Ramblings of a DPD retiree. :)

[ct_alum]

Who is they? The money just isn't there to pay for it. There is no greedy evil bad guy here. It is simply a systemic issue due to the declining tax base in the city.

As far as appreciation for the guys putting their lives on the line for the community, what about the current officers and firefighters who are putting their lives on line right now, and have to deal with malfunctioning and/or shortages of equipment, no backup, and constant cuts to their pay and benefits?

Everybody likes to get outraged about the cuts to compensation and benefits, but very few are willing to pay the extra city taxes required to pay for it, and nobody supports shifting a portion of the burden to the county, region, or state.

"They" is Wall Street. What a short memory you have. they totally fuc**ed up the economy through their reckless greeed and they got made whole by the taxpayers - 100 cents on the doller, no haircut for them, just more bonuses! Now, they expect to get paid by fuck**g pensioners who risked thier lives every day for at least 20 years to protect their sorry asses. Tell you what - Lets tell Wall Street to get lost and we'll call it even.

Poor "thirty something" - Been paying into S.S. for all of what, ten years?
Where is that great self-reliance that all the right wing nuts preach until it comes to them? Then it's I want mine, f**k you!

Tell you what, next time your house is on fire or getting broken into, call Bank of America, I'm sure they'll be right out to help.

[Lowell]

Ray thanks for sharing those beautiful stories. I don't know how you do it because if I were in your shoes, I would be expressing outrage more along the lines of CLA1945. A person of your demeanor is the ideal for law enforcement. You clearly knew how to do a dangerous and demanding job amid the sewers of society and still maintain your humanity and good humor.

You worked honestly for a legally contracted agreement of compensation that included deferred payment in the form of pension and health care.

Now that deferred pay has turned out to be a ponzi scheme except there is no Mr. Ponzi, no Bernie Maddoff. You did your part of the bargain, now you get stiffed.

Then we hear another side, Eric_d's and about those currently in public safety, expressing equal outrage at paying into pension plans and social security, hence into the ponzi scheme, but receiving ever-declining services with the seeming possibility of never collecting a dime.

And you are both right and entitled to fume. You are victims of the same crime.

The perfect crime -- one with no perpetrator.

At the core is an economy that was a victim of globalization. Ponzi schemes work fine as long as there is growth. Our middle-class jobs have become sweatshop jobs in the emerging third world economies. The profits have disappeared into the pockets of the owners leaving behind the lawless and impoverished ruins of what was once the richest city on earth.

And there is no one to point a finger at, just some generalized 'them'.

[nain rouge]

I think pensioners would get a lot more sympathy if there was a sense that they were looking out for the rights of us newer workers also. But they only seem to care when someone comes for their personal pension.

[mwilbert]

"They" is Wall Street. What a short memory you have. they totally fuc**ed up the economy through their reckless greeed and they got made whole by the taxpayers - 100 cents on the doller, no haircut for them, just more bonuses! Now, they expect to get paid by fuck**g pensioners who risked thier lives every day for at least 20 years to protect their sorry asses. Tell you what - Lets tell Wall Street to get lost and we'll call it even.

Poor "thirty something" - Been paying into S.S. for all of what, ten years?
Where is that great self-reliance that all the right wing nuts preach until it comes to them? Then it's I want mine, f**k you!

Tell you what, next time your house is on fire or getting broken into, call Bank of America, I'm sure they'll be right out to help.

There just isn't any real connection between the Wall Street bailout and Detroit becoming insolvent. You can think [[and I do) that the banks and their executives got off much too easily, but if they hadn't it's not like it would have made Detroit's pensioners better off. And of course Detroit, and possibly its pensioners, would be significantly worse off if they hadn't bailed out GM and Chrysler.

[Jimaz]

... The perfect crime -- one with no perpetrator....

... The profits have disappeared into the pockets of the owners leaving behind the lawless and impoverished ruins of what was once the richest city on earth.

And there is no one to point a finger at, just some generalized 'them'.

Sometimes I wonder. Either there's no perpetrator or maybe there are perpetrators that are just very, very skilled at hiding.

