BATON ROUGE — Some Baton Rouge Police Department officers have raised concerns about what they call fine print attached to their recent pay raises, but Police Chief TJ Morse says those officers are misinformed.

The WBRZ Investigative Unit heard from a handful of members of the department who expressed worry that the new pay system will reduce their veteran status.

When the Metro Council approved a minimum 15 percent raise last month, it also restructured the department's pay step system to adjust for the increase.

"What the council voted on was a completely different pay step scale," Morse said.

The way it works now is that an officer's position on the new scale may look lower than before, but the pay attached to it is higher.

"If you're at pay step 15 now, you might be at pay step six, but pay step six is at least 15 percent higher than pay step 15 was," Morse said.

Some officers say that part was not disclosed or made clear to them. Morse said prior to the vote, Metro Council members had one-on-one conversations with the finance department and the mayor's office, where they could ask any questions they wanted.

While there are no other benefits attached to each pay step, the system does reflect how long an officer has been with the department. When asked whether a pay step carries a sense of pride, Morse said it is simply a number that reflects an officer's hourly rate.

Morse said the restructuring also benefits higher-ranking employees.

"Sergeants, lieutenants that are maxed out at pay step 19 — they're not getting any more pay raises until they're able to make rank, which could be years, so with them resetting, going down and us going up to 21 pay steps, they're going to be able to get those miniature increases every January," Morse said.

The Baton Rouge police union president, Brandon O'Neal, said the union is totally on board with the raises and the pay step adjustments.