Pittsburgh officials bullish on police recruiting, but union stays skeptical

Pittsburgh officials on Wednesday struck a cautiously optimistic tone about police recruitment efforts after struggling for years to attract officers to a shrinking police force.

“It’s a little too early to bring the champagne into the locker room,” Councilman Khari Mosley, D-Point Breeze said. “But by all indications, it seems we’re out of the worst part of the covid period when there was the lowest interest in law enforcement.”

Since the city paused hiring new officers during the covid-19 pandemic, recruitment has been a significant challenge. Officials have blamed a cultural shift that made policing a less desirable career, the fact the city pays less than some surrounding municipalities and the pandemic-era hiring freeze.

But Public Safety Director Lee Schmidt said things are getting better.

This week, over 160 police recruits are undergoing physical fitness testing. About half of recruits typically pass that process, Schmidt said, and move on to the next stages.

Two years ago, Schmidt said, the city saw only 40 recruits going into the same physical fitness stage.

A standard police academy class has about 40 recruits. Schmidt said he’s confident that, with 160 people in the physical fitness testing now, this fall the city will likely have its first full, 40-person class since the pandemic.

Another group of more than 30 recruits is currently in their field training stage, Commander Anthony Palermo said, and about 25 more are in the training academy now.

Schmidt said that if the city could reach its goal of ushering in three full classes of 40 recruits per year — an ambition it will not achieve this year — new recruits would begin outpacing resignations and retirements.

“That’s really encouraging,” Councilman Anthony Coghill, D-Beechview, said.

Coghill, who chairs council’s public safety committee, has been vocal in his concerns about police staffing levels.

Police union leadership, in the meantime, is concerned that recruitment classes are not bulking up staffing levels. The union sees the administration as just scrambling to stop the bleeding.

“I still don’t think they’re hiring officers as fast as we’re losing them,” said Robert Swartzwelder, president of Fraternal Order of Police Lodge 1, which represents the police force’s rank and file.

Pittsburgh police have lost more than one-quarter of their total headcount in just two years. The bureau lost 103 officers last year — and the number topped 100 in 2023, as well.

This year, 14 officers have retired and eight have resigned, Swartzwelder said. Despite recruitment efforts and new police academy classes, the bureau has grown only minimally by the union’s count, to 764 officers this week, up from 762 officers on Jan. 1.

“And I just don’t see this trend changing,” Swartzwelder added.

Steady decline

Most city officials long considered the bureau’s ideal size to be around 900.

But Mayor Ed Gainey has cut the budgeted size of the bureau to 800, reflecting the reality that the city could not recruit and retain enough officers to exceed that figure.

The bureau had 937 officers the month Gainey was inaugurated in 2022, Swartzwelder said. It dropped to 862 a year later and 805 on Jan. 1, 2024.

Palermo, the commander, said the city is receiving, on average, about 100 applications for the police force each month.

Not all of them will be eligible for the police academy, because some will fail civil service tests, physical fitness exams and other requirements.

Palermo could not immediately say how many applications the city had been receiving in the past, but said the bureau is seeing notable progress in its recruitment.

He credited two dedicated recruitment officers who have expanded the bureau’s efforts to find candidates.

Previously, Palermo said, recruitment efforts were largely confined to job fairs. Now, the designated recruiters are also connecting with people at colleges, sporting events, gyms and coffee shops.

The city is in the process of creating a recruitment video, too.

Another tactic they’re working to employ, Schmidt said, is recruiting more officers who have experience elsewhere, rather than relying more heavily on new recruits.

Schmidt said officials are in a final stages of crafting a policy that would allow police officers from other municipalities to get a higher starting pay in Pittsburgh than new recruits. They’d still have to go through the city’s training academy and would not have seniority over officers who have spent more time in Pittsburgh.

Staff writer Justin Vellucci contributed to this article.