Controversy – or a wealth of differing opinion – has broken out with regard to the efforts by Redlands police officers to pressure the city council and the city manager to raise their pay.
In recent weeks, Redlands Police Officers Association president Jeff Frisch has sent out emails to a cross section of Redlands residents, seeking their assistance in persuading top city officials to up the pay and benefits of the city’s police officers.
“Our city and residents support us, but the budget for the Police Department is woefully inadequate,” Frisch wrote in the missive. “Over the past ten year’s [sic] the Redlands total city budget has increased 100% from approximately 70 million dollars in 2016 to approximately 140 million. Despite this increase and additional funding from Measure T, our police department budget has lagged far behind the rest of the city’s spending, leaving officer pay and compensation well below other law enforcement agencies in the Inland Empire.”
According to Frisch, “Our average 10-year Redlands police officer now ranks dead last in compensation compared to neighboring Inland Empire agencies. Please give the city council and city manager the courage to follow through on years’ worth of promises to resolve this problem so that our city can recruit police officers and fill positions that have been vacant for multiple years. Please Visit www.RedlandsPoa.org for the complete salary survey.”
Frisch closed the email with a tacit request that the reader carry his message forward to the city’s decision-makers. “Please use these city emails and cc us: citycouncil@cityofredlands.org [and] cduggan@cityofredlands.org,” he wrote
Upon going to the Redlands Police Officer Association website, one immediately encounters a pop-up that boldly states, “Redlands Police Officers are one of the lowest compensated agencies in the Inland Empire area.” it thereafter provides what is asserted to be a “full salary survey.”
According to the posting, the Redlands police department’s officers are poorly remunerated when “compared with 11 comparable agencies.”
This comparison of the compensation of officers with the department is made for recently recruited officers and those with five, ten, 15, 20 and 25 years as police officers as compared with their counterparts with similar tenures who are employed by the Beaumont, Chino, Fontana, Murrieta, Ontario, Palm Springs, Riverside, San Bernardino, Rialto and Upland police departments and the San Bernardino County Sheriff’s Department.
According to the survey’s summary, Redlands officers starting out, i.e., those with “0 years experience,” rank 10th among the 12 departments, as they are remunerated at a level 8.84 percent below the average in total compensation, and at 17.24 percent below average when considering salary only.
Redlands officers with 5 years experience, according to the survey, rank 11th of the 12 departments 8.42 percent below the average in total compensation, and at 21.44 percent below average when considering salary only.
Redlands officers with 10 years experience, according to the survey, rank 12th of the 12 departments at 9.61 percent below the average in total compensation, and at 22.64 percent below average when considering salary only.
Redlands officers with 15 years experience, according to the survey, rank 10th of the 12 departments at 6.04 percent below the average in total compensation, and at 22.64 percent below average when considering salary only.
Redlands officers with 20 years experience, according to the survey, rank 10th of the 12 departments at 5.62 percent below the average in total compensation, and at 22.64 percent below average when considering salary only.
Redlands officers with 25 years experience, according to the survey, rank 10th of the 12 departments at 5.89 percent below the average in total compensation, and at 22.64 percent below average when considering salary only.
The compendium of statistics and assertions that the officers of the department are being taken advantage of by the city’s leaders was put together with the assistance of the law firm – Rains Lucia Sterns St. Phalle & Silver – that represents the association. While the presentation does put the association’s and its constituent officers’ best foot forward in making that case, some of those who do not count themselves as advocates for the union or the officers found elements of the case being made somewhat disingenuous.
Four of those comparison departments – Ontario, Riverside and Palm Springs – are divisions of cities that have substantial wealth. The City of Riverside has a current annual budget of over $1.4 billion. The City of Ontario has an annual budget that exceeds $1.1 billion through all of its municipal funds. Fontana has a current operation budget of $883.9 million. Palm Springs, with a population of 44,540, has an annual budget of over $180 million.
In contrast, Redlands, with a population of 74,300, has an annual $133 million operating budget.
Additionally, the City of Chino within the last two years saw annual infusions of $24 million and $25 million over the last two years in additional revenue following its residents approval in March 2024 of a one-cent-per-dollar sales tax override.
