Attleboro police chief seeks bump in pay for department, citing challenges of recruiting

ATTLEBORO — Police Chief Kyle Heagney is asking the city council to appropriate $80,000 for his overtime account.

But it’s not for the usual reasons, such as an officer out for line-of-duty injury or an illness.

He said he needs that money because his department is down five officers and he can’t keep the roster filled. The cash will go to pay overtime to keep patrols on the streets.

And being down five officers is not unusual, he said. In fact, it’s becoming a constant to be short officers. Filling vacant slots is like filling a revolving door, he said.

Replacements come in quickly and go out just as quickly, he said. Or sometimes they don’t come in at all.

“It’s extremely frustrating,” Heagney said. “It’s like a dog chasing its tail.”

There are always slots to fill. Since last July 1, the start of fiscal year 2023, there have been 26 empty positions, he told the council Tuesday.

“It’s a constant rotation,” he said. “It’s very challenging and very stressful.”

The hiring process is always ongoing and it’s an expensive and frustrating operation, he added. So far this year, $100,000 has been spent to hire and train new officers.

“The hiring process is broken,” Heagney said. “It’s irreparable. It’s an abomination. We need more flexibility in hiring.”

He said more flexibility could lead to better qualified personnel and more local people on the force.

Heagney said hiring police officers is hard and getting harder, especially because the city has to follow Civil Service hiring procedures.

Civil Service recruits can come from anywhere in the state, which means they may not like serving in Attleboro but they may take the job just to get a foot in the door.

Heagney said he wants that to change and is trying to extract the city from the Civil Service hiring rules.

He said state Rep. Jim Hawkins, D-Attleboro, and state Sen. Paul Feeney, D-Foxboro, have both filed bills that would allow the city to develop its own hiring process and would focus more on local residents who want to serve their city.

Other rights under Civil Service rules would not be lost by the officers hired, he said.

One thing the department does not want to do is lower its standards, Heagney stressed.

“If we lower our standards we’ll be hiring the wrong people,” he said, and that could lead to trouble.

Meanwhile, some other departments pay more and recruits sometimes make lateral transfers to fill open spots in those departments when they get the chance.

Heagney said one officer got a 25% pay increase her first day on the job at a new department.

Also, some officers are retiring at a greater rate or simply resigning because they decide law enforcement is not for them.

There are 59 officers with less than five years’ experience on the Attleboro force — that’s 64% of the 92 sworn officers and that, he said, shows how many have come and gone.

The fact that it takes a full year for an officer to be fully trained is also a burden.

The police academy takes six months and then the recruit has another six months with a training officer riding patrol with them.

And sometimes a recruit does not make it through the academy or just decides police work is not for them.

At that point the department has to start the process all over again.

So far this year, the department has spent $100,000 on training and still has five vacancies — and it’s not assured that the five new recruits will measure up. In fact, Heagney said, he got a call Wednesday morning saying one recruit failed the physical fitness test to get into the police academy.