Ken Rhodes, a twenty-seven year detective in the Pueblo, Colorado Police Department, got involved in the IBPO twenty years ago after he and other officers thought their ranks could benefit from some fresh faces in the local. When he was voted president of Local 537 in 1996, he and the local firefighters teamed up to win a referendum changing the city’s charter to allow binding arbitration of their contracts.
“Over the next twelve years, our pay increased 3-1/2 times the original pay,” he said. “Where we’d been paid in the middle of the pack for police in cities of 100,000 or more in Colorado, we moved up to the 98th percentile.”
Although the economy has slowed their progress, he said the gains they made over the years have had a substantial impact on his members. Union involvement is up, too, with executive board members and stewards from shifts around the clock and patrol and investigation divisions.
Ken and his wife Ida are certified state trainers for a child abuse/neglect program and use their vacation days to teach school teachers and counselors how to administer the Good Touch/Bad Touch program. They have two grown children and a new grandson, and collect vintage cars and antiques.
We can either have democracy in this country or we can have great wealth concentrated in the hands of a few; but we can't have both. 
- Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis Quincy, MA 02169
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