My advice: Let's at least not allow ourselves to be divided and conquered.

[Ray1936]

Again, thanks for your thoughts; especially Lowell. Trying to pin down blame is a futile exercise, so I'm not going there. And, frankly, if the bottom drops completly out, I'll be in decent shape. I know many of my colleagues who will not be so fortunate.

I thank my wife who has nagged me for over 50 years to save. Whew!

[Wesley Mouch]

Wesley, when you refer to Many city retirees in the past received lump sum payments -- because the pension funds were OVERFUNDED! are you referring to the 13th check that we received at the end of the year in the past?

If so, I can tell you that the pensions were receiving a very good return on the investments that the pension boards and trustees made during that period of time. When the market crashed, those checks stopped. In my own opinion, I think the City would have been prudent to have just kept that money in the pension funds and maybe they wouldn't be in the spot they are in today.

I can't help but wonder if the pensions are $5-6 billion strong, they MUST be getting a fairly decent return, even in today's market. I'm not an analyst in this field by any means, but I know that the little bit of annunities I have are coming back to where they were before the market tanked...and so should the pension funds.

Nope, not a check for the 13th month each year. I mean a one-time lump sump payment that for my family was five digits. CoD General Retirement System.

The money was great and appreciated. But I can't understand why you wouldn't give that benefit back to the taxpayers, or as you said simply keep it in the system for a rainy day.

[cla1945]

Nope, not a check for the 13th month each year. I mean a one-time lump sump payment that for my family was five digits. CoD General Retirement System.

The money was great and appreciated. But I can't understand why you wouldn't give that benefit back to the taxpayers, or as you said simply keep it in the system for a rainy day.

If a Detroit employee put money into an annuity while working, at the end of their career it could either be rolled over to your pension or you could opt to take the "lump sum" amount and put it into a different fund. The annuity had nothing to do with a pension though...only if you wanted to combine it with the pension. Some borrowed on the annuity during their careers as well.

I never heard of anyone just getting a lump sum from the City of Detroit General Retirement System unless it was their own annuity. The pension fund never gave out lump sum payments for pensions that I know of.

[cla1945]

I think pensioners would get a lot more sympathy if there was a sense that they were looking out for the rights of us newer workers also. But they only seem to care when someone comes for their personal pension.

Who says we don't feel sympathy for the newer workers. As I said in a previous post, I have two very close relatives working for Detroit right now, this not only affects me but my entire family. I signed a contract with Detroit when I hired on. In that contract, a pension was promised. I contributed, I paid my dues, I gave everything for 30 years. My family went to school functions without me, I worked Christmas and Christmas Eves, Thanksgiving, all holidays. Dinner time with family was dismal because I wasn't there on certain days, and nights. I had to have a second sometimes third job to make ends meet because our pay was not that great. But, I didn't complain because that was where I wanted to be. I stuck it out for my pension. The City didn't collect Social Security from my paycheck so I had to work my quarters to get a very very small SS check after I retired.

I don't see much concern from the younger, newer workers. We were younger, newer, too. We fought for things in the contract that newer workers are getting today. Pensioners have no control over what the City did with the pension funds, we trusted those who were overseeing it and obviously some made some very bad investments and some had their hand in the till. Whatever the reasons that the pension funds are underfunded, what is left belongs to the thousands of retired City of Detroit workers who gave their lives to Detroit for their working careers and never wanted anything more than what the City said they would do for them....provide a meager pension and healthcare if you pay part of the premium. I lived up to my end of the bargain, Detroit needs to live up to their end.

[Cliffy]

I think pensioners would get a lot more sympathy if there was a sense that they were looking out for the rights of us newer workers also. But they only seem to care when someone comes for their personal pension.

I'm a newer worker. I don't know what you want the 70 year old former garbage man to do for you. He is just getting by too. I'm more concerned about the right wing kooks who go out and march in the street for billionaires and tax cuts to the rich that is fucking us little people over. I thought I saw it all when that nut was marching against Obama Care and going crazy and the reporter asked her if she had health insurance, she said no, she couldn't afford it. The Right Wing are the Taliban of America.

