Police departments large and small are struggling to attract new officers after more than a year of negative public sentiment toward law enforcement and an intense focus on police misconduct.
Leaders of police departments nationwide say they can’t fill their academies or overcome rapidly worsening officer shortages as interest in law enforcement careers dwindles to such lows.
In some places, the pandemic compounded the problem by putting police training on hold.
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Philadelphia halted police training in March 2020 and did not resume until June 2021 — exacerbating an officer shortage that has grown to as large as 370 officers, according to Philadelphia Fraternal Order of Police spokesman Mike Neilon.
“While other departments continued to recruit and push through classes at the academies … Philadelphia stopped that process,” Neilon told the Washington Examiner. “So, we’re behind other big-city departments, other suburban police departments, who are kind of going after the same men and women that we would like to pursue. So that challenge has been a real struggle.”
Competition between suburban and city forces has affected jurisdictions nationwide, as police officers weigh the physical danger and unfriendly political environment of some cities against the potentially better experience of working in a suburb.
In Philadelphia, as in much of the country, murders have spiked this year. The city has seen 404 homicides this year to date, according to data from the police department.
“If you’re a young person, male or female, you know, that level of violence is concerning to officers and recruits,” Neilon said.
Some of the same factors driving officers out of the force are giving prospective officers pause about joining, law enforcement leaders say.
In Las Vegas, where the police department said its three academies saw a 57% drop in enrollment between last year and 2019, police leaders partly blamed demoralization in the wake of George Floyd’s murder and ensuing scrutiny for their inability to attract more recruits.
Neilon said the public pressure on police has discouraged some prospective recruits from pursuing law enforcement careers.
“No doubt about it: There’s anxiety within the rank and file of, what is going to happen to them if they make a mistake or something out there in the street happens?” he said.
Some police academies are advancing classes of new recruits in sessions filled well below capacity, as fewer qualified applicants express interest in the process.
In Montgomery County, Maryland — near Washington, D.C. — police reported in June that while the number of applicants for new academy sessions averaged more than 1,000 in recent years, new academy sessions have attracted fewer than 500 applicants.
The department cited the competition for new hires with other Washington-area police forces as a factor in low recruitment.
In St. Louis, the police department typically hires roughly 100 officers by September of each year. However, last September, it had hired just 27 new officers amid difficulties holding training classes during the pandemic, according to the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. This year, the department hired just 75 new officers, failing to keep pace with previous years.
Similar to other city police departments, St. Louis is contending with an uptick in officer departures while its hiring slows.
Officials in some departments have worked to entice recruits with bonuses and higher salaries.
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In Memphis, Tennessee, the mayor announced on Monday that new police officers will receive a $15,000 signing bonus on top of existing incentives, such as a $10,000 relocation bonus and an increased starting salary.
Memphis Police Department officials have spent months attempting to attract recruits to address the city’s officer shortage. In 2020, the police academy in Memphis graduated 53 candidates. That same year, 122 officers retired, according to the findings of an open records request filed by a local news station.
