Low pay hurts recruitment of police officers in San Luis, chief says
Starting rate of $23/hour is $8 less than what other agencies in area offer
SAN LUIS, Ariz. – The city “urgently” needs to increase salaries to be able to recruit and retain police officers, otherwise turnover in the police department will become a growing problem.
That’s according to the city’s interim police chief, Miguel Alvarez, who says the police department is trying to fill six vacant positions for officers and could soon lose three more officers to other law enforcement agencies offering higher pay.
The starting pay rate for a San Luis police officer is $23 an hour, $8 less than what many other departments in the Yuma area offer, says Alvarez.
“We can’t recruit people for any position because our salaries are not competitive with other agencies. Right now we have six openings and we are speculating that there are going to be three more in a period of more or less two months.”
Alvarez said he plans to request that the San Luis City Hall and city administration fully adopt the pay hikes recommended in a 2018 salary study done by the city.
“(The pay study) was not implemented with the rigor that it should have,” he said. “Thirty-five dollars an hour was recommended, and while pay is increased every year, we are nowhere near that.”
Alvarez, named as interim chief following the retirement of Richard Jessup, said working on the border presents San Luis officers with challenges not faced by police officers elsewhere.
Those challenges include managing long traffic backups that form among cars bound for Mexico during rush hours, managing the arrival of large numbers of asylum seekers in San Luis, fighting drug smuggling from Mexico, and assuming custody and transfer of suspects arrested at the U.S. Port of Entry.
The expansion and remodeling of the port of entry, slated to take place in 2024, will create additional traffic control problems that his officers will have to handle, Alvarez said.
Alvarez said the police department is understaffed based on the accepted law enforcement standard of having 2.4 officers on the street for every 1,000 residents.
“We are short right now with 43 officers,” he said. “The community is growing in an accelerated way, with every residential area needing police attention. We do our best and that’s why I say we have some of the best officers in the entire state, because the time it takes to respond to emergencies is very short compared with other cities.”
Mayor Nieves Riedel says she shares Alvarez’s concerns.
“It’s a loss for San Luis when so many officers in which the city has invested in training leave at the first
opportunity. And they are not leaving because they don’t love the community or they are not interested in serving it. They leave because the salaries are very low.”
She added: “(Pay) is something that I have reviewed and I see it in all the departments. Right now there are so many vacancies, and in more than 90% of the posts, the salary is very low.”
Riedel says she will urge the council to consider the issue at length with the goal of making salary adjustments no later than in the next fiscal year.
Another issue that hurts recruitment and retention of officers is the lack of compensation for officers who have to remain on call during their off-hours.
“We have detectives who remain on call in case they are called to an emergency, but they are not compensated. We are looking for compensation for them and those in other positions within the department because those are fair benefits and should be there.”