The Hartford Police Department is on a hiring spree its chief says will drive a budget increase, but attracting enough officers and recruits has been difficult.
“It really is about recruiting and retaining diverse police officers,” Police Chief Jason Thody said at a recent budget presentation. “And replenishing our ranks in the department, to get back to a place where we can operate with lower overtime, less holdovers, and really operate the way we should operate with adequate staffing.”
The department, which is 108 officers short of full staffing, continues to suffer from low recruitment numbers. At present, the department has 378 sworn officers among its ranks. That number represents a loss of just one officer from the same time last year, showing an increase in officer retention.
“We have seen officer resignations slowing, yet officer hiring is just barely keeping up with resignations to keep the staffing number steady in the 370s,” Thody said. “Challenges with hiring include low application rates and applicants not showing up for required portions of the hiring process.”
Thody, who announced last month he will be stepping down as police chief, is among those leaving the department this year. Thody was appointed chief in 2020 during the height of the pandemic and acknowledged several challenges during his tenure, including waves of violent crime and staffing shortages.
As the city looks to hire a new police chief, the department also is looking to hire 50 new officers. Thody said the department is actively trying to fill slots for 25 new police recruits for this fall and an additional 25 recruits next year. But the police chief acknowledged that meeting those numbers will be difficult.
“To be honest, we’re looking to fill as many slots as we can,” Thody said during questions and answers at the budget hearing. “As I go all the way back to 2016, we’ve never had a class of 25. Our goal is to hit that number, but the short answer is that’s an estimate and a wishful one.”
The starting salary for a new police officer in Hartford is listed at approximately $63,000, according to an application online.
“These staffing numbers affect our overtime budget,” Thody said. “We have 84 total shifts that we fill in a day on day shift, evening shift and midnight shift. Of those, we’re averaging 28 we have to fill through overtime and six shifts per week have to filled by either ordering an officer in or holding an officer in for a double shift because we just don’t have the staff to fill those.”
Overtime pay for officers is often a large contributor to department expenses. In Hartford, $2.2 million or 44% of the department’s overtime budget is driven by vacancies alone. Another 32% of the overtime budget is driven by concerts and sporting events and the remaining $1.1 million or 24% is driven by special events like elections.
But despite the department’s high use of overtime pay, many officers in the city make the bulk of their annual salary from “regular” pay. Regular pay, as with others on the city’s list of top earners, includes base salary, special duty pay, payouts and anything else besides overtime. Hartford’s top wage-earner in 2023 made $266,751 in “regular” pay and just $2,889 in overtime.
The department is also seeking to boost its diversity after years of scrutiny.
Cintron v. Vaughan, a landmark case that began in 1969, brought a settlement and 1973 consent decree between the plaintiffs and city alleging a “systemic pattern of police discrimination,” and established a code of police conduct. It required a written procedure for internal review of complaints against police, including interviewing all available witnesses and giving the complainant written reply; that officers avoid using profane and derogatory terms, among other things. The long standing consent decree also required the department to ensure it hired diverse officers among its ranks.
But just last year a federal judge let the decree sunset after denying a motion for contempt, thereby dissolving the consent agreements and ending the half-century old litigation, according to the city. Despite criticism from several city leaders, the department no longer has to abide by the decades old requirements.
The department’s minority staffing is 42%, according to Thody. The majority of the police department’s staff identifies as white or Caucasian with 63%, 23% of staff identify as Hispanic, and 12% of staff identify as Black. The department is also predominantly male with 85% of officers identifying as male and 15% of officers identifying as female. In addition, 95% of officers on the force do not list their residency in Hartford.
But the department said they are actively trying to bring up those numbers.
Among the eight Hartford recruits in the police academy class that graduated last month, four identified as a minority other than white. For the recruit class that just started last month, among 7 Hartford police recruits, five identified as a minority other than white.
The hiring spree is just one thing driving a proposed budget increase for the department.
The Hartford Police Department is asking for a nearly $2 million budget increase next year, due to payroll increases, the anticipated hiring of dozens of new officers to the force and a loss in federal grant money.
The department, which presented its budget to the city council last week, outlined a recommended $55 million budget for 2025 from the city’s general fund, an increase of 3.4% over the adopted $53 million budget for this year.
“That really breaks down predominately to our general wage increases that were negotiated in the contract,” Thody said at a budget hearing last week. “Wage increases accounts for $1.5 million of that.”
Grant money is also expected to dwindle down to just $1.1 million next year from $2.6 million this year. The federal dollars are part of the 2021 COPS Hiring Program Grant. The competitive award program helps local law enforcement agencies hire additional officers to increase community policing and crime prevention efforts.
As part of the grant’s requirements, officers hired in the program are paid a full salary and benefits for three years using federal dollars. After that, the city is obligated to maintain the officers’ employment for one full year at its own expense.
“We’re also shifting 10 officers from COPS grant funding onto the general fund for $657,000 and 15 officers are falling down a tier in grant funding so that’s another $145,000,” Thody said.
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