Recruiting police officers is so hard that the National City Police Department recently started offering a $30,000 signing bonus to lure experienced officers from other agencies.
It’s a lot of money for a small municipal department, but competition is fierce.
National City needs to fill just a handful of openings. There’s a lot more empty slots at the other end of the spectrum — like at the San Diego Police Department, which has 184 vacancies. At the county Sheriff’s Department, 315 deputies are needed, although that’s not for patrol jobs, but for deputies to work in courtrooms and detention facilities, including the new Rock Mountain jail in Otay Mesa, which began housing some inmates last summer.
In recent years, departments locally and across the state and country have found themselves with lots of open jobs and few interested takers. They recruit hard, cover academy costs for favored candidates and even try to poach from each other. The Sheriff’s Department, as well as the San Diego, Oceanside, Chula Vista, El Cajon and La Mesa police departments, all offer bonuses to officers who transfer into their departments.
The U.S. Department of Justice said recruiting and retention of qualified candidates was in “a historic crisis” in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, a tightening labor market, heightened community frustration with the policing profession, and concerns about officer safety and well-being. Local recruiters say they are competing with each other for the best candidates.
The staffing shortage that plagued many police departments across the country appears to be easing for some. Police departments in the U.S. reported an increase in staffing in 2023 for the first time since the COVID-19 pandemic, according to a survey of 214 agencies conducted by the Police Executive Research Forum, a police research organization.
Departments reported more sworn officers hired in 2023 than in any of the previous four years, and fewer officers resigning or retiring, according to the survey. Small- and medium-sized agencies reported having more sworn officers in 2023 than they did in January 2020, although large departments still were below staffing levels from that time period. “The larger agencies are still having a challenging time hiring,” said Chuck Wexler, the research group’s executive director.
Bonuses are a boost
Many departments are enacting signing bonuses to boost recruitment efforts. At least six agencies in San Diego County are offering payouts of between $15,000 and $30,000.
“The hard part is we are all pulling from the same pool,” said Escondido police Lt. Damian Jackson, who heads his department’s recruitment effort. “So it is a challenge for everybody all around.”
Escondido doesn’t have a signing bonus — but it does offer a special perk valued by its officers. In Escondido, every sworn officer is issued a car they can take home. Last month, the city extended its mileage radius to 45 miles, which reaches into Riverside County where many officers live.
“We’ve had a take-home car program for all sworn employees since the early ’80s,” Jackson said. “That’s a huge benefit.”
Jackson also touts Escondido’s supportive community and reputation when talking to applicants and officers interested in making a move from neighboring agencies.
“I think here the culture of our department speaks for itself and that’s what helps us retain people, that’s what helps us draw people,” Jackson said. “When you do a Google search of Escondido it doesn’t come up with a whole bunch of crazy stuff. … It is a busy town, but it is not a crazy town.”
