EP 39: The Police Recruitment Problem (And Solutions?)
It's a nationwide issue weighing on police departments of all sizes: the lack of good, qualified applicants when police chiefs seek to hire officers. Salary concerns, public scrutiny, the inherent dangers, long hours and the need for wholehearted commitment are just a few factors stressing the profession. And there's more. To get a handle on it, we talk with an expert and visit with police officials who recently changed their own agency's hiring approach expressly to turn things around. Did it work? (Oh, and after the serious talk, we have a few more names to add to our ongoing list of Best Fictional Mayors.) Show notes: ADDED 12/4/17, crazy New Zealand police recruitment video - https://youtu.be/f9psILoYmCc Hartford Courant, "Lack of Qualified Applicants Forced Delay in Adding Cops to City Force" - http://www.courant.com/community/hartford/hc-hartford-police-classes-20170127-story.html Washington Post (2006), "Police Finding it Hard to Fill Jobs" - http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/03/26/AR2006032600995.html The Forecaster, "Call for help: Southern Maine police department jobs going vacant" - http://www.theforecaster.net/call-for-help-police-department-jobs-going-vacant/ The Balance, "Why Police Departments are Facing Recruitment Problems" - https://www.thebalance.com/why-police-departments-are-facing-recruitment-problems-974771 Governing, "WANTED: Police for Hire, Minorities Encouraged" - http://www.governing.com/columns/smart-mgmt/gov-police-hiring-recruitment-minorities.html The Pantagraph, "Challenge remains in hiring minority, female police officers" - http://www.pantagraph.com/news/challenge-remains-in-hiring-minority-female-police-officers/article_36979ced-346a-53a9-9ede-c8c2e37872a0.html Burlington, NC recruitment video - http://burlingtonnc.gov/1126/Employment-Opportunities Police Foundation, "Recruiting, Selecting, and Retaining Law Enforcement Officers" - https://www.policefoundation.org/recruiting-selecting-and-retaining-law-enforcement-officers/ Southern City (2016), "Rebuilding Trust: Law Enforcement Leaders, Legislators Talk Modern Issues with Police and Public" - https://www.nclm.org/programs-services/publications/southern-city/2016/2016-09/Pages/RebuildingTrust.aspx#.WhxThSNzKUl Mayor Lenny - http://ghostbusters.wikia.com/wiki/Mayor_Lenny
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Transcript
On this episode of Municipal Equation.
This crisis
is seemingly looming. So we struggled with, just getting quality
candidates. I wanna offer you maybe $38,000 a year to come and work twelve hour shifts, nights, weekends, holidays.
Not only our agency is struggling to, hire new officers, but
they are also struggling with retaining the officers that they already have. How long do you have to wear a bulletproof vest all the time because people are crazy? And we thought we have got to do something. This is a waste of our time and money and effort. Police departments all over the nation are struggling to find qualified candidates to be police officers, which is obviously a huge issue. We talk about it, and we connect with a police official who might have found a way to turn things around. My name is Ben Brown, and this is Municipal Equation, a podcast about cities and towns and changing times from the North Carolina League of Municipalities, episode 39. Oh, and at the end, we got a couple more submissions for the best fictional mayors of all time, so stick around for
that.
Alright. So I'm going to google.com right now, and I'm gonna type into the search field, police can't find qualified candidates to hire. Okay. We get 2,230,000 results. Of course, there's gonna be some false hits in there, probably a lot of false hits, just based on what I typed, but right off the bat, there's an avalanche of newspaper headlines from around the country. One here says, NOPD struggles to bring on new cops as force dwindles. Another one right below it says, lack of qualified applicants forced delay in adding cops to city force. Another one here says few recruits meet Glendale PD demands. Omaha Police Union says it's facing hiring crisis, and on and on and on, with almost all of these headlines dating from within the past three or four years. And there's a lot of them. And it's not like I just dreamed up a problem and confirmed it by finding matching results on Google. I mean, it's it's pretty well established that this is a big deal. So last year, my employer, the North Carolina League of Municipalities, held a police issues forum. And we actually used a lot of content from that for episode six about the troubled relationship between cops and the rest of the public. And in part of that conversation, a guy named John Gregory, he's the director of the Basic Law Enforcement Training or BLET, program at Wake Tech Community College. He said that over the previous year, there are more than 20 programs across the state that had to cancel their BLET programs per a lack of students. So there's not a very big wood pile for police chiefs to pick from when it's time to hire. And if you can't hire, then just like in any business, the existing staff feels stress and pressure. And of course, that's not the only stress around police these days. Now police face a lot of criticism following individual and separate, but similar, incidents between officers and civilians, particularly the police shootings that have received so much attention over the past few years. And you know all about the pain and outcry that follows those incidents.
