Cape CopCast
Welcome to "The Cape CopCast," the official podcast of the Cape Coral Police Department.
Hosted by Officer Mercedes Simonds, and Lisa Greenberg from our Public Affairs team, this podcast dives into the heart of Cape Coral PD's public safety, community initiatives, and the inner workings of our police department. Each episode brings you insightful discussions, interviews with key community figures, and expert advice on safety.
Cape CopCast
Chief's Chat #21: The Dispatch Pay Raise & Department Promotions
When it comes to building and maintaining an exceptional police force, the details matter. Cape Coral Police Department has just scored a major victory for its Telecommunications team by securing competitive pay for dispatchers - the culmination of a years-long effort to properly value these essential first responders.
In this episode of the Cape CopCast 'Chief's Chat,' Chief Sizemore breaks down how dispatcher compensation had previously been hampered by broad city-wide comparisons to similar-sized municipalities rather than the actual local competition for talent. "All recruiting and retention is local," he explains, noting that staff were leaving for nearby agencies offering better pay without requiring changes to their childcare arrangements, schools, or living situations. Through persistent advocacy, the department successfully carved out dispatchers from the larger collective bargaining unit, allowing for more accurate local compensation comparisons and creating both financial recognition and professional dignity for these critical team members.
The episode also spotlights department growth with exciting leadership announcements, including Deputy Chief Matt Campion and three new captains: William Rosario (Investigations), Julie Green (Professional Standards), and Brian Kearney (Patrol). Each promotion creates ripple effects of opportunity throughout the organization, with more advancement prospects coming in August's promotional process. As Chief Sizemore notes, what once yielded just one or two promotions now regularly produces "double digits on every list," reflecting the department's healthy expansion to nearly 500 total personnel.
Whether you're considering a career in law enforcement, interested in the dispatcher pipeline that can lead to officer positions, or simply curious about police department operations, this insider look at CCPD's strategic growth demonstrates how thoughtful leadership builds stronger public safety systems.
Ready to join a department on the rise? Visit CapeCops.com to explore opportunities with Cape Coral Police Department.
Welcome back to another episode of the Cape Copcast Chiefs Chat Edition. I am here once again with Chief Sizemore to talk about a few things that we've been seeing this week. But first, how are you doing? I'm good. How are you? I'm good. It's been a busy week for us, yep.
Speaker 1:Ready for the weekend.
Speaker 2:Absolutely. There are a few things I know we want to touch on today, and first I want to talk about the anticipated pay raise for our dispatchers, because we definitely need more dispatchers. This is something that we've been talking about for a while now, and now I think there's a bit more incentive, so to speak.
Speaker 1:Absolutely. This is something that's really been about five or six years in the making, without getting too technical. We have labor contracts right. So our dispatchers belong to an acronym called IUPAT. It's a labor union called the International Union of Painters and Allied Traits. It's a white collar union, an easy way to say it. And when we do labor agreements there's a lot of members in that labor union throughout the city, not just the police department. So there are city employees on the macro level and they bargain for contracts.
Speaker 1:And our dispatchers, just like other parts of the city, are very, very nuanced, very unique, unlike any other white-collar job. So when they do comparisons to set pay structure, they do comparable cities. So they may, for instance, use Port St Lucy, coral Springs, st Petersburg there could be many different cities and they do comparisons to them, which is good. There's a whole science behind that. But with a very unique job like communications, we like to, and we have been trying for a long time to use local comparables. Even though the Lee County Sheriff's Office or Lee Control for EMS, or City of Fort Myers or Naples, their cities are not as large as ours, so they're not a comp on a big 2,000 employee pay scale for the city. They are very comparable for a small group like Dispatch, but it doesn't work when you're doing collective bargaining, so what we're able to do is get them carved out. They're still in that labor group but we were able to get them their own separate little unit if you would and be able to have the freedom and be nimble, to do comparisons not just to these other comparable large cities and get pay where we may be competitive with St Lucie or we may be competitive with Coral Springs, but we are severely behind the market locally. We may be competitive with Coral Springs, but we are severely behind the market locally. Right, and when you talk about all politics is local, all recruiting and retention is local.
Speaker 1:So what was happening is we had professional people that would come to work here and they didn't have to take their kids out of school, they didn't have to leave their home, they didn't have to abandon help with child care to go across the bridge and get the same type of job for more money. And that became a real problem. And when we would go for contracts we weren't comparing against those true competitors for that job. So a lot of work went into it.
Speaker 1:It's not an easy lift when you're doing stuff with collective bargaining. But we were able to successfully do that on Wednesday night. The city council approved that move and then we were able to then take that small group, do a true comparison to our local comps and get them to a very competitive salary. So it's great for the people that work here now because there's no incentive or less incentive to say, well, I'm just going to go five miles away and make more money doing the same job. There's no inconvenience of, like I said, changing schools or moving or abandoning help If you have help if you're a single parent.
Speaker 1:you have help from your parents or you could be a secondary income in the home your spouse isn't able to, you know, fulfilled. So we're now competitive to retain the awesome talent that we have and, equally as important, attract new talent.
Speaker 1:Absolutely so you can be a career dispatcher and make career money, and it's also a fantastic entry into the pipeline if you eventually want to be a police officer. But let's say you're in that 18 to 21 year age group where you cannot be a police officer, but that's where you want to be. You can get in work with the city, work in our culture, learn the job and be compensated competitively and then you may decide that, no, this is the career I want. That's now an option, and if you still want to fulfill your goal and be a police officer, you're in the pipeline. So it was just a tremendous effort by a lot of people the human resources department, the finance department, our folks, everybody coming together that had their eye on the prize and it's a pretty proud day.
