AUSTIN, Texas • A recruiting video from the Fort Worth, Texas, Police Department features a look-alike of Star Wars’ Chewbacca. Gimmicky? Perhaps. But it’s gotten nearly 3 million views online, and the department believes it’s helped recruit as many as 50 officers.
In Florida, the Clearwater Police Department hopes to entice potential job candidates with a video that plays at outdoor concerts, this one pitching the coastal region’s surf, sandy beaches and majestic sunsets.
And in Houston, where law enforcement agencies have been steadily losing officers, Harris County Sheriff’s Office deputies drive vehicles inscribed with an online address — HCSOJOBS.COM — to attract potential recruits.
Police departments across the country are scrambling to fill their ranks. The loss of tens of thousands of officers over the past decade has compromised effectiveness and imposed greater demands on those still on the job, according to police officials and outside experts.
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“It makes it much more difficult,” said Bill Johnson, executive director of the National Association of Police Organizations (NAPO), a coalition of unions and associations representing 241,000 police officers across the country. “From the public’s point of view, it’s a risk to public safety, because you have fewer officers out there to respond to calls.”
Among the causes of the officer shortage: a rash of retirements by senior officers from the baby boomer generation, better-paying jobs in the private sector, a robust economy with low unemployment rates and, in many cases, grievances over salary and morale.
The ‘Ferguson effect’
There is also the “Ferguson effect,” a reference to the city that in 2014 exploded in protests over the shooting of an African-American teenager by a white police officer.
The U.S. Justice Department later determined that the officer in Ferguson had acted in self-defense. But that incident and others involving white officers’ shooting unarmed African-Americans have fueled antipathy toward the police, especially among members of minority groups.
Potential applicants might think twice before plunging into a profession that could subject them to scorn, law enforcement officials say. Police officers now feel they are being perceived as “the new bad guy,” according to a 2016 survey by the International Association of Chiefs of Police.
“When you got into this career in our day and age, it was a very popular profession,” said Clearwater Police Chief Dan Slaughter, who has been a policeman for more than a quarter-century. Now, he says, an undetermined number of potential recruits are being “scared away” by a changed environment.
Then there are the dangers of the job: Being an officer means facing the prospect of death or injury on any given day. On-duty law enforcement deaths totaled 144 in 2018, a 12 percent increase over the previous year, according to the National Law Enforcement Officers Memorial Fund.
The number of law enforcement personnel reached a peak of 724,690 in 2013. Police departments lost 23,500 officers over the next three years, according to a 2018 report by the U.S. Bureau of Justice Statistics. Many departing officers counsel friends and family members to find another career path.
“They’re telling their children, ‘Don’t be a police officer,’ ” NAPO’s Johnson said.
Fewer officers means longer response times, heavier caseloads and fewer opportunities to build relationships with area residents. The shortages also result in more overtime shifts, which gives officers a financial boost but can increase stress, fatigue and burnout.
In a survey of about 400 law enforcement agencies, only 12 percent said they were not short on full-time personnel, according to the Police Executive Research Forum, a Washington-based organization. Over 40 percent reported that their personnel shortages had increased over the past five years.
Michael Bullock, 28, a former state legislative aide who has been on the Austin Police Department for a year, said he carefully weighed what he was getting into before he joined the force.
Because of “all the angst toward law enforcement,” he said, “well-meaning friends sometimes asked, ‘Are you sure that’s what you want to do?’”
Focus on recruitment
Recruiting has become an essential mission as police departments, sheriff’s offices and state agencies appeal for potential candidates through virtually every conceivable venue, from billboards to social media. Recruiting teams from larger departments dispatch representatives across the country for weeks at a time to look for job candidates.
St. Louis police Chief John Hayden said his department was about 140 officers short, and the department has expanded its recruiting efforts by advertising on radio as well as increasing the number of job fairs it attends through donations from the St. Louis Police Foundation.
So far, the department’s rejuvenated cadet program has produced 46 cadets, about four or five of whom are expected to join the police academy soon, Hayden said.
At St. Louis County police headquarters in Clayton, the recruitment office was moved to a more prominent and visible location on the main floor.
“We wanted there to be a good image of it in the main hallway, not tucked into the personnel division,” Chief Jon Belmar said.
The county, with help from an anonymous benefactor, also is using a cadet program.
Belmar said he heard from chiefs across the country who were also struggling with recruiting.
“Everybody is having to work harder than we used to, and there’s a smaller group to choose from,” he said.
He said his department was doing less traditional advertising such as billboards and buses, instead turning to social media platforms to plug its perks such as a starting salary of $52,800.
Many police recruiters are focusing on minorities, to more closely match the racial demographics of their areas. They are offering financial incentives to applicants who speak Spanish and recruiting on the campuses of predominantly black and Hispanic universities.
Many also are boosting salaries and benefits, offering signing bonuses, college tuition, take-home vehicles, health club memberships, and, in some cases, student loan forgiveness and child care assistance.
Starting salaries can vary widely, from mid-$30,000s to more than $60,000. Salaries for veteran officers can often exceed $100,000.
The number of racial and ethnic minorities in U.S. police departments nearly doubled over a 26-year period, according to the U.S. Bureau of Justice Statistics, reaching 27 percent of all staff in 2013, up from 15 percent in 1987.
Some police recruiters also are relaxing rules on past drug use, according to a Police Executive Research Forum survey. Tattoos are no longer forbidden at many police departments.
One reliable target for potential recruits is the military, as evidenced by the 20 law enforcement agencies at a January jobs fair at Fort Hood, a large military installation in Central Texas.
Most recruiters were from Texas, but the fair also drew state police agencies from Missouri and Louisiana and a small-town police department from eastern New Mexico.
Hundreds of potential job-seekers, many in military uniform, milled among tables staffed by recruiters and stacked with brochures.
Missouri State Trooper Tony Sandoval sat at a table at the fair. He said that when he confronted uncertainty at recruiting events such as this one, he advised potential candidates that they had an opportunity to change the perception of law enforcement from the inside.
“For some, it becomes a difficult decision whether to get into law enforcement or not,” Sandoval said.
“I tell them, ‘If you want to serve your community, you want to try to make a difference, this is the job for you.’ ”
Christine Byers of the Post-Dispatch contributed to this article.
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