San Bernardino was until a municipal charter changeover a decade ago bound by a provision of the Charter for that city adopted in 1905. One provision put into that charter in 1939, known as Section 186, required that city’s public safety employees – firefighters and police officers – be paid on a scale equal to the average pay of police officers and firefighters in ten similarly-sized California cities by population. San Bernardino is California’s 18th largest city. Section 186 was a primary factor in driving the City of San Bernardino into bankruptcy in 2012, a status it did not leave until 2017. Dispensing with Section 186 was a primary motivation in San Bernardino officials and voters replacing the 1905 Charter with a redrafted city charter in 2016. Nevertheless, along with other considerations, vestiges of Section 186 are a primary factor in San Bernardino police officers being among the highest paid law enforcement officers in the region.
The survey the Redlands Police Officers Association relied upon found that the deputies of the San Bernardino County Sheriff’s Department were one of two set of officers who, on average, were more poorly paid than Redlands officers. The San Bernardino County Sheriff’s Department serves as the contract law enforcement agency, i.e., the police department, to four of the cities that are most proximate to Redlands – Yucaipa, Loma Linda, Highland and Grand Terrace. Thus, Redlands police officers, according to the survey it is citing, are better paid than the majority of the police officers in adjoining cities.
Some residents, in particular ones who are employed in the private sector, were pout off by the association making reference to a number of job perquisites in which it was claimed other department’s officers were given a better deal than police officers in Redlands. Those perquisites or benefits extended to things such college tuition reimbursements as well uniform or equipment allowances, together with the ability to accrue benefits commonly perceived as intended for contingencies. While government workers are provided with holiday leave, sick leave and vacation leave, such benefits are not universally extended to those who do not work in the public sector, though some workers for private sector companies are similarly looked after by their employers. The ability to accrue holiday leave, sick leave that is not used or vacation leave is neither guaranteed nor common in the private sector. That Redlands officers were bemoaning that the terms of their holiday leave accrual, annual sick leave accrual and annual vacation leave accrual was not as generous or open-ended as that of some of their counterparts with other departments was not viewed positively by many of those who saw the association’s presentation. Among those citizens were some who found the complaint that the city was not being generous enough in allowing officers who were fortunate enough to not to have gotten sick or injured to cash out the time they were not injured or sick to be disrespectful toward the city’s taxpayers.
Similarly, the officers’ complaint that their tuition reimbursement was lower than that offered by six of the 12 departments surveyed and the same as that offered by one of the departments was taken as a bit presumptuous, particularly since four of the comparison departments provided no tuition reimbursement to their officers.
The association made a point of eight of the comparison departments providing higher employer-paid life insurance, two providing insurance of a lesser monetary value or none and one providing an identical amount of coverage.
With regard to court appearances, which are an inherent part of police work, Redlands pays its officers overtime for showing up to court, consisting of three hours plus all hours actually worked. That arrangement was generally comparable or in some cases slightly more generous than the policies of other departments.
The association also raised the issue of the department having no specific compensation outlined for police officers standing by for a possible court appearance. Four of the other departments similarly had no specified pay, while four specified paying their officers straight time, one specified paying officers half time and two specified overtime. On this issue, Redlands officers are protected by California’s wage law.
The association made an issue out of the department having no compensation specified for detectives on call. That is the case with seven of the other 11 departments surveyed.
The association complained that the $100 per month incentive paid to officers who are bilingual runs behind the incentives paid by the other departments.
A recurrent refrain of Redlands residents exposed to the association’s charge that the city was being too parsimonious with respect to its police officers’ pay was that Redland Police Officers, relatively speaking, do not have overly challenging assignments, vis-a-vis the setting they function within.
Redlands is not a hotbed of criminal activity.
Crime statistics vary depending upon the methodology used by the statisticians doing the ranking. Redlands is thus shown to fall, variously, somewhere on the scale within the top nine percent and top 23 percent of the safest cities in the country and the state. Redlands is typically considered to be one of the top 300 safest communities in national studies. Of those on that vaunted roster, roughly one-fifth are smaller, affluent enclaves, some of which are gated or involve limited entry. On a state and regional level, Redlands maintains a solid reputation in that regard, with across-the-board criminal activity within its city limits statistically less than that in 78 percent of U.S. cities. Regional crime and safety evaluations generally indicate that in Redlands the violent crime rate sits at roughly 298.6 per 100,000 residents, which is notably lower than the national average of about 359 per 100,000
Using statewide rather than national metrics, Redlands with a 298.6 violent crimes per 100,000 residents is substantially below the California average of 518, translating to typical Redlands resident being 42.4 percent less likely to be victimized by a violent crime than the average resident of California. That carries over to the province of deadly violence, as Redlands residents are 5.7 percent less likely to be murdered than others in the Golden State.
