Conrad Trezza #1044
My name is Conrad Trezza, and I was a police officer in Florida for 12.5 years before I was hired on with the Irving Police Department on August 11, 2008. I moved to Texas with my wife and my son from Safety Harbor, FL. Safety Harbor is about ten miles west of Tampa. I was originally raised in Conroe, TX as a kid, so my goal was to come back to Texas one day. I started looking into agencies in the DFW area that were taking laterals officers at higher pay for their experience. At that time, Irving accepted lateral police officers who had over 5.5 years of service as an officer and brought them over at their topped out pay. The things that stood out to me about Irving were the pay, the camaraderie of the officers, and how cheap the cost of living was in Texas compared to Florida. Another factor for me was the school system for my son. When I started with Irving in August of 2008, my pay went up by $20,000 from what I was making in Florida, and the cost of what I paid for my first home was half of what I paid in Florida. It surprised me how squared away the department was from day one. I learned that being part of a civil service department is a huge deal and benefit. In 2008 my previous department was going through layoffs and freezing all officer pay raises. It was not a civil service department, so you were getting laid off if you were a new hire with under three years of service. Irving also has a great pension plan with TMRS. TMRS took all my time of service as an officer from Florida. This was a huge deal for me, and no other department I looked at was willing to do this. To date, Irving has been the best police department and job I have ever had. I have been treated with nothing but respect since the first day I started here, and the only regret I have, was not making the move earlier in my career to IPD.
To contact Officer Trezza: ctrezza@cityofirving.org