City to spend $250,000 on police recruiting campaign

With overtime a concern, up to one-third of officer positions available

UNION CITY >> With roughly a quarter to a third of its 80 police officer positions projected to be vacant by November, Union City is planning to spend about $250,000 on a police marketing and recruitment campaign, aiming to shore up numbers in the rank and file.

Police officials and city staff reports say the campaign — which will include a digital branding and marketing effort and a referral incentive program for existing police officers — is badly needed to maintain core policing services, reduce overtime, and ease the demand on current officers.

The department also plans to hire four more police officers than previously authorized to help fill gaps much sooner. The City Council approved the recruitment plan at an Aug. 10 meeting with no discussion.

The city has fallen behind in police vacancies because of “long-term injuries, retirements, belowaverage salaries compared to neighboring agencies, competition among law enforcement agencies for qualified applicants,” according to city staff reports.

In addition, some officers have left the sate while other officers have retired or were injured on the job.

It also has also been harder to find applicants for police work because of “new challenges in the policing profession stemming from controversial or criminal incidents involving police around the country,” a city report said.

Union City Police Department Lt. Andrew Holt said incidents like the police killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis have contributed to anti-police movements that make it harder for some to justify working as an officer.

“I think somebody that might have been on the fence before about entertaining a career in law enforcement, would be less likely” to do so now, he said in an interview.

And when the department does find candidates, city reports say it can take between one year to 18 months to recruit, hire and train them, and as many as half of the candidates don’t make it past initial screening and testing.

Union City spent nearly $1.3 million in overtime for the police department in fiscal year 2021, and about $1.1 million of that was attributed to the short-staffed patrol division, according to the city officials. That was about 15% more overtime for patrol than the city budgeted for.

The “aggressive recruitment campaign” the city is embarking on will include spending up to $210,000 between the current and coming year to pay Epic Productions of Phoenix, a video production and marketing company based in Arizona, to create a “carefully crafted branding strategy” to help the city in “hiring highly qualified and diverse candidates.”

Epic will create a recruiting website for the department that will “showcase (the) department’s brand and messaging while tracking and retargeting visitors,” and the company will also create a digital outreach plan, including placing ads on major social media platforms and YouTube.

“Union City is facing an urgent need to get new and lateral officers through the door as soon as possible to fill staffing shortages. Our research showed that Epic had a strong reputation with peer cities helping them with similar challenges,” City Manager Joan Malloy said in a statement.

The department said in its staff report that Epic is a “sole source provider,” typically meaning the services offered cannot be found or matched by another company and so the city did not have a competitive bidding process for the contract.

Though Union City codes generally require bidding for most contracts, professional services — which typically include “some specialized training or skillset” — are exempt from those requirements, city spokesperson Lauren Sugayan said in an email.

Epic Productions has done recruiting and video production work for several police departments, according to its website, including Hayward, Davis, Richmond, Tracy, West Covina and others.

City reports call the company “law enforcement specific” and Epic does appear to have a separately branded portion of its company called Epic Recruiting. However, Epic Productions also has done work for plenty of non-police organizations, including Marriott hotels, Grimaldi’s Pizzeria, credit unions, medical device companies, Hewlett-Packard, and Verizon, among other companies.

To help justify using Epic for the city’s recruitment campaign without any bidding, the police department accepted a letter written by the company’s CEO, Sam Blonder.

“In our experience over the last 16 years we have never come across another company that provides the complete package of law enforcement recruitment services we offer,” Blonder said in an April 14 letter.

“Epic Recruiting contains the skill set of a recruiting agency, an advertising agency, a video production company, and a web development firm, all in a single entity with a specific focus on law enforcement” and doesn’t use sub-contractors, the letter said.

“Regarding the sole source letter, we can select who we think can provide the best service,” Malloy said. “The letter does a sufficient job of detailing the specialized services that are being provided.”

As part of the recruitment plans, the department also will bring back a referral incentive program that will pay current officers a $5,000 bonus in phases when they refer a new officer to the department.

Based on prior incentive programs, the city estimates that it might have to pay out about $30,000 to $45,000 in referral bonuses over the two fiscal years.