How concerned are each of you that we are in a vicious cycle now? This is Jacksonville, North Carolina mayor pro tem, Michael Lazara, the League of Municipality's president. Now with public focus on what we would all agree are tragic encounters. Fewer people are willing to go into this profession. In that, it becomes more difficult to hire well qualified officers. What's the way out of that situation? How do we get out of it?
Alright. Here's Garner, North Carolina police chief Brandon Zudama.
It's absolutely an issue, but we need to enhance our applicant pools, so that we can then hire a good, diverse workforce as representative of the community we serve. We struggle to find minority and female candidates, particularly minority and female candidates that are qualified. And I don't have a great answer to that. It is absolutely getting more difficult, I think, than it has been. You know, I I tell people, here's my sales pitch. And we do okay in terms of, I think, salary. So my sales pitch is I wanna offer you maybe $38,000 a year to come and work twelve hour shifts, nights, weekends, holidays. I want you to have to wear a bulletproof vest all the time because people are crazy. I want you to have to sometimes go from doing nothing in a day to two seconds later be involved in a pursuit or a fight for your life. And not only now today, we all know that we respectfully are the folks that run towards the danger when others run away. I've said for a long time there's something not quite exactly right about anybody that'll do this. But we've always understood that and we went into that not happy about it, but you knew that. But now you also have to warn your candidates if you're truthful, that not only you have to be concerned about potentially giving you life to protect the life of another, but you have to be careful at the gas pumps because there's people sniping and murdering police officers. Part of my question, who the hell's gonna do that? It's incredibly difficult task to ask someone to do. We have a long way to go in terms of selling this profession. Now there's a lot to do So that's a pretty frank setup. Right? And it gives you the idea that recruitment probably isn't the only issue here. It's retention too.
To be clear, this is not an entirely new issue. Matter of fact, when I did that Google search, the first result was a Washington Post story from March 2006 about this very thing. The second sentence said More than 80% of the nation's 17,000 law enforcement agencies, big and small, have vacancies that many can't fill, police officials estimate. Quote, I was just at a conference of police chiefs, said William Bratton, the chief of police in Los Angeles, which has 720 openings. It was all everybody was talking about, end quote. So let's go ahead and list out some of the identified barriers, the apparent reasons why police departments aren't getting the applicants they want or getting enough applicants at all. I am a career law enforcement officer. I spent close to twenty five years with the Statesville Police Department in North Carolina. This is Tom Anderson. He's a police specialist at the League of Municipalities, and he knows this issue inside and out per his previous career. My my last seven years, as the police chief there. This, we'll we'll call it a a crisis. I don't know if that's too dramatic of a word. Why are we facing this, recruitment and retention problem?
