By Kaylee Remington, cleveland.com Express Desk
cleveland.com
NEWBURGH HEIGHTS, Ohio — The Newburgh Heights Police Department will soon be down to five patrol officers, a staffing level the police chief described as a “catastrophic low” as the village struggles to attract candidates and relies increasingly on overtime to maintain minimum staffing.
Newburgh Heights police Chief John Majoy told Village Council Tuesday that one officer submitted a two-week notice that day, meaning the department will drop from six to five patrol officers Nov. 17.
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“To put it candidly, we are at a catastrophic low,” the chief said.
The department also has three sergeants, although one is on medical leave until at least Jan. 1 . The chief said the department is at its lowest staffing level in his 13 years as chief.
Compounding the problem, he said, Newburgh Heights currently has no candidates in the hiring process.
“We have no candidates in the pool. We have no applications pending,” Majoy said. “We have no one going through the background investigation. We’re at a really bad impasse. And I’m not trying to instill fear into everyone; this is just factual.”
The department has struggled throughout the year to find qualified applicants.
The chief said the department rejected 27 candidates because of issues in their backgrounds that prevented them from being hired. Another five were rejected because they were not certified.
Another 25 prospective candidates obtained applications but never returned them. The village knows two took jobs elsewhere, while the chief said officials assume many of the others also found other employment after they stopped responding.
The chief pointed to Newburgh Heights’ starting pay as one of the department’s challenges in attracting officers.
Under the department’s collective bargaining agreement, starting pay is $23.50 an hour. The chief told council that the next-closest police job he found advertised online started at about $30 an hour.
“The people that we’re getting to apply here are the ones that nobody else will hire,” Majoy said.
The staffing shortage has forced Newburgh Heights officers to work increasing amounts of overtime simply to maintain what the chief described as a bare-bones minimum of two officers per shift.
Police accumulated 152 overtime hours in September and 252 hours in October, according to figures the chief presented to council.
The department projects 272 overtime hours will be necessary in November and 296 in December.
Those projections only account for maintaining two officers on each shift and do not include additional overtime that could be necessary if an officer calls off sick or takes vacation or personal time, the chief said.
The staffing shortage is already affecting when officers take time off.
The chief said officers have stopped submitting some time-off requests because they are aware of the department’s staffing problems.
“I need to provide some relief to our officers. They are getting burned out and they’re being mandated to work all these extra shifts, all these extra hours that they don’t want to work,” Majoy said. “And my fear is we’ve got one other officer who’s in the process at another agency that we could conceivably lose.”
The chief himself is also returning to patrol duty to help fill the gaps.
He said he covered shifts as often as three days a week in July and August, helping keep overtime lower during those months. He stopped regularly covering shifts in September, when the department’s overtime jumped to 152 hours.
Majoy’s normal administrative responsibilities don’t disappear when he covers patrol shifts, he said, meaning that work has to be completed outside those hours.
Council later unanimously approved paying the chief time-and-a-half for any hours he works beyond 40 hours to provide shift coverage.
The chief described that as a temporary measure intended to relieve other officers while he and the mayor work on a longer-term solution.
Newburgh Heights is preparing to enter contract negotiations, and the chief said he didn’t think it would be appropriate for council to take separate action on wages at this time.
But he told council the village will have to make changes if it wants to attract additional officers.
Despite the staffing problems, the chief told residents the department would continue placing two officers on duty around the clock and said he did not expect police response times to change.
Cleveland.com and The Plain Dealer reached out to Majoy and Mayor Trevor Elkins for additional comment.
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