July 27, 2001
(WASHINGTON) – In recent years, college graduates with some training or experience in computers could expect offers of $50,000 or more right off the bat – with the possibility of six-figure incomes and maybe a stake in a growing company a few years down the road.
Police departments, by contrast, offer low starting pay, gradual raises and no stock options for a job that is sometimes dangerous, often disagreeable and involves working nights and weekends. Job security and the prospect of retirement in time to start a second career may not look enticing to young people hoping to be millionaires at the age of 40.
At the same time, officials are demanding more of new recruits, with many departments requiring college degrees or a certain number of credit hours.
The high-tech boom is one reason that many police departments have had trouble finding new recruits. Jason Cheney, research assistant at the Police Executive Research Forum, said that the problem appears to be most acute in some big-city departments.
There are other factors at work. Many of the baby-boomers are hitting retirement age and putting in their papers. And some police officers say that they do not get the kind of respect they should.
“There is this constant barrage of criticism of police and policing that makes police work seem less honorable than it may have in the past,” said Ken Pascoe, executive director of the Fraternal Order of Police.
But Pascoe said that much of the recruiting problem is cyclical. When the economy is strong, police departments are not competitive. Average starting salary is $32,000 across the country, and police pay can be especially unappealing in large metropolitan areas with high living costs. Waves of hiring also tend to be followed 20 or 30 years later by waves of retirements.
“If you can go to work for a high-tech company right out of college and make %50,000 right out of college, you have to really have to have been born to do police work to make what we would consider the right choice,” Pascoe said.
Sgt. Joyce Barney works in the Chicago Police Dept.’s Ambassador program, an effort to expand the potential pool of recruits. She said that the city recently adopted mandatory retirement at 63 for police officers and firefighters, a move that created a lot of vacancies. Police officers were already able to retire after 20 years once they turned 50.
The department tries to work with potential recruits by offering them workout facilities before they take the physical tests, Barney said. Officers mentor high school and college students, in a program that is a combination of community service and introducing young people to police work.
Chicago could also gain some new police officers from the economic slowdown, Barney said. Potential recruits include the thousands of people facing layoff at Lucent Technologies and other large companies, who may be more interested in job security now than they were in the late 1990s. The department is also working with the city to set up on-line recruiting so that applicants from outside the area can submit forms and go through preliminary screening without having to travel to Chicago.
Police departments, like other government agencies, have one big problem. Because they are on a year-to-year budget cycle, officials have trouble planning for their needs a few years down the road. Pascoe suggested that departments should have been preparing for the baby-boomer retirements 15 years ago.