Police Departments Struggle with Staffing Levels

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Drive by your local police station and there could be a Help Wanted sign out front. Police chiefs across the country are looking for ways to solve the shortage of new recruits.

NPR's Laura Sullivan reports on why the thin blue line is a little thinner.

LAURA SULLIVAN: Four police officials smoothed their hair, straightened their ties and sat down in front of Web cameras in Washington yesterday. Their images beamed onto the computer screens of police departments all across the country. Then they got right to the point. Young people just don't want to be cops anymore.

Major JIM PRAVITERA (Florida's Hillsborough County Sheriff's Office): The days of people coming to us, well, those days just don't exist for a lot of agencies anymore.

SULLIVAN: Major Jim Previtera is a 20-year veteran in charge of recruiting for Florida's Hillsborough County Sheriff's Office. At the Internet forum, he was sitting next to Ronald Davis, chief of the East Palo Alto Police.

Mr. RONALD DAVIS (Police Chief, East Palo Alto Police): We come from a different era where it was very paramilitary, very disciplinary, very structured - the job became your life. And I think - and probably for a good reason - that this generation looks at a more balanced and temperate approach. They want to be entertained. They want to see what's in it for them. When can they have their time off and when will they be able to go out and have fun as well?

SULLIVAN: Lt. Charles Hang(ph) from the Las Vegas Police and others suggested to departments try offering perks. Let officers keep their patrol cars, help them with mortgages, highlight local outdoor activities like skiing or hunting, and of course, pay them more. But after the forum, as the officials lingered at the table, they said some of the forces are simply beyond their control. There's the videos of police beatings and corruption that tend to stay in people's minds. There's a war on Iraq drawing from the same pool of applicants. Police Chief Albert Najera from Sacramento says there's something else too.

Mr. ALBERT NAJERA (Chief, Sacramento Police Department): I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but frankly, we can get the numbers of candidates. What we cannot get is the numbers of candidates that pass our background.

SULLIVAN: Meaning drugs, poor academics, or criminal records. Police officials estimate that as many as half of all people who attended high school from 1980 on used drugs while in school. Others simply have bad credit or even very visible tattoos. There's a lot of debate about how far to lower the standards. But in many ways police departments are also their own worst enemies. Younger generations are mobile. Chiefs Najera and Davis say that means newly trained recruits jump easily from one force to the next, lured by signing bonuses or better retirement packages. It's a dirty little secret of police recruiting called poaching.

Mr. DAVIS: The challenge is they don't stay put. And so they bounce around a lot and we create an environment where we are allowing them to do that.

SULLIVAN: That environment you're talking about is poaching.

Mr. DAVIS: I think the chiefs in this country are going to have to sit down and have a discussion about the issues of commitment and loyalty. We need to support each other and stop doing that.

SULLIVAN: So has he ever poached any of your officers?

Mr. DAVIS: I don't believe so.

Mr. NAJERA: I don't pay enough.

SULLIVAN: Chief Najera says he's going to tell the officers he has managed to recruit to stay clear of Chief Davis, just in case.

Laura Sullivan, NPR News, Washington.

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