Metro is starting a recruitment effort to help fill the agency’s open transit police positions on the heels of announcing a jump in crime rates andbus operator assaults.
Metro officials declined to discuss how many of the agency’s 423 police officer positions were vacant, but said the transit police had a 5 percent vacancy rate when administrative positions were included.
“It is a challenge to recruit, because you’re dealing with 27 different law agencies in D.C. alone, and then you have the feds and the surrounding states,” said Ronald Pavlik, commander of the Transit Police Recruitment Unit. “The competition is so severe out there it’s unbelievable, because everybody is offering different carrots, so to speak.”
Metro offers a $5,000 signing bonus to transit police recruits and a salary range of $44,609 to $80,062.
Metro officials said this month that riders reported 414 robberies in 2007, a 19 percent jump from 2006.
Metrobus drivers suffered 84 assaults last year as well, the agency said.
Metro’s bus operations chief recently told the board of directors that there would be more plainclothes police officers assigned to bus routes once the agency fills its vacant positions.
There are currently 12 plainclothes officers and one supervisor assigned to the routes.
Pavlik said 19 recruits are enrolled in the transit police’s 39-week training program and that the agency is recruiting at local universities and military installations and has looked as far from D.C. as Ohio.
“We try to stay in the region,” he said. “Traditionally what we’ve found is if you go too far away from someone’s home, they get homesick, and you don’t get a big bang for your buck. The transition is too much for them.”
To be considered, applicants must be 20 years and 9 months old and have no felony convictions and no history of drug use, Pavlik said.
They also must submit to a background check, a psychological and physical evaluation and truth verification test, and pass an oral board interview.
