If you read any professional periodicals or websites, these are bleak times for law enforcement recruiting. Most all agencies are reporting diminished numbers of applicants for their recruiting pool. Without any fuzzy math involved, less numbers in the recruit pool should produce reduced quality candidates for the final selection process. I have seen less qualified applicants than vacancies and it does not seem to get any better. There are many that subscribe to the ‘de-policing effect’ theory. The turmoil of law enforcement with the political and media scrutiny makes any sane person question why would you do this for a career?
Behind the Question
Why place your life, family and sanity on the line for those who do not support you. The quote by the Czech historian of “We, the unwilling, led by the unknowing, are doing the impossible for the ungrateful. We have done so much, for so long, with so little, we are now qualified to do anything with nothing” may still apply today. Many a promising young officer has left the ranks for more stable (and lucrative) careers. If we continue to lose our best and brightest officers, we are doomed to a future of mediocrity.
There are constant attacks on police pay, retirements and benefits. I caution any young person applying for a job to review the stability of the benefits they are being offered. Many just want their foot in the door to become certified. They will apply for another job later until marriage, children and putting down roots; then they are trapped to ride it out. The economic viability of the governmental fiduciary agency should always be questioned before employment, but when you are unemployed and twenty-something this is a remote ideal. Attacks on funding and staffing dwindles at the security of the job. Chiefs and sheriffs are told to do more with less and make it work. Henceforth, the problem of filling today’s vacancies with yesterday’s standards.
Everyone has heard of the ‘easing of standards’ to comply with this dilemma. I am supportive of diversity in the work staff. However, we must achieve basic levels for the certification process. Knowing of agencies that have lowered their hiring standards beneath the state standards has proved to be a road to disaster. You have students who are destined to fail out. You ‘filled’ the vacancy only to waste precious monies hoping they would pass the academy.
Some states and cities have embraced allowing those with a non-violent criminal past history to apply. They are skimping on background investigations. One mayor went on the record of stating an applicant’s disclosure of their criminal wrongdoings is their integrity test. It is referred to by some as ‘not checking the box’ to allow for the omission of past arrests or criminal conduct. Really? Seeing some agencies no longer using the polygraph as a tool as well. Only cursory backgrounds, excluding financial backgrounds along with it. This was a budgetary and personnel savings explained by one. I get giving someone who is trying to put their life back together but where does this ‘easing of standards’ stop?
There is an Irish pub song lyric of ‘come on you hopers, jokers and rouges’ and this is where we are at now. By allowing our standards to drop, where is the quality assurances that we are protecting our customers with the most trusted officers. I remind those that at an accident scene, strangers will hand a police officer their child and ask them to protect their child. A police officer should be one of the most trusted public employees without question. Would you hand your child to a less than stellar person on the street? Do you trust anyone to check on your home or business if it was found unlocked? The real answers are no. When we turn away from the standards that we embrace as that for a professional law enforcement officer, then enters “the hopers, jokers and rouges”.
In my career I have had to hire (and fire) officers. It is not the officers that you do not hire that gives you a sleepless night. It is the one that you should not have hired that gives you a sleepless night. I fear that many chiefs and sheriffs will have to bend to budgetary and political pressures to make it work for them. The legacy that this climate leaves for the future is uncertain to me and full of peril. Some of the lesser candidates who came under the newer programs may work out in due time. However, there are some that are applying for our ranks that are totally frightening. Their lack capabilities and good intentions could bring disgrace to one agency but to all of the profession. No, I am not the old curmudgeon who states that they do not make coppers like they used to in my day, we had a few as well. Time tested standards that are predictors for future performance and have worked in the past (for the most part) and can continue. The throwing the standards out of the window to meet a temporary hiring crisis can haunt an agency. Everyone you hire is a twenty plus year investment, treat hiring as such and you will reap the rewards.