Speaker 2:That's awesome and you know, we have had people who have started in dispatch and then moved into the police role when they were able to whether it was an age thing or whether it was a you know, whatever the situation was that they decided to kind of change to the police path. So that is definitely possible and this is such a big win because you mentioned keeping our own talent. I mean these people, the work that they do is so unique compared to the rest of the union that they're involved with. And you think of even the call this week where we had that car that went into the pond of water. There is a dispatcher who took that call, worked through, you know, talking to the person who's on scene, who's witnessing all of this. You know the coordination of the officers that respond and having to deal with all that it weighs a lot on a person, and so it's great to see that the compensation is matching the level of work that they put in.
Speaker 1:Right it's. They are the first first responders and they they answer the call. They're hearing the gruesome details, they're working right alongside the first responders on the scene and then when you hear the end result, it's just as traumatic. They're included in our critical stress debriefing situations. It's a real professional job and part of it's financial, but a big part of it, I think, if you'll ask them, is dignity as well. For sure, Absolutely so. It's a big win.
Speaker 2:It's great news and hopefully this will help, you know, bring more people in who want to take on that job. It's a it's definitely rewarding. We just had telecommunicators week not too long ago, so I was down there kind of interviewing different people and a lot of them were saying you know the reason they continue to do it is just how rewarding it is. So you know, being able to serve the community in that way. So for anyone who's interested, you can go to the Cape Cops website, capecopscom, fill out an application. We'd love to have you Absolutely, and we've had a lot of changes within our department. You've been busy, you and the two deputy chiefs. You guys have been busy. A lot of our staff that's involved in the succession process as well. There's been a series of promotions and more to come.
Speaker 1:More to come. In a growing organization we're approaching 500 people. When you talk sworn officers and professional staff, that's a big group and a lot of people with a lot of people, you have a lot of timelines. So there's retirements that happen, there's growth that happens and when those two things come together it creates a lot of opportunity. And we recently had a promotion process, or a testing process, evaluation process if you will, for some executive staff positions. Phil Van Lanshoot retiring recently.
Speaker 1:We were able to find his replacement, I'm proud to announce Deputy Chief Matt Campion. Over 20 years on the department, multiple assignments, a recent grad of the FBI National Academy, the preeminent preparatory school for advancement in executive leadership. So he's joined as a deputy chief and his promotion because he elevated from captain created a void. We needed a captain and we had two retirements that happened several months ago. So we wanted to combine them and do one process to get three Okay and we put really talented people through a rigorous process and three people have emerged.
Speaker 1:We have Captain William. Rosario is going to be taking over our Investigative Services Bureau, our detective division, if you will. Captain Julie Green came from patrol and excelled in the process and now she's going to be taking over our professional standards, excelled in the process and now she's going to be taking over a professional standards which is recruiting, hiring, training, internal affairs, accreditation and policy. It's just the HR function of our department and it's really exciting for her because we are in that pedal to the metal growth phase where we've we're onboarding more than we ever have. So the recruiting is so pivotal and I can't think of a better person to lead that area.
Speaker 1:And if you meet her and sit down with her, you're going to go to capecopscom and join. Oh yeah, and Captain Brian Kearney, who is going to be leading our patrol bureau, which is our biggest bureau when you think of the police, you think of that bureau and just dynamite. He's got a fantastic resume. A big trainer on our department worked in our community services bureau for school resource when we launched that program, so he was pivotal in developing what it is today, the success that we have today and the training, the very nuanced training for that type of a role, Just great leadership ability, great followership and I'm excited for what's going to happen down in patrol and then by all of them elevating. There are voids where they were. So we have some people in acting roles until we do a large promotional process in August.
Speaker 1:So that's coming really quick. So that will be lieutenants for backfill. We have new lieutenants in the budget because we are growing kind of wider, so there's more units, that span of control, so there's opportunities for that. And when those lieutenants get promoted they come from the sergeant ranks. So there'll be voids in the sergeant ranks and we have the backfill there and then new positions for sergeant. So there's a lot of movement for that. And then where those sergeants come from. A lot of them come from specialized assignments, so people in patrol or in other parts of the building have the opportunity to move into new roles. So it's very exciting. Even if you're not the one who's getting promoted or on the eligibility list to be promoted, there's opportunity for you and there's excitement and a buzz and it's almost like a holiday season around here when we do promotions, and years ago when I started, there would be a promotional process and you might get one or two, and now we're double digits on every list.
Speaker 1:So it's really exciting and I can't wait for it.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's really awesome. It's interesting too, cause when I started, at the end of 2023, you guys had just gone through a big year of promotions, then 2024, it was kind of quiet. We had, you know, maybe a handful, and then this year, 2025, we're back out swinging. So it seems like almost like an every other year kind of thing.
Speaker 1:It is.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's busy, well, awesome. Anything else you want to cover today?
Speaker 1:No, maybe we'll dry out a little bit. We needed the rain. I'm glad we got it, but it'd be nice to have a sunny weekend.
Speaker 2:I would love that Absolutely. Well, thank you so much for another wonderful podcast and thank you all for joining us. We will catch you next time. Have a good one.