Well, I think, the word crisis, depending on where you are located, is very, applicable. And and that's one thing that I've noticed depending on where I am at in North Carolina, the needs are are are greater than than other locations. I've I've been with a few agencies that, have been very successful in in maintaining a a good level of staffing, whereas I've been another agency where they are struggling and every day is is a is another continuation of that struggle. Mhmm. And, you know, the hiring good qualified applicants to serve your department and and to provide public safety for your community, that that is the number one job of a police chief. And probably when you look at all of the, you know, the moving parts of what a police chief does, I don't know that there's any one, part of it that's more important because Mhmm. The the hiring decision will follow you throughout your career as well as a chief because you're either right. You're either hiring a problem solver or you're hiring a potential future problem that the agency will have to deal with. And and it it it's it's critical. But at the same time, this crisis is seemingly looming. And, you know, just, you know, looking outside of North Carolina, this looks to be a trend that's that that is a pack impacting agencies across the country, where not only are agencies struggling to, hire new officers, but they are also struggling with retaining the officers that they already have. I would say that there's probably not one just major common denominator, but I think it's more related to a lot of overlapping issues and challenges that are happening at the same time. It's it's almost like a a crossroads of a of a variety of factors. I I think first and foremost, you know, just look at the nature of the work. It it is dangerous. In a lot of areas, the salaries are are very low and it is is, that's part of the challenge. And when you couple that with mass media, the news cycle, and continued coverage of the dangerousness of the job, I I think that, with today's society being as informed and educated as they are, they're thinking through it a little bit deeper than maybe my generation did. There's there's more of a of a an availability of resources to be able to do that.
Tom pointed out the improved employment rates and job opportunities these days in the private sector. So if you've got the heart to be a police officer or some other kind of public servant, you've also got options. And in in a lot of cases,
options are, you know, less dangerous for higher pay. And, you know, the things that attracted me to the profession might not also attract the new generation to the profession like a retirement system and those longer term benefits. So, you know, there's there's a lot of moving parts with this. The trend is that it looks like it it will continue to be a challenge. And I I think we're at that crossroads also where we've got to be thinking further outside the box and what we can do different as compared to, you know, yesterday and last year.
So a hugely scrutinized public position requiring highly specialized skills ready to be used in truly dangerous environments.
Yep. And, you know, it takes a special type of person to to go into policing. I mean, that it it is a position with a lot of stressors. It is a dangerous job. And, you know, the national spotlight, you know, for the last couple years have have highlighted a lot of those, areas of risk. And it's not just about arresting people. It's not just about enforcement. A large part of what an officer does is related to quality of life issues. You know, just just your day to day citizen interactions. And it it it takes a special person to be able to put on that different hat depending on the situation. And, you know, that's why, I say from the police chief's, you know, point of view, it's it's very important. It is critically important you get it right and you and you get that right person in the agency. It is not a job for everybody. It's a it's a never ending process, as far as staffing and trying to retain. And and, again, it's gonna continue to be, a challenge.
Also worth pointing out about police recruitment is it can take a long time to get through the application process because it has to be rigorous and serious. You know, as a chief, I saw where we had lost applicants
to other agencies based on how long our process was, not just to other agencies, but to the private sector because it can take, gosh, three to four months in some cases to do a background and go from application to, the job offer just depending on, you know, the the extent of that background investigation. Right. And that that is a long time for an applicant to wait for a job and a paycheck. And the private sector is very quick to to recognize that and Right. You know, take advantage of that time period. So a lot of competition between, you know, the public and the private sectors as far as, you know, availability of jobs and and and salaries.
And and that that that's the retention piece too where, you know, you can you can be on the job for, you know, a a couple years, get some get a a degree of expertise enough to carry it somewhere else if you wanted to to where a private employer says, like, hey, you know, we have an opening. It's it's perfect for you. You've got some experience here. We're gonna pay you $10,000 more per year. Right. I'm kinda making up that figure, but, I mean, I I could see that playing out that way. And and I can also tell you from experience,
in working with agencies across the state, the retention piece is huge. You've got a lot of officers that are leaving through retirement or just going into the private sector or separating for a variety of other internal issues, or reasons, at the same time that agencies are trying to staff. And, you know, I've worked with one agency that had 20 openings, at one point, and and this was, an agency of less than a 100 officers. When you have 20 openings with a 100 officer agency, you know, that that is a fifth of your workforce. Yeah. Yeah. You know, that further strains the existing staffing and and, you know, because the job still has to be done whether, you know, you're full staffed or half staffed. We've got the police to communities and provide that level of service as if nothing had changed, and that's a further stress, more strain on those officers. So, you know, that can impact the retention piece as well.
