention raise to address that crisis, the answer for Mr. Dark and his boss, Mayor Tom Arceneaux, was to defund the police department further. Yes, it is called defunding when you take money away from a budget. Reducing a budget sounds much more attractive I admit, just remember it was taken from payroll. We simply asked for a retention raise during 2023 for the 2024 budget. We wanted to use the funded, unfilled position salaries to provide a pay raise with the hope that we could retain the remaining Officers. But the Shreveport City Council unanimously voted to let Mr. Dark take the money. Recently, tax payers have funded emergency meetings, special meetings of the Shreveport City Council. Those meetings have specifically been about crime in the streets. There have been no emergency meetings about brown drinking water that flows from our taps. There have been no emergency meetings about raging fires or even the deplorable condition of city streets. The rage has always been, and always be, crime. We are a union that is dedicated to the profession of law enforcement. We have existed since 1964. So many of the elected leaders use the issues surrounding our service and occupation as their ladder for political achievement. They use the issues, but forget the needs once elected. On November 7, 2025, we submitted a 10% base pay raise proposal to all seven Council Members. I personally wrote their names on each packet, and affixed an SPOA logo. We then hand delivered the packets to the City Council office staff. The first and only pay proposal request of the 2026 city budget cycle for the police officers. We assumed that all other labor organizations would complete their obligatory duty for their members. As it turns out, submitting a pay proposal for the members that pay dues to SPOA is some how wrong in this council’s eyes.