Austin police aiming to build up, diversify
Department tries new tactics to fix recruiting problem.
Police Sgt. Marci Graham didn’t sugarcoat it for the 56 women who gathered one Saturday this month in Northeast Austin to learn about joining the Austin Police Department. It can be tough, she said.
Graham knows. In her 17 years on the force, she has raised three children while working for a department where women make up only about 10 percent of the rank and file.
Outreach efforts toward prospective female applicants, such as her information session with the women, are part of a series of responses by Austin police to address a recruiting problem that a consulting group’s recently released report said is the biggest challenge facing Austin police.
Lagging recruitment in recent years has contributed to staffing shortfalls. The lack of new officers for patrol shifts has forced commanders to bring in most detectives and other nonpatrol officers into the shift rotation.
Efforts such as the women’s information session are also an attempt to diversify the ranks and seek prospects from outside the traditional pipelines for new officers, such as the military and criminal justice students.
The recruiting effort now also has a larger staff to speed up the process, and police are reaching out to possible applicants through social media.
In recent months, the efforts appeared to have paid off. In November, the police academy will begin training its largest class in recent memory, putting 110 men and women on track to hit the streets next year.
“Our applicants are quite honestly through the roof,” said Cmdr. Andy Michael, supervisor of recruiting for Austin police.
Austin police project that they will have 1,294 appli- cants this year, a 36 percent increase over 2015, and nearly twice as many as 2014. Police also project that by the end of 2016, the
department will have hired almost twice as many offi- cers as last year.
But the department had faced an applications back- log that in most cases meant a prospective officer would wait several months before being contacted after turn
ing in an application. A report released this month from California-based Matrix Consulting Group, which identified recruitment as the worst problem facing the Police Department, specifically pointed to how long it takes for an applicant to be hired, calling the 12- to 18-month period “unacceptably long.” During that tim e , the d epartment l oses prospective recruits who find employment elsewhere.
Michael, the recruiting supervisor, said adding four new positions to the recruiting unit has already shortened that time to four to eight months.
Hiring new officers is a much more vigorous process than for most jobs. Applicants are required to submit to mental health reviews, a deep background check, multiple interviews, both physical and scholastic tests, and a lie detector test.
The department dedicated an entire unit, led by a mander, to the extensive process. Day-to-day operations are overseen by a lieutenant, two sergeants and administrative staff. Eleven officers and a number of temporarily employed retirees within the unit investigate recruits’ backgrounds and assist them through the process. “It’s not rocket science. It’s
about efficiency,” Michael said. “We found a backlog. We put all hands on deck to get that caught up. Once we got that done, we became able to handle them as we get them.”
Recruiters also are taking a more holistic approach to marketing the idea of being a police officer in Austin.
The consulting group’s report found that the department’s marketing efforts had focused on the adventure, danger and stress related to becoming a new police offi- cer. On YouTube, the department has posted videos that
portray the police academy as a military boot camp, the report said.
“The set of videos produced by the APD and shown on YouTube are high-impact, exciting clips,” the report said. “However, they are also a reason why good applicants who have a different vision of their future police career will not apply.”
Applicants who envisioned a career based on community service could be turned off by images of high-speed car chases, SWAT situations and other adrenaline-pump- ing activities.
“Probably what attracted folks in the past is that you can jump out of helicopters or be on the SWAT team, but that is not the day-to-day for our officers,” Assistant Chief Troy Gay said. “We need to highlight the great work that our men and women do on a daily basis.”
Focusing on the physical requirements tended to discourage women from applying, so Austin police changed a fitness requirement from performing a certain number of push-ups to using a rowing machine, which is a more gender-neutral physical activity, police said.
Only 170 Austin police officers — or about 10 percent — are women, and at an academy that began last November, just five of the 49 cadets were women.
At her information session, Graham said many of the questions the women asked revolved around what it’s like to balance family life with a career on the force. Graham said that when she was promoted to sergeant three years ago, she moved to the night shift. Her father helped take care of her kids four nights a week.
She said female officers offer something different than their male counterparts. Women who are victims of sexual assault feel more comfortable with female officers because they can be better communicators and show more empathy, she said.
“All of those things are necessary as a part of policing,” she said. “And if we can get to more than 10 percent women, I would be happy.”