About a month ago, Tom Anderson and I went out to the Chapel Hill, North Carolina Police Department because we'd gotten word that they were doing things a bit differently, intentionally, to try and not only recruit more qualified people to be police officers, but also to keep them. So while taking notes, I had a little voice recorder on the table. We hired, what, we hired five? And within three days, two had either decided it wasn't for them. Yeah. This is assistant chief of police, Salisa Lehiu.
And we thought we have got to do something. This is a waste of our time and money and efforts, and, you know, we're not getting good products. So we literally scrapped the whole process. I started from fresh. So we struggled with, just getting quality candidates. We just were not getting the amount that we had had in the past. We were doing all the same things, but the candidate pool was becoming less and less and less. And, the other problem was that we weren't having people successfully get through BLET. So it was a real struggle just to staff the vacancies that we had due to retirement or, you know, movement out of law enforcement. We did see a kind of an increase in that. So, you know, it was a it was a really tough time to find the the quality or those people that we were looking for to fill those positions. So we decided we had to do something a little bit different, and we looked at our whole hiring process and BLAT program as a whole. And in years past, we partnered with Durham Tech, which is our local community college, and sent either host it here and or sent our students to a BLAT around the county. And what we found was first that we were in competition with the hiring cycles. Right? BLAT academies were coming up and every agency within the county or this surrounding area were all fighting for the same candidates.
So there's a blaring issue, at least for police departments here.
The bullpen of potential future officers fills at the same time. So you've got police departments all at once going for the same limited group of people. We didn't see that pool of candidates coming out that, you know, had been spa sponsored and looking for positions. Most were were hired by an agency already and finishing out their, you know, the pro their BLT program and moving on to their field training program. As well, we weren't doing a good job reaching, you know, as as kind of a national we weren't encompassing everybody nationally. We were advertising old style.
Old style meaning not the most direct way to reach people these days. For example, the Chapel Hill Police Department was trying to engage people at things like job fairs. And so what we did is the other assistant chief and I sat down every intern that we could put our hands on, and we interviewed them and said,
you know, what what are you looking for? What do you wanna hear? Where do we where do we reach you? How do we go out and find? And and those were not just interns within criminal justice. We really did kind of a broad, overview of of students and interns. And what we heard was, you know, we don't go to job fairs. We look online, we look at social media, or we sit down one on one and have a conversation with somebody. So the the, you know, the whole culture had kinda changed, and we hadn't changed with it.
So the takeaway was that these young prospective applicants were not interested in the cold, impersonal details about the requirements and all the checkpoints they had to go through to become a police officer, at least not as the upfront recruitment pitch. While being a cop is obviously a very serious job, it's not desirable with any line of work to get chills on the front end. What these people wanted was to hear about how they personally fit in, the big picture, the community, the good things that might happen if they apply for this job. I don't wanna hear that you're 21. I don't wanna even hear what you have to offer salary wise. I want you to tell me
what the community what what I would get out of it. And so it was kind of a different approach than what we had been using. You know, we had we'd always advertised you have to be 21. You know, this is the test that you have to pass to get here. This is our starting salary. You know, we didn't explain what, you know, kind of what this, you know, the involvement of the community and how engaged we were. So So the Chapel Hill PD reached out to its partners, like the community college, local churches, and so on, and they arranged an open house. And we advertised it using just social media. We targeted certain times and certain age groups,
and we just pushed it and pushed it. They put some money behind it too. And when it came time, they held two open houses, which were really well attended. It involved all kinds of faces from the Chapel Hill PD to explain what they did and their jobs and what they got out of it, what the rewards were. They even created a connection with the town itself. We loaded them all on a city bus and gave them a tour of the university and the town and, you know, all of those kind of hot spots, invited them back for lunch. They interacted with our patrol officers or whoever was in the building at the time. And then after the good impression is made, they went into the sort of nuts and bolts of the hiring process.
And, then we offered them a chance to sit down with the HR rep and reply right then. And we had a overwhelming response.
