By Ashley B. Craig
Charleston Daily Mail
The lifting of a hiring freeze on the Charleston Police Department will result in four new police officers patrolling beats, but it will be late fall before they are in place.
Chief Brent Webster said city council authorized the department to hire four officers after the state Legislature passed a bill giving cities an alternative way to reduce their pension debts.
The police department had been operating under a hiring freeze since last March but had not hired any officers since December 2009, he said.
City officials froze hiring for the police and fire departments and cut several vacant positions last March to stabilize the pension problem. The city had an unfunded liability of about $129 million in its police and firefighter pension funds.
The department currently has 169 officers, and it has been authorized to bring the numbers to 173.
“It’s always exciting but particularly so when you know you’ve got a lot of guys leaving,” Webster said. “We’ve got a few retirements coming up, and we want to be able to fill our vacancies.”
Two high-ranking officers will retire next month after decades with the department. Capt. Rusty Flowers, who runs the department’s special operations bureau, and Lt. Mark Shannon, who leads the investigative services bureau, are retiring in April.
Webster said new hires give the department more flexibility to promote more experienced officers to the senior ranks. Those experienced officers can move into leadership roles to help the less experienced officers learn about the job.
“It’ll be nice to have some new blood coming through here,” Webster said.
Six to 10 applicants remain on the department’s hiring list, and officers were checking to see if any remain interested, Webster said. Candidates will have to submit to a background check, a psychological exam and a physical exam.
Those hired will be sent to the West Virginia State Police Academy for training.
Webster said he has asked the academy for four slots in the 147th Basic Class, which begins in July, or the 148th Basic Class beginning in September but hasn’t heard back.
A basic class begins in May, but Webster said he did not want to rush through the applicant vetting process. Paperwork for that class is due April 1.
“We’re not rushing through this or changing any of our policies to move along any faster,” the chief said. “We want to do this the right way so if we get one or two through, then that’s what we’ll do.”
He said officers typically are sworn into service the Friday before they begin at the academy. Then they are certified upon graduation from the 16-week course. After that, they undergo another 16 weeks of training on the streets of Charleston with a field training officer.
“All the new people - they’ve all got to cut their teeth in patrol,” Webster said. “They have to learn the fundamentals, taking reports, interacting with the public, driving around Charleston.”
He said any recruits placed in the July training class would graduate in November and start their department training that month. The officers likely wouldn’t be on their own until next year.
Webster said the hiring would result in more officers on the streets and more responders to emergency calls. The new officers eventually would bulk up the patrol division. That division was not hurt by the freeze but could always use additional officers, the chief said.
“Even with the cuts, we were able to keep patrol staffed,” he said. “They’re on the front lines. They have to respond to every 911 call, and they’re on the streets patrolling.”
While the chief was happy the freeze had been lifted, he said the department didn’t really suffer because most of the positions eliminated by budget cuts were vacant.
He said the department rarely operated at full capacity when it had more than 180 officers because a few always were on military leave.
However, the prospect of new officers still appealed to him.
“You can always do more with more officers,” he said.
Copyright 2011 Charleston Newspapers