Social 'climate,' lagging pay could be fueling decline in municipal police applicants

Some local police chiefs are having a tough time finding officers to join their forces.

Jeannette recently advertised seeking candidates to take a civil service test. It received three applications.

Irwin had five applicants for its test — all of whom were already part-time officers in the borough.

After receiving just three candidates in its search, Latrobe officials extended its deadline, pushed its advertising campaign on social media and reached out to two local training academies for help recruiting. The effort brought in 16 applications.

All three chiefs said they believe the current national climate toward policing is playing a role.

“We’ve seen a startling decline in applications,” said Latrobe Police Chief John Sleasman.

Both he and Jeannette Police Chief Shannon Binda recalled being among scores of candidates seeking to take a civil service test to join local departments when they started their careers. That’s not the case anymore, at least locally.

“There were so many people that wanted to be a policeman then, they had to have (the test) in the cafeteria at the high school,” Binda recalled. “Now, I got three guys.”

Municipal departments that advertise civil service tests can put those who successfully pass a physical and written exam on a list of potential candidates for hire. That list can remain valid for a certain period of time and more hires can be made from it as jobs open up.

The number of cadets in recent years at Westmoreland County Community College’s police academy has been pretty steady, said program director Franklin Newill III. In July, there were 23 cadets and 14 more in the fall class. Fourteen cadets have signed up to start the academy in February, he said.

“2020 has not been bad,” he said.

There was a bit of a downturn in the 2018 academy classes, but it bounced back the following year. A January 2020 class started with 14 cadets, but that was reduced to eight after the coronavirus pandemic hit.

“It’s sort of cyclical, and I don’t know what causes that bounce,” Newill said.

The Allegheny County Police Academy has two basic recruit classes each year. Graduates of the two classes rose from 33 to 50 from 2017 to 2019, and dipped to 31 in 2020. There are now 26 attending, said Allegheny County Police Superintendent Coleman McDonough.

After negative attitudes toward police the last several years, McDonough said he expects the pendulum will swing back.

“Based on the events at the Capitol, you’re seeing police being hailed as heroes again,” he said. “The events down there point out the difficult position police officers are often in. Maybe once the heat associated with an election year decreases we might see people willing to take a more rationale look at those that serve the public.”

State police have not seen a decline in the numbers of cadets joining the training academy in Hershey, said Lt. Robert Bailey, director of recruitment services section.

Three recent academy classes have seen about 120 cadets join and around 100 graduate, Bailey said. The most recent class graduated Friday. It had 80 cadets enroll and produced 51 graduates. That was because of a decrease in funding for the program, Bailey said. A class starting next month will have about 110 cadets.

“Fortunately for us, we haven’t seen any decline as far as applicants are concerned,” he said.

Arnold is now fully staffed with nine full-time officers and two part-time after recently hiring one of each, Chief Eric Doutt said.

Years ago, Arnold would get 15 to 25 applicants for a job. “Now, we’re excited when we have five or six,” Doutt said.

Doutt said pay is partly contributing to his department seeing fewer applicants. In its last contract, the department went from three pay steps to five, meaning a full-time officer starts at 60% of the base pay. It takes longer for an officer to get to the full rate, and they can start at a higher rate at other departments, he said.

While a national $15 per hour minimum wage is being considered, McDonough said pay for part-time officers is often below that, with municipalities with the highest crime rates often the least able to pay.

He called some of the salaries paid to entry level part-time officers “a shame.”

In Harmar, Domaratz finds himself turning to a limited number of candidates to replace part-time officers who leave for full-time posts elsewhere. His department is now out of part-timers, and he’d like to bring on up to three.

“It’s creating overtime. We’re trying to get that taken care of,” he said. “The amount of applicants definitely went down,” he said. “It’s hard to find anybody out there right now.”

West Deer is fully staffed with 14 full-timers and six part-timers, Chief Jon Lape said. His department last hired in the fall.

Like Domaratz, Lape also sees turnover in part-time officers, with them leaving for full-time jobs more quickly than they used to.

“Instead of training one or two officers a year, you end up training four or five,” he said. “It’s costly in the budget and time-consuming.”

Having fewer candidates results in having a narrower array of skills, abilities and talents from which to choose, Lape said.

“Any time you interview someone you want to have the right candidate for your particular area,” he said. “When you have a little number of applicants, that means they probably don’t have a lot of experience. It may take longer in training those individuals. Most of them are freshly out of the academy, which is no problem, which is good. You’re training them to what your community needs.”

But, he said, “They may only be with the department a short time.”

Irwin Police Chief Dan Wensel said he plans to increase the number of places the borough advertises for its civil service test in hopes of attracting more applicants. It wasn’t unusual to him that the borough didn’t attract anyone who wasn’t already working in the department as a part-timer for its most recent advertisement.

He blamed the lack of applicants on the “climate of today’s society.” Binda and Sleasman agreed.

“It takes a special person to be a police officer,” Wensel said.

Jeannette first advertised its civil service test in November and extended the deadline near the end of 2020. Binda said it will be readvertised after a new police contract is completed, but applications are still being accepted. He and Sgt. Jose Gonzalez are retiring in mid-2021, leaving at least two open spots on the force.

“You don’t want to be left two guys down in the middle of summer with vacations,” Binda told city council this week.

The decrease in applicants started a couple years ago and could be, in part, related to pay, he said.

Latrobe faced a similar timeline for advertising its test. After receiving three applications initially, 13 more have come in since extending the deadline to last Thursday, Sleasman said.

He assumes the “nationwide negativity towards police” is part of the reason it’s not as popular a career choice as it was when he became an officer. But support for forces in municipalities like Latrobe is a positive for candidates, he said.

“I think that’s what’s happening — the police cadets are searching for departments who have overwhelming amount of support by the community and by the administration,” Sleasman said.

Similar departments around the country are facing the same problem, a 2019 report by the Police Executive Research Forum found. About 63% of departments surveyed in the report said that the number of applicants had decreased compared to the previous five years.

The report offered several ways to improve recruitment and retention, including building trust with communities, find potential candidates who are comfortable with technology’s role in policing and conduct exit interviews with those leaving the force.

But not all local departments are seeing so few applicants — Penn Township Police Chief John Otto said about 25 applied for a civil service test two years ago. Eight made the hiring list.

“I’m happy with the caliber of people we’ve been able to hire,” he said.

Pay could factor in the decreasing numbers as well as negativity toward the profession, he said.

“You have to have the intrinsic motivation to go out and do this job to reap the rewards of doing this job,” Otto said.

Staff writers Joe Napsha and Brian Rittmeyer contributed.