That security margin, however, does not apply as starkly to property crimes, as the 2,152.2 incidents of theft of all kinds per 100,000 population in Redlands is just marginally below the rate of 2,161.3 per 100,000 population in California. The nuance in that statistic is that victims in Redlands are more likely to have their homes, property or vehicles burglarized than violated by an act of strong-arm or armed robbery.
There are Redlands residents who believe the city’s men in blue deserve every penny they are asking for and more. They attribute the enhanced safety of the community to the performance of the department and its officers.
Others interpret those positive statistics differently, saying they are an indicator of the inherent quality of the community itself, which makes it a far cry from the mean streets of San Bernardino, which has on multiple occasions over the last two decades been ranked as one of the 20 deadliest cities in the United States. That statistic applies to the difficulty and danger of the job of policing, as well. Officers in Redlands, similar to officers in Upland, have made bitter pronouncements that those in the community they serve value their contributions lower than the residents in San Bernardino, for example, which remunerate their police officers at a rate of roughly 109 percent of what Redlands officers receive. It has been pointed out, however, that San Bernardino police officers are more likely to be injured or killed on the job than officers working in Upland or Redlands.
An element discernible in the statistics cited by the Redlands Police Officers Association is that while the base salary levels of Redlands police officers generally run behind those officers with the Ontario, Fontana, Palm Springs, Riverside, Murrietta, San Bernardino, Chino Beaumont and Upland, the benefits Redlands police officers are provided with are on average with or slight better than those available with officers in most other cities.
One Redlands resident who had received the email from Frisch said he found particularly offensive the call to “give the city council and city manager the courage” to provide the city’s police officers with raises, stating that Frisch was actually encouraging residents to assist members of the police department in “intimidating and extorting” the city council into providing the officers with raises the city could not afford.
“The city council, for all of its shortcomings, is doing the best it can with the existing revenue available,” the resident said. “The police department is one of whatever it is, depending on how you count them, 19 or 20 departments and divisions. The city has a balanced budget. Having one department increase its spending radically is either going to unbalance the budget or require shortages and a drawdown in services in other departments. It is not the police department’s place nor that of its officers to dictate how the city’s money should be spent.”
The resident said, “Mine isn’t one of them, but there are families in Redlands with two incomes who are still on the brink of losing their houses. Every last one of the police officers in Redlands are paid well enough that they can pay their mortgages on a single paycheck alone. The police union wants even more money for those officers, which has to be paid from somewhere. That means those who live in the city whose financial situation is already marginal will be hit even harder.”
The resident said the message city residents should send to the city council is 180 degrees opposite that which Frisch is calling for.
“They should tell the city council to have the courage to tell the police union, ‘No,’” he said.
In actuality, the City of Redlands’ single highest expense in its operational budget is police department salaries. In 2025, the city paid out to one of its police department employees, former Deputy Police Chief Travis Martinez, a staggering $1,326,105.74. That payout included his salary and a settlement of a claim he made which pertained to what he claimed was wrongdoing on the part of other members of the department, most notably another former Redlands deputy police chief, Michael Reiss. Lawsuits filed by individuals, mostly Redlands Police Department personnel, that named the city and Reiss as defendants, have now cost the city in excess of $3.7 million.
A handful of Redlands residents have observed that the Redlands Police Officers Association has in the past proven instrumental in preventing the city and the police department’s management division from meting out discipline to police officers and holding those engaged in unbecoming activity accountable, which has allowed those officers, such as Reiss to not only remain as members of the department but to advance in rank. Presumably, those residents say, had the department purged itself of problem officers such as Reiss when issues involving them first cropped up, the savings the city would have made in avoiding the cost of lawsuit settlements could have been used to provide the increased pay and benefits the association is now requesting.
-Mark Gutglueck