HELP WANTED
Police recruiting a challenge for departments in Berks
As the Reading Police Department’s primary recruiter, Lt. Lance Lillis’ calendar is filled most weeks with career fairs at schools and institutions within the city and beyond — far beyond.
As part of his mission to promote his department as a wonderful career opportunity for students, Lillis, who is the department’s community response coordinator, has visited Penn State University campuses from Berks to Schuylkill Haven to Hazleton.
He’s traveled as far as Mansfield, just south of the New York state line and about 160 miles from Reading, to recruit Commonwealth University of Pennsylvania (formerly Mansfield University) criminal justice students.
Locally, Lillis and some of his Reading police colleagues recently set up a recruitment table at a Reading Royals hockey game at the Santander Arena. Two days earlier, the officers and representatives of other Berks County police departments were at Alvernia University’s career fair at the main campus in southwest Reading.
Lillis has also been making the rounds at job fairs. He posts his activities on the department’s Facebook page.
The Reading Police Department is taking extraordinary measures to encourage men and women to take the written civil service test out of necessity in a difficult environment for police officer recruitment.
“It’s been more of a challenge the past few years,” Reading Police Chief Richard Tornielli said.
Nationally, news coverage involving police abusing their authority, including the killings of unarmed Black men, have tarnished the image of law enforcement officers.
“A lot of things have happened in the country,” Tornielli said. “You can go back to Ferguson (Missouri), the incident there. Obviously the George Floyd incident. It’s made recruiting police officers more difficult. And there’s a lot of challenges for police officers these days.”
Two decades ago, when Tornielli and his contemporaries were applying for the job of police officer on
the Reading force, close to 400 others would be taking the exam at the same time for a shot at a few openings. Fewer than 100 showed up the last time the test was given in 2022.
The civil service test is the first of several steps in the process of hiring a police officer with no prior training in Pennsylvania. Other cities, including Philadelphia, are facing severe police-staffing shortages due to officer retirements and a dwindling pool of applicants.
The Reading Police Civil Service Commission recently offered its latest written test at Alvernia University. To encourage more people to sit for the test, city officials
dropped the $35 registration fee for the exam.
Anyone who is at least 20 ½ years old and a U.S. citizen was eligible to take the test.
Officials said about 60 people showed up.
Tornielli said the department expects it will need to hire at least 10 police officers early this summer to fill vacancies. But those hired won’t be ready to go out on street patrol on their own for nearly a year from their date of hire.
Those who pass the test must successfully complete a physical fitness test, a background check and