Police staffing shortages have hit cities, towns across CT
GREENWICH — About 50 people took the civil service test last month to apply for a position as a patrol officer in the Greenwich Police Department.
It was a fraction of the number who took the test over a decade ago.
“100 or 200 people taking the Greenwich police test was not uncommon years ago,” Greenwich police Capt. Mark Zuccerella said recently.
The shrinking number of applicants looking to join the Greenwich police force is one of many indicators that shortages are hitting departments around the region — and the nation — hard, he said.
“Everybody is in the same boat. That pool of committed people who want to be police officers is thin throughout the region,” said Zuccerella. In the Greenwich department, 11 positions are yet to be filled.
Experts and policy analysts say law-enforcement work has become harder to recruit for, with a number high-profile cases that have put police officers under harsh scrutiny. The death of George Floyd at the hands of a Minneapolis police officer in 2020, captured on cellphone footage, is cited regularly as a cause for the negative connotations around police work, driving away new recruits.
“There are multiple factors” for the lack of interest in a policing job, said professor David Myers, chairman of the Criminal Justice Department at the University of New Haven.
“Policing as a profession in recent times has become more of a public position, open to public scrutiny. Situations like George
Floyd impact on that. With videotape, from a member of the public, or cameras in a facility or a vehicle, there’s more scrutiny. It makes it harder to recruit,” he said.
An additional factor is the overall disruption in the employment sector known as “the Great Resignation,” a churn in the labor market caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, bringing shortages to a number of fields — not just limited to civil service positions.
“With the Great Resignation, as it’s called, many police officers retired or changed professions; there’s been turnover. So many departments are working to address that,” Myers said.
Recruitment and retention was already a problem through the 2010s. A recent study by the International Association of Police Chiefs found “multiple social, political and economic forces are all simultaneously at play in shaping the current state of recruitment and retention.”
The study said Millennials and Generation Z, people in their teens through their late 30s, had a particular disdain for the regimented and structured work-life balance that law enforcement typically requires.
Whatever the reason behind the staff shortages, it is nearing critical levels around the region, local data show.
Stamford police are down nearly 30 officers, coping with a force of about 250 men and women when 287 are budgeted for. In Norwalk, 20 openings in the department’s allotment of 181 officers has made staffing “almost untenable,” in the words of
Police Chief Thomas Kulhawik. Response times for routine police calls in New Haven have been lengthened considerably, due to about 100 vacancies in the department’s ranks, officials there said. In Hamden, the police department has 19 vacancies, a situation that led to a city councilwoman recently calling the department “very depleted.”
Local departments are working hard to fill their ranks — offering bonuses, educational stipends and casting a wide net, as far as Texas and Virginia, to bring in new recruits.
“As far as recruiting goes, it’s fairly common to offer hiring bonuses to get people on board, and some departments are offering educational assistance — for a bachelor’s degree, or going on for a master’s degree,” said Myers.
In the worst-case scenario, he said, particularly in big city departments such as Chicago, New Orleans and Philadelphia, entry requirements were lowered to attract candidates who would otherwise have been
ineligible for work in law enforcement because of the city’s initial educational qualifications. He said lowered educational standards for new officers often led to poor outcomes.
In Greenwich, Zuccerella says, department commanders are working on a range of strategies to get new recruits through the doors of police headquarters — and cope with the current shortage.
The department has an authorized staff of 152 officers. It now has 147 members, of which six are commanders who do not respond to calls, for an effective force of 141. In addition, there is a shortage of four police dispatchers who send police, fire and EMS units to respond to calls for help.
The shortages have meant more overtime costs, Zuccerella said, and a much more stringent look at scheduling and training obligations. “Being down 11 people for the better part of the year makes everything tighter, for planning and scheduling. But we’re doing our best to serve the town. Hopefully it will get better in the fall when the officers get done with their training,” he said. Six police officers are currently in training.
In terms of recruitment, Greenwich police are looking to hire from other parts of the country, as other departments are also doing. Greenwich recently hired two recruits who were working for the New York City Police Department, as well as one from Texas. Norwalk police recently hired an officer from Virginia.
The Greenwich police captain said “lateral hiring” was likely to be expanded in future. “Traditionally, our lateral program was kept to Connecticut, but we’re looking to expand that,” said Zuccerella.
The department is also ramping up its hiring notices on social media and websites for law enforcement, and it will do more in-person events at area colleges. The message has also been sharpened for potential applicants.
“The pay is good, it’s a safe town to work, and in our community, you can engage and interact. We do things other than law enforcement,” the captain said, adding patrol officers generally have more autonomy in Greenwich than in other departments to follow up on cases.
“As a patrol officer you can take a case from beginning to end. In other departments, they don’t have the time for that. Officers handle a report and push it to the detective division. Our officers are ‘empowered,’ as we say. And we have a lot of different aspects that you can do — detective division, the boats, motorcycles, a canine unit, the bike guys, different units in the detective division, technology. We have a lot of stuff, compared to many departments,” Zuccerella said.
The captain said he was also planning to contact people who applied for the Greenwich force but did not follow through. “I want to know why they didn’t follow through, or why they dropped out. I want to find out that reason why,” he said.
Myers says the shortages are coming at a time when the nature of police work is changing; there were opportunities as well as challenges in obtaining personnel. There are untapped or under-utilized groups of potential applicants, some of whom did not fit the standard profile of a police officer in years past, he said, women in particular.
“Policing has become much more data driven, guided by research, focusing on evidence-based practices, that have a positive impact on crime. Also community policing has been experiencing a revival,” Myers said. “It takes a different skill set. There’s much more need for good communication skills, problem solving, working directly with the public, cultural understanding, intervening in crises situations with mental illness. Officers need skills in those areas. It’s a different style of policing, different expectations.”
Finding good personnel is rewarding for a community, data shows, and the job also offered good rewards for those who sign up for it, he said.
“There’s a great deal of opportunity there,” Myers said. “I always emphasize that, if you’re prepared for it, you can have a very productive career.”