Atlanta Mayor Shirley Franklin says that she wants to raise cops' salaries by 40 percent and hire more than 500 more police officers to make Atlanta a safe city.

The cost, she estimates, would be $25 million annually, and she said the city needs a stable, well-paid force of 2,000 officers in place by 2007. Fewer than 1,500 of the department's 1,732 sworn positions are filled.

Franklin says the city can afford to hire good officers and pay them well, and needs to make it a priority.

"We need to have a plan of action to make this the safest city in America," Franklin said.

A 40 percent increase in pay for Atlanta officers would mean a starting salary of almost $46,000, and would take the city's department from being relatively low-paid to being one of the best-paid departments in the country. By comparison, it would surpass a top-paying department such as Las Vegas by more than $3,000.

Franklin spoke Friday to business and community leaders at the unveiling of an audit conducted by the New York-based police consultants Linder & Associates.  The report was paid for by Atlanta Police Chief Richard Pennington's Police Foundation to help assess the department. The chief is using the information in his campaign to build public support to beef up the department through hires and higher salaries.

The audit revealed that Atlanta's crime numbers have been underreported by the department --- to boost tourism, one officer said --- and that the patrol force has been either unable or unmotivated to respond effectively to crime. The understaffed force, the report says, is often so overwhelmed by 911 calls that some beats aren't effectively patroled. According to the report, the department gets about 3,000 calls a day during the week and 4,000 a day on weekends.

Linder & Associates has analyzed police departments nationwide, including New Orleans when Pennington was chief. Pennington's Atlanta Police Foundation, which was formed to help fund the department through donations, paid the consulting group $826,000 for the 227-page Atlanta report.

The report both lambastes the department pre-Pennington, and lays out the progress it says Pennington has achieved. The audit is similar to the report that Linder produced for Pennington in New Orleans, including the recommendation to increase salaries and hire more officers.

Pennington is increasing police academy class sizes to try and fill the ranks more quickly, but it still may be tough to meet the employment goals. The department has had a fairly consistent number of sworn officers for the last 13 years, with a high of more than 1,600 in 1994 and a low of 1,400 officers in 2001, according to the Linder report.

Budgeted positions jumped to more than 1,800 spots in 1998, but APD usually couldn't fill even 1,500 of the posts --- prompting the City Council to cut positions from the budget last year.

"We have to be better in our compensation to be able to compete with other departments in the region," said Atlanta City Councilman Ceasar Mitchell, who stepped down as the chair of the public safety committee this year. "It is extremely costly to have the attrition rate that we have. It costs a lot of money to train people."

According to the Linder report, the APD unit charged with recruiting officers hasn't been able to attract quality recruits.  Sixty percent of 1,000 officers surveyed by the auditors agreed with that assessment.

Franklin said police griping about pay is legitimate and police salaries need to be a priority. This year, they weren't, as police received a 2 percent raise and another 2 percent raise scheduled for July. Officers would have to see their salaries rise by 12 percent a year to meet Franklin's goal of a 40 percent increase by 2007.

According to PolicePay.net, a Web site dedicated to police pay and benefits, Atlanta ranks about 5 percent below average in salaries and benefits among the nation's 200 largest cities. Atlanta ranks 122nd in pay when a cost-of-living difference is calculated. The city ranks 156 out of 200 if not adjusted for cost of living.

The staring salary is $32,783, while the top pay for a patrol officer is $44,000. DeKalb County Police, on the other hand, start out at $34,428 and top out at $57,000 for patrol officers.
How the mayor plans to pay for her proposal isn't clear, but she says that city government has to make salaries and hiring a priority.

"This isn't about a tax increase," Franklin said. "There is a growth in property taxes. . . . There is more development and more property coming on line for taxes."

Mitchell wouldn't rule out a tax increase, but he said he thought the council wouldn't necessarily need one. "If we go back to the city charter and see what it calls for us to do, there is one thing we know that it requires us to do and that is to provide for public safety and welfare of our citizens," Mitchell said.

--- Staff writers Bill Montgomery and Milo Ippolito contributed to this report