Desperate Police Departments Luring New Cops With Huge…

As law enforcement agencies across the country suffer from record waves of resignations and retirements in the wake of the left’s ‘defund’ movement, police departments have resorted to showering new hires in cash – doling out tens of thousands of dollars in signing bonuses to attract recruits.

Redding, CA police chief Bill Schueller was having trouble attracting new cops last year after raising signing bonuses from $5,000 to $7,500 – so this year he raised the offer to $40,000 – more than half of a year’s starting salary at the agency, the Wall Street Journal reports.

The outsize bonus was necessary, he said, to recruit experienced officers in a line of work that has lost its popularity. After nationwide protests over the 2020 murder of George Floyd by a Minneapolis police officer, Mr. Schueller said, “the negative attention brought to law enforcement really started people thinking that maybe this isn’t the job for me. “

Law-enforcement agencies across the U.S. have said they are facing staffing shortages as resignations and retirements rise. The tight labor market is compounding what police chiefs describe as waning interest from job seekers amid heightened scrutiny of officers’ actions, a less favorable view of the profession by some Americans and a surge in violent crime. -WSJ

Seattle – which has seen more than 460 officers depart over the past 2.5 years, approved $30,000 bonuses for lateral hires and $7,500 for new recruits, while the city of Ithaca, NY is now offering $20,000 for hires from other agencies.

“You’re hard-pressed to think of a time when police departments had to incentivize hiring with bonuses and pay officers to stay on the force,” said Chuck Wexler, the executive director of the Police Executive Research Forum, adding “I haven’t seen that ever.”

In 2021, the average salary for a police officer was $70,740, vs. $58,620 for all occupations, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. This comes after the number of cops dropped nationally in 2020 after rising over the previous decade.

Other agencies have been dropping their standards to fill vacancies – such as Chicago, which dropped its college requirement for some recruits.

Alameda County Sheriff’s Department spokesman Sgt. Ray Kelly said that agencies are hiring officers who washed out during their probationary periods in other departments.

“We’re hiring people we wouldn’t normally hire,” he said, adding that in September his department hired a 24-year-old who had been fired by another police department for falling short of expectations. Last month he was arrested in connection with the murder of a Bay Area couple with his service weapon shortly after he clocked out for the day, according to court documents. The man was fired and is currently being held in jail.

“We’re scraping the barrel,” said Kelly.

Philip Stinson, a professor at Bowling Green State University who studies police misconduct, said research shows that loosening hiring requirements makes it more likely that an officer will have problems down the road.The ultimate danger is you’re hiring people who are just not suited for police work,” he said.

In Redding, a city of 92,000 two hours south of the California-Oregon border, Chief Schueller was struggling earlier this year to fill 15 open spots. He persuaded city leaders that spending $40,000 to attract an experienced officer was a better deal than training a new officer at a cost of more than $75,000. -WSJ

In Redding, the PD has begun advertising the bonus with the tagline: “Come work in a community that supports their police.”

“That’s one of the things we try and sell to applicants,” Chief Schueller told the Journal. “When we were getting George Floyd protests, and we had a few, we were also getting Back the Blue rallies.

via zerohedge

LEAVE A REPLY

Please enter your comment!
Please enter your name here

Subscribe Today

GET YOUR REAL AMERICAN NEWS

Latest News