Police recruitment applications in Tulsa are being hurt by job-security concerns and stale pay increases, a Tulsa police official told city councilors Thursday.
The pool of applicants hoping to enter the Tulsa police academy has gone from 236 in 2010 to 135 last year to 130 this year, Deputy Chief Daryl Webster said.
"I don't consider that to be a number I'm comfortable with," Webster said. "If I want to build and maintain a top-notch department, I want to have applicants crawling all over me."
Webster visited the council to talk about the reduced number of applicants and to discuss what effect the department's requirement that applicants have college degrees has on future applicant pools.
Webster said the degree requirement is an overall positive for future police recruitment.
With the requirement, applicants "tend to be a little older; there is a chance for them to bring not only a degree but also some experience," he said.
The policy has been in place since 1997, when Mayor Susan Savage approved the proposal by then-Police Chief Ron Palmer that made the Tulsa Police Department the first of its size in the nation to require its future officers to have a four-year college degree, the World reported at the time.
City Councilor G.T. Bynum said the degree requirement was questioned by councilors several years ago as a hindrance to returning military servicemen and women who might want to enter law enforcement.
Webster said recruits with military background still make up a large portion of the applicant pool.
"We are tapping into the military market very heavily, and we're getting them with degrees," he said. "We're getting the best of both worlds."
While the discussion began as a topic of the Police Department's college degree requirement, it became a discussion about officer pay increases and the city's budget.
Webster said the numbers on recruitment are down because of Tulsa's 2010 police layoffs and a stagnant pay progression that has not increased salaries in several years.
Webster said choosing to become a police officer comes with an underlying agreement that officers take an oath to protect a city and that they in turn will be protected by the city from things such as mass layoffs.
"When we were laid off, ... we shattered that understanding," Webster said. "That is something we are going to have for a long time to come."
The stigma from the layoffs detracts from the attractiveness of being an officer in Tulsa, he said.
"Many of our potential (recruits) simply do not see Tulsa as an attractive place to have a law enforcement career," Webster said.
Councilor Skip Steele said the Tulsa police union had a hand in the layoffs and asked whether the union shares the city's stigma.
Cuts in early 2010 led to 124 police layoffs and other cuts in an agreement between the city and the union.
"I will defer that to the union, but that was not the union's decision to make," Webster said.
Councilor Phil Lakin said the problem with paying the officers or any department in the city more money is that the budget doesn't allow it.
"The reality is our budget is growing by 1 percent," Lakin said. "A budget that's growing at 1 percent can't award 5 percent raises across the board."
A recent Tulsa World analysis of police officer salaries in the Tulsa region showed that Tulsa police are the second-highest-paid officers in the region, behind Broken Arrow.
The average Broken Arrow Police Department salary is about $64,000. The average Tulsa Police Department salary is about $63,000.
Councilor Jack Henderson said the city needs to bring in additional revenue and address pay increases for officers now before the problem gets worse.
"We have to figure out a way to get more revenue to come into the city. We may have to find a way to raise that dreaded thing -- to raise taxes," he said. "It's a job, and if you expect people to do their job, you have to pay them."
Copyright 2013 - Tulsa World, Okla.
McClatchy-Tribune News Service
