MIAMI -- Miami-Dade Police Director Robert Parker, who has held the job for the last five years, announced his resignation Friday afternoon.

Parker's letter was issued just hours after Miami-Dade Mayor Carlos Alvarez, a former police director himself, announced that all nonunion Miami-Dade employees would take a 5 percent cut, effective Monday, Nov. 2.

By submitting his resignation on Friday, Parker, 56, saved himself a loss of tens of thousands of dollars, according to sources close to Parker.

A county employee may be paid for unused vacation and sick leave on retirement, and after nearly 34 years with Miami-Dade Police Department, Parker had accumulated time worth a lot of money. His retirement benefits would also have been calculated by his highest pay on his retirement date, and had he waited until the end of the year as he’d planned, his retirement pay would have been considerably lower.

“In reality,” Parker told Local 10 senior political reporter Michael Putney, “the mayor's announcement played a big role in my decision, and I was thinking about retirement anyway.”

Deputy Police Director James Loftus will become interim director of the police agency until Alvarez picks a permanent successor.

Asked what his future plans are, Parker told Putney he’ll take off through the Christmas and New Year’s holidays and then see what develops.