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Police departments in many communities across the
United States say they are facing a serious manpower
shortage
and attracting new recruits is
not as easy as it used to be.
Police officer Reggie Brown is on patrol in Oakland, California,a
city notorious for its crime rate. After 18 years, Brown says the job has
become routine. When he started, he loved the excitement. "It was
everything you could dream of!" he recalls. "I mean you get to drive fast,
chase folks, put people in jail. It was like, you know, on a nightly basis
there was plenty of action back then."
The promise of such thrills had young people like him lining up for
police work 20 or 30 years ago. But, as Miami Police Department spokesman
Delrish Moss notes, things have changed. "When I grew up, you wanted to be
a police officer, an astronaut or president of the United States. I don't
hear those three on the top of the list anymore."
Finding young people who are eager and qualified to train as police
officers has gotten tougher in many cities. Of 20 big city and county
police departments contacted by this reporter, 17 -- ranging from Los
Angeles to Dallas to Washington, D.C. -- said they are having difficulty,
or expect to have difficulty, meeting their recruitment targets. They
point to several reasons: higher education standards for recruits,
aggressive counter-bids from the military and government security agencies
and competition from private business as the economy picks up .
"Most of us are seeing that our
pools of applications have dwindled down," says Mary Ann Viverette,
president of the International Association of Chiefs of Police. "Where we
might have used to got 300 applicants for one position," she explains,
"now you may only get 50 to 75."
To make matters worse, police departments are losing a larger
percentage of their staff than in years past, as veteran officers who are
part of the baby boom generation begin to retire.
In the San Diego Sheriff's office,the Lieutenant Mike Barletta
says,despite the a recruiting blitz last year,they had a net gain of only
15 deputies. They are short 260 officers. "It's coming
to a head that our deputies are really experiencing exhaustion. In
the past we used to have to fight the deputies off [because so many
wanted] to work overtime. We've reached a point where we are now ordering
deputies to work overtime."
Other cities are also short-handed.
And the rivalry for new recruits is so intense, some are trying to lure
experienced officers away from other communities offering thousands of
dollars in signing bonuses or housing benefits. Other measures are more
imaginative. Oakland, California has lowered the cyclone fence trainees
have to jump from 2 to 1-1/2 meters. The Los Angeles Police Department is
holding recruitment seminars in churches and at meetings of minorities and
even gay activist groups.
But the young people in the target audience say more than just speeches
and handouts may be needed to steer them toward a career in law
enforcement.
Rick Romas speaks at the Administration of Justice class at Contra
Costa College in Northern California in preparing students to be probation
officers, investigators and cops. Rhonda Roberts hopes to become a prison
guard. She says many of her peers wouldn't consider becoming a police
officer, mainly because of the negative image the job has these days,
thanks to media coverage of cops who've broken the law with unjustified
arrests or rough handling of citizens. "I think that children are seeing
more corrupt officers on the news," she explains, "and that the police are
more on trial. And a lot of people don't want to get into that."
Not that such images hinder everyone. Fellow student Michael Hernandez
is taking his own stand. He plans to be a police officer. "I don't like
what's become of my community," he says. "It bothers me how, you know,
some people are afraid to walk in the streets. If I can make the slightest
difference in one person's life that's fine enough for
me."
Hernandez graduates this year. He should have no problem
getting a job. | 
