Despite recruitment and incentive efforts, CPD staffing remains ‘critical’

Between Oct. 1, 2015, and Oct. 1, 2016, the amount of vacancies at the Columbia Police Department has nearly doubled, public information officer Bryana Larimer said. Four of those positions were frozen until this year and recently opened up. The other four were newly created after Columbia Mayor Brian Treece pushed for money to be found in the budget to support additional positions.

“Ultimately I think there’s this concern, ‘You went from having five vacancies to having 16 vacancies. What’s the deal?'” Larimer said. “I think it’s important to differentiate that.”

But in addition to these vacancies, there are still 6-10 officers classified as “walking wounded, who are injured or sick and not on patrol.

“We have asked investigative personnel to work a patrol shift,” police Chief Ken Burton said at the City Council meeting Monday night. “It’s getting critical as far as staffing goes.”

There will be five new officers sworn in in December, but they aren’t filling the current 16 vacancies.

In the past week, Columbia police began investigations into several gun crimes that left four people shot. Two died of their wounds and brought the homicide count from three to five for 2016 – of the seven since 2014, police have only made arrests in three of them.

Dale Roberts, a spokesperson for the Columbia Police Officers’ Association, said putting a detective on a patrol shift takes them away from these violent crime investigations.

“It’s really robbing Peter to pay Paul,” he said. “It’s just a matter of trying to keep the pieces moving where they’re needed on a day to day basis and that makes it hard in terms of the consistency of their work.”

But police administrators say the training and recruiting unit, a team of officers that solely focuses on recruitment under the supervision of Sgt. Richard Horrell, has been working around the clock to recruit potential officers and entice them with incentives unique to a city police department, including paying for academy training and all of an officer’s equipment.

“Those are things that not all departments offer,” Larimer said.

Recruiters also attend career fairs and speak at colleges. Many of the colleges are ones that have large criminal justice programs. They also focus on the military.

“We go to Fort Leonard Wood, we’ve gone to other military bases to try and work on that transitional program from coming from military into law enforcement,” said Larimer.

Larimer said she thinks recruitment is strong, but retention might be an issue because many officers now aren’t looking to stay long-term. She also said nationwide tensions, especially after more shootings of police officers this past weekend, have discouraged people from wanting to go into law enforcement and lowered morale across the country.

Larimer said she would attribute the low morale to the nationwide shortage but Roberts said he believes the new shift change for Columbia police officers might help boost morale in a different way for police.

“That’s less grueling for the officers,” he said. “That’s another sign that there’s light at the end of the tunnel and help is on the way.”

Members of City Council approved a conversion of an assistant chief position to a deputy position in order to better manage the new 10 hour shift change.

Burton said at Monday night’s meeting that they switched from a 10-hour shift schedule to the 12 in 2009 after officers complained. While this time around the officers voted for the 10-hour shift to come back in, Burton is hoping proper management will make it successful this time around.

“I’d like to get a fifth lieutenant on patrol and split duties between an assistant chief and deputy chief,” he told the council. “We’ll have investigative and administrative under a deputy chief and the operations side under another deputy chief.”

Horrell said there are 25 recruits who will be going through the interview process in the next few weeks. Not all 25 of those recruits will make it through background checks and certain tests.

“The pools have gotten smaller and smaller each year,” Larimer said. “That’s not just specific to Columbia.”

Gov.-elect Eric Greitens and President-elect Donald Trump have both expressed the desire to help law enforcement officers in the future.

Link to application to be a Columbia police officer here.

There is also an interview process, background check, and lie detector test to pass among other things. Potential recruits can also complete these steps while in the police academy, which the department pays for. Larimer said there’s also a 25-year retirement plan as well.