It's worth noting that families were invited as well. And they had one applicant who's actually in the department's academy right now tell them that the open house is why she decided to apply with the Chapel Hill Police Department versus that of a different city that she had more desired. Another thing, they totally streamlined their application process, Where it used to take six to eight months to get through before, which, by the way, was another aggravating factor, they changed it to last about six to twelve weeks. And then they kept in touch with the applicants to keep that personal connection. Instead of leaving them in the dark, someone with the PD would contact the applicants on a regular basis to let them know where things were. That was that was that was big. You know?
Lieutenant Nate Chambers. Letting them know the next steps and know what's coming up next. Getting them prepared for what's next. So they feel like they're part of the process. They don't feel like they're out in the cold or in the dark or anything like that. Yeah.
They had emails and cell phones of, both the lieutenant and the sergeant within that training division. So anytime I had a question, they were free to call.
Sorry. The heating system kicked on right there, so it's a little bit noisy. But without getting into every single detail, they streamlined things wherever they could for the benefit of the applicant. They also set up a community panel, an audience for the applicants to explain why they wanted to serve the town of Chapel Hill. It gave them more of a chance to think about it, get personal, and connect with the community and what it is. Ultimately, they felt really good about the 16 people they hired. The number of people who applied, 1,300. Now remember retention is an issue too. This is a few months ago. All 16 are still on the job.
Which is, again, an accomplishment because usually within the first week, you drop them. Yeah. But all 16 are still here. It was also one of the most diverse applicant pools they've seen.
Lieutenant Chambers. You know, male, female, ethnicity, and race, and stuff like that. It's one of the biggest groups I've seen. Yeah. How's that been a challenge in the past in terms of,
the diversity of applicants over the past, you know, handful of years? There it has that been a challenge? It has been a challenge. We just hadn't had the applicants, and we just were not coming up with a diverse pool. And the funny thing is, this time around, they didn't do anything different to attract diversity. They just improved their engagement overall. And another thing, these changes weren't just to benefit young people. They got more older applicants as well, meaning the department is really diversifying its skill sets and experiences.
You know, we talk a lot about, in this culture, policing about de escalation and community engagement. And I think you really, are able to tap into different skills, you know, when you have that more of a diverse age
group. So thinking on the future, what if all agencies, all police agencies changed their hiring practices as such? Does that create a new baseline for recruitment and a new evened out level of competition? Are police agencies gonna be competing with each other again? Does it give the public sector an overall new strength in hiring as the private competition stacks up? What new factors might develop that continue this hiring challenge? A lot of questions. Here's Tom Anderson.
Right. And, you know, the next three and five years down the road are are gonna bring more challenges to this conversation.
Yeah. What do you think's ahead?
Well, I I I do think that this is gonna continue to trend. I I think that, the availability of, you know, social media and and, again, that that twenty four seven news cycle, I I think it has almost a force multiplying effect on, you know, news coverage and local issues because, you know, when an when an officer is injured or killed in the line of duty in, you know, whatever town USA, that is now national news versus a local story. Right. You know? So I I think that that will continue to be the trend where we are getting inundated with some of the negatives that that you see. Oh, you know, the civil unrest that's that's continuing to take place. And, you know, I also teach for a couple of universities on the side and have had, you know, pretty significant conversations with students that are in criminal justice programs who are now rethinking their degree programs and rethinking Wow. What they are wanting to do when they graduate. Wow. And, you know, that that wasn't the trend when I was in college. I I went, got my criminal justice degree because this is my profession. This is where I'm gonna stay, and this is I want that to enhance, you know, my mobility in the profession. Now pre graduation, I'm seeing where students are thinking about changing majors and or even with the criminal justice degree, not necessarily using it in policing. So that that is something new that, I'm starting to to see and and study as well. So may like, take it to the private sector or something? Is is that the goal? Absolutely. Yep. The private security sector is is growing quicker than the public safety sector. Wow. And and and that that's that's not just observation. It's just based on research. The the private sector is growing in many ways faster than the public safety sectors. It's a it's a lot to think about. I mean, this could be broken into, like, 10 different episodes. And these are the these are the things your average police chief thinks about all the time. You know, it's it's every day is a new day, and, you know, it it's a it's a it's a it's a huge mandate.
