Police departments across the country are having a hard time retaining and recruiting police officers.
It is especially bad in Gladstone, Missouri.
“This is the worst that it's been for us,” Police Chief Fred Farris told KCUR.
The department is short 14 officers out of 48 authorized positions, or about 30%.
“This isn't something that just happened overnight. This is something that's nationwide been plaguing law enforcement for years,” he said.
The country, and the metro, have seen waves of protests – over Michael Brown’s killing in Ferguson, then George Floyd’s death in Minneapolis – that often put police at odds with demonstrators. The COVID-19 restrictions and shutdowns corresponded with spikes in reckless driving and homicides.
“Now we're going through another whole round of civil unrest,” Farris said. “I came on Kansas City (Police Department) right at about the peak of the civil unrest following Rodney King. That was bad. But I've never seen it like this.”
Last Monday, the Gladstone City Council gave current officers, corporals and sergeants a 7% pay raise, even though the union contract doesn’t expire for another year. It also voted to increase the starting pay for hires from other departments — what police call laterals — by about 9%.
A survey last year from the International Association of Chiefs of Police found that 70% of American police departments say it is harder to recruit now than just five years ago.
Lenexa is authorized for 94 officers and currently has six openings, according to a department spokesman.
The Kansas City Police Department has 1,107 sworn members with 108 open positions, the Board of Police Commissioners heard at their June meeting.
The Kansas Highway Patrol is almost 10% short. KHP is budgeted for 533 troopers, but has 52 open positions, according to a spokesperson.
Still, pay increases weren’t the biggest driver of more applications. Almost 40% of agencies said relaxing restrictions on tattoos brought in the most new candidates, followed by relaxing standards for hair and fingernails.
Ten years ago, the KHP banned all tattoos on troopers. That ban excluded not only younger people but many military veterans. Today, the Patrol has relaxed those standards, but troopers still can’t have body markings on their neck, face and hands. Also banned are all offensive markings including “Pornographic, gang-related, anti-government, racist, or prejudicial content, or depictions of violence,” according to the KHP jobs website.
But money matters. While recruits were somewhat concerned about pay, when it came to retaining veterans, almost half of departments said salary made the difference, according to the IACP survey.
The median salary for police officers is around $72,280, but rookie officers generally make less. Much of what an officer earns is overtime, but many younger workers want to limit their hours. That means jobs with shorter shifts and less overtime.
“Their free time is more important than monetary compensation,” Chuck Wexler, executive director of the Police Executive Research Forum told Governing magazine last year.
It is also a buyers’ market. People who want a policing career have lots of options. “We're all fighting and clamoring for the same relatively small pool of applicants,” Farris said.
Gladstone police are currently able to cover all shifts, but officers are getting extra backup from sheriff’s deputies, according the Clay County Sheriff's Office.
About 65% of departments have reduced services or specialized units “prioritizing essential patrol functions over specialized assignments,” the IACP survey found. That’s what Farris did in Gladstone.
“For a period of time, I had an impact unit, which is a proactive kind of project-oriented policing, community policing, type unit that isn't subject to working calls,” he said. “This specialized unit, that's a luxury. Our primary mission; make sure that we've got cops on the streets. Answer 911.”