[stromberg2]

I'm happy to hear you're going to be allright, Ray! You are one of the reasons I signed on here. Thanks!!

[MikeyinBrooklyn]

Ray1936, thank you for both your service and the anecdotes. A "cop on the beat" history of Detroit would be a fascinating book.

[jiminnm]

Ray1936, thank you for both your service and the anecdotes. A "cop on the beat" history of Detroit would be a fascinating book.

It should really be "A Cop on the Seat."

[Ray1936]

Naw, I'm not a book writer. Short stuff is fine, but I lack the personal discipline to sit down for six months and bang away on the same thing. I edited the "Bars & Stripes" monthly magazine for the DP Lts. & Sgts. Association for ten years, and I wish I would have kept all the copies. It would jog a lot of memories.

There was the cattle drive at Western Market where the confused cow charged Larry Bylica and...........well, never mind.

[sumas]

Naw, I'm not a book writer. Short stuff is fine, but I lack the personal discipline to sit down for six months and bang away on the same thing. I edited the "Bars & Stripes" monthly magazine for the DP Lts. & Sgts. Association for ten years, and I wish I would have kept all the copies. It would jog a lot of memories.

There was the cattle drive at Western Market where the confused cow charged Larry Bylica and...........well, never mind.

Don't be silly. I am a published author. Memories in small vignettes as chapters are significant if put in a time frame.

Not being pushy but write those memories. If nothing else your progeny will adore them.

[Lowell]

Stop picking on Ray to write a book. His 2000+ posts here already tell a remarkable story from his ancestors, through his police career to the wild west. If you talk him into writing a book, he'll have no time for us and then you will all be disappointed.

Everything on the internet is now catalogued and it will be there forever available 24/7 to billions worldwide. Just enter the following search phrase in Google to see what I mean -> "ray1936" site:www.detroityes.com

Besides, book writing is not all it is thought to be. I have have had several offers to write a book even one with a $5000 advance. But when I did the math on it, and unless sales were something north of an unlikely 25,000 copies, I ended up making $5 an hour, surrendering my ideas while everybody at the publisher got their full salaries, pensions, health care and benefits. Vanity is all they really have to offer.

Now what about that cattle drive in Eastern Market?

[sumas]

Nothing wrong with gentle teasing to write a book. Ray has significant stories that he has shared freely.

A lady once told me vanity keeps one young. She was right.

[Downriviera]

Ray,

Did you survive the storm out there?

[msamslex]

Thanks for the wonderful stories and your service. Sending positive thoughts.

[Ray1936]

Downriviera, yeah, the desert monsoons have left us intact.....so far. The weather in southern Nevada is a good news/bad news thing.

The good news is we only get four inches of rain a year.

The bad news is it all comes on the same day.

[Ray1936]

Western Market, Lowell, not Eastern.

Larry Bylica was my partner one hot summer day when a dozen or so cattle got loose from a truck up around Humboldt and Michigan. Some citizens at the time thought the police were a bunch of cowboys, but we proved to be lousy ones while trying to roundup those steers. Well, Larry had one of those car seats made of straw and coiled springs to keep his back and bottom cool from those leather seats of the scout car. This was before air-conditioning, as today's candy-assed first responders demand.

Larry was 5-10 and 150 pounds soaking wet. So he grabbed his car seat and started waving it in the air at a steer trying to back him up into a pen. The steer wasn't impressed by Larry's size, so it charged him instead. Larry was able to step -- stumble -- aside, but the steer caught his car seat and sent it sailing onto the roof of Gus' grill on Humboldt. Now Larry got pissed. When the real wrangler who was in charge of the cattle got them all penned in, Larry wanted to call the fire department for a ladder to get up on the roof and retrieve his seat. A sergeant at the scene put the kibosh on that and told Larry what he could do with his car seat. That was near midnight.

The next day, after roll call, Larry and I were assigned together again, and damned if he didn't have his car seat. I asked how he got it, and he replied, "After we got off work, I went home and tied my extention ladder to my pickup and went to Gus' and got my damn car seat."

Larry has gone on to his reward, and I think warmly of him often.

[RaumVogel]

There just isn't any real connection between the Wall Street bailout and Detroit becoming insolvent. You can think [[and I do) that the banks and their executives got off much too easily, but if they hadn't it's not like it would have made Detroit's pensioners better off. And of course Detroit, and possibly its pensioners, would be significantly worse off if they hadn't bailed out GM and Chrysler.

The wall street fat cats, the corporate fat cats...the government fat cats.They are the real criminals who make pensions go away.The greedy are the ones who continuously ruin the economy and the middle class are the ones who always pay for it.

[Jimaz]

Some similar stories from today's Free Press: A few minutes with ... a Detroit paramedic

A woman giving birth slugged him and broke his nose! LOL!

[Zads07]

Well, the shit has hit the fan, and there are those who wish to take away my pension and health benefits. My colleagues and I are pretty well stewing over what the future may hold, but I sat on my back porch this afternoon with my mind remembering days gone by. And damn, some of them were funny.....and refreshing to recall.

There was the time I stopped Jeanne Dishong, "Miss Fairweather" on Channel 4, for speeding. I might have warned her and wished her well, but she gave me a ration of shit, so I wrote the ticket for 60 in a 55. On the ticket, where it says "weather", we were supposed to write "NAC" for "Normal Atmospheric Conditions" if it was nice. I couldn't resist it. I wrote "Fair", for Miss Fairweather.

Saw a car pull out of Briggs Stadium in the early sixties, and make a left turn from s/on Trumbull to e/on Michigan from the right lane. Stopped it, and it was Chuck Dressen, manager of the Tigers. As I looked over his driver's license, other members of the Tigers team passed by and every one gave Chuck the horse laugh. I can just imagine how they got on his ass the next day. Naw, didn't write him. Back then the policy was not to write out-of-towners except for extreme violations, and Chuck had a CA driver's license anyway.

Got into a chase on Gratiot that ended up around Connors early in the evening. Car cracked up and the driver was going nowhere. He turned out to be Joe Don Looney, then quarterback of the Lions, and took six coppers to get him cuffed and on his way to the hoosegow for DUI. Met him later at the Lindell AC and sober, he was a perfect gentleman.

Had the honor of meeting Sir Lawrence Olivier alongside Ford Hospital during the filming of "The Betsy", an otherwise forgettable film. Ron Sexton, DPOA pres, asked him, "How do I address you? Sir Lawrence, or Your Honor?". Olivier chuckled and said, "Just call me Larry."

In later years, Jim Bannon, Exec Deputy Chief, asked me to grab a car from the MO Garage and pick up Doug Fraser, UAW president and then a DPD Commissioner, take him to the City Airport and pick up Sen. Ted Kennedy. Take them to Fraser's home and then back to the airport. Doug Fraser was one helluva down-to-earth guy, and Ted Kennedy was a delight. I spoke only when spoken to, but it was an honor. And that from a right-wing conservative......me.

Also had the pleasure of picking up and returning Hal Lindon, he of "Barney Miller" fame, and taking him to "our" 12th Precinct in Palmer Park, where he had a heck of a time with the dicks at number twelve. Some of the guys there were just like the cast in the show; especially Wojo and Fish.

I used to appear regularly in Traffic Court in front of a referee named Roman Gribbs. A straight-shooter, he always impressed me with his fairness, never suspecting he would someday be Mayor. And I worked on his campaign. Just last year, I saw him in a restaurant in Livonia with friends, but I didn't approach him to say hi as he seemed well engaged in conversation with his party. I'm still kicking myself for not doing that.

In my 29 years with the DPD, I don't think there was a day that wasn't remarkable. I loathe the '67 riot, of course, and what has since happened to the old Fort, but even if my pension and healthcare go "poof" in the night, I wouldn't do one goddam thing different.

So there.

Ray1936, thanks so much for your service, that short piece was a great read. My grandmother also served in the DPD for awhile, back in the 1960s-early 1990s. We too, are scared for her pension and what could happen.

[skyl4rk]

Ray;

Glad to hear you are still doing well. When I hear about the bankruptcy and how it will affect the retirees, yours is the face I see to put it into perspective. Best of luck to you.