But in the context of police service, cops demonstrating their commitment, doing good for the community. Chief Zoutama, who we heard from earlier, thinks that positive casting is something that can help to dissolve the recruitment challenge.
Selling this profession now. There's a lot to be sold. I try to talk about maybe different states, with our folks because I believe not every day, but a lot of days you can go home knowing that you made a difference for someone. Maybe it's a power officer, maybe it's someone in the community. So there are many different states. We need to highlight those. We need to settle the positive. We need to do a better job of interacting with the community and seeking that support. I think over the past two months, I can't tell you the number of Gables that have been delivered and cookies that have been delivered and snacks that have been delivered, so the community needs more.
Coincidentally, as I was outlining this episode, I got a press release from the city of Burlington, North Carolina about a police recruitment video they put out, and it's pretty clever. It's dramatized. An officer responds to a domestic situation after a young boy calls 911. The officer tells the kid he did well, gives him a good impression, then tells the kid he should think about becoming a cop when he grows up. Billy Smith. So fast forward ten years later, he indeed becomes a cop, and then he himself responds to a situation you have here 891. Where a young girl had called 911. And when this boy turned cop sees her, he says Have you ever thought about being a police officer?
Not really.
Maybe you should give it some thought. I think you could do it at it.
Right. I'll have a link to that in the show notes along with a gazillion news stories from the past few years about the recruitment problem. As for Chapel Hill, a written version of what they did will be in the next issue of Southern City Magazine. And when that comes out, I'll update the show notes with that link. Soundcloud.com/municipalequation. Alright. We have a couple more additions to our list, our ongoing list of best fictional mayors. Please keep them coming. For this time around, Craig Walters, from parts unknown, said Lenny from Ghostbusters, and I can't believe no one suggested him the last time around. I think my favorite thing about him is that we only know him as Lenny, just Lenny, the mayor of New York. And speaking of being on a one name basis, the Ghostbusters Wiki points out that, quote, he was also a Catholic and valued the advice of the archbishop, whom he called Mike. Thanks, Craig, for suggesting mayor Lenny. K. Chris Rogers of Charleston, South Carolina said the Back to the Future mayor, which I'll take as mayor Goldie Wilson, who had some popularity behind him on the last episode. Thank you, Chris. And then appropriate to this time of year, Anne Watson of Montpelier, Vermont suggests this guy.
It's a citizen to see you, mister mayor. Citizen?
They're not allowed in here. This is public property. I don't know if we ever get his name, but he's the mayor from the 1974 animated version of Twas the Night Before Christmas. That clip we just heard was from a questionable closed door city council meeting. Anne writes, quote, oddly enough, now I'm running for the mayor of Montpelier, Vermont. I can only hope to be nothing like this guy.
Thanks, Anne Watson. My favorite submission this time around. This one says he has an answer to our problem. Then show him in. Show him in.
Email me at bbrown@nclm.org if you have any to add or you wanna voice your support for one of the mayors we've already covered. Best fictional mayors. And feel free to get obscure with it too. One more time, bbrown@nclm.org. NCLM stands for North Carolina League of Municipalities, the membership organization that brings you this podcast. But here's also to reminding you that this podcast is not restricted to or about North Carolina. It's about all cities and towns in changing times because there are good ideas all over the place that we can copy and paste in other areas where they might work. So if you have a good topic for a show, a good idea, please let me know. Again, bbrown@nclm.org, or you can get me on Twitter. The handle is at muni equation. That's at m u n I equation. Follow on Instagram. Subscribe on iTunes. Leave us a friendly review. Keep the conversation flowing. Again, we're gonna have a fluctuating schedule over the holiday period, but we've got a lot planned ahead. So keep in touch. We'll talk to you soon. This is Ben Brown. Mister mayor and honorable councilman,
I think we all know what the problem is. We have concluded that for reasons unknown, mister Claus, Santa that is, has taken an unconscionable attitude of hostile retaliation toward, oh, heck. He's mad at us.
