KNOXVILLE, TN (Story courtesy of WVLT) – Three Knoxville Police Department sergeants are suing the city, claiming they’ve been underpaid ever since the city revamped it’s emergency responder payment plan.

The three sergeants — Barry Scott Coffey, Matthew W. Gentry and James N. Lockmiller — claim in the lawsuit that they were placed on the wrong “step” in the city’s pay scale. As such, they claim they’ve been underpaid for years and are demanding compensation.

The plan was approved by city council and enacted in the city’s 2022 and 2023 budget. It enacted the step-based plan, which places employees of the police department in specific categories that decide how much they take home each year. In some ways, an employee’s “step” corresponds with how long they’ve held their current position; that’s what Coffey, Gentry and Lockmiller have issues with.

“Nevertheless, [the] City of Knoxville, through Mayor Kincannon’s office, has failed to follow the Pay Step Plan as enacted,” the lawsuit reads. “Without notice or an opportunity to be heard, at implementation in July 2022, and each year since, [the city] has placed [Coffey, Gentry and Lockmiller] and other Police Sergeants and Police Lieutenants at arbitrary lower steps.”

Specifically, the suit said Coffey, who has served as a sergeant for 12 years, was placed at Step Two in 2022. Similarly, the suit said Gentry (a sergeants of two years) was placed at Step One and Lockmiller (an 11-year sergeant) had been placed at Step One.

The lawsuit points to a press release from Mayor Indya Kincannon’s office, which said the step plan allowed “uniformed employees to advance each year throughout their careers.”

In previous transitions to step plans, city and county employees have been placed on “steps” that don’t correspond to how long they had served in that position. Instead, employees were placed on an initial “step” that closest fit to their existing salary, pre-transition to the step plan.

That being said, there has been no word from the city explaining how it decided which “step” to originally place employees at. That lack of transparency was one of the problems listed in the suit.

“[Coffey, Gentry and Lockmiller] nevertheless filed grievances essentially requesting (1) that they be properly reclassified under the Pay Step Plan enacted by the City Council, and (2) that they be furnished with the formula, if any, used to determine their current classification,” the lawsuit reads.

It adds that the city refused both requests, saying compensation disputes aren’t the responsibility of the Civil Services Merit Board, the body that oversees the city’s personnel policies.

It’s a similar problem a gang of veteran Knoxville firefighters ran into in January when they filed a similar suit. In that lawsuit, the firefighters claimed the city was underpaying more experienced firefighters.

In all, the three KPD sergeants are asking the city be ordered to pay each of them for the money they claim to have lost since 2022 and place them higher on the scale.

WVLT News reached out to KPD and the City of Knoxville for a statement. A representative for the police department declined to comment; the city has not responded.