Police struggling to fill ranks

INDIANAPOLIS -- Police departments across Indiana are devising incentives to entice recruits as they struggle to fill their ranks in a field notorious for low pay and dangerous working conditions.\n"Almost every chief in every department I talk to complains about this as a major problem," Michael F. Ward, executive director of the Indiana Association of Chiefs of Police, said.\nIn Columbus, problems such as the area's growing methamphetamine trade are not getting the attention Police Chief Matt McCord believes they deserve because his department is short six officers.\nOvertime hours are rising as officers take a no-frills approach to fighting crime in the city of 39,000.\n"We handle what is right in front of us," McCord told The Indianapolis Star for a story published Monday.\nAric Steven Frazier, chairman of the Law Enforcement Studies Department at Vincennes University, said the shortage has developed over the past decade.\nEnrollment in the university's two-year entry level police skills program has declined from about 600 students in 1990 to 480 this year, Frazier said.\nPolice scandals in cities across the country in recent years are partly to blame for the declining enrollment, he said.\nHe also pointed to a cultural shift.\n"Recruits aren't coming from military backgrounds or from families with a tradition in public safety," Frazier said.\nLow pay, a lack of benefits and the dangerous nature of police work also steer people away from police careers, Ward said.\nOn average, police chiefs in Indiana earn $43,000 to $45,000 a year, he said.\n"This is top pay for senior law officers," he said. "Imagine the entry level pay."\nColumbus pays new officers slightly more than $33,000. For veteran officers, pay tops out at about $37,000.\nTougher recruit standards also have contributed to the shortage, Tammy Schaffer, assistant chief of the Bluffton Police Department, said.\n"We expect a lot," Schaffer said. "Used to be if you had height, size and brawn, you could get the job."\nNow it takes a minimum of two years in college or three years of law enforcement experience for her to consider an applicant.\nAs an incentive to stay, Bluffton rewards probationary recruits with an automatic $4,000 pay raise when they complete training, boosting their salary to $32,716.\nSchaffer takes out advertisements, contacts colleges and universities and even "raids" other departments in the search for recruits.\nAt the Indianapolis Police Department, a key challenge is finding minority recruits. Josue Escalante, a department recruiter, uses Spanish-language radio shows to try to tap recruits in the city's growing Hispanic community.\nThe IPD, which requires a high school diploma or equivalent, also will tutor candidates to ensure they pass mandated written tests, Escalante said.\nRecruiters frequently talk to as many as 200 potential recruits to fill a training class of 70. Interviewing prospects, conducting background checks and administering tests can take weeks.\nFrazier, of the police chiefs' association, said the wave of popularity that police and other public safety workers have enjoyed since the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks could boost recruiting numbers and ease the shortage.\n"It will take some time…for people to follow through and actually start doing what it takes to be a police officer," he said. "We haven't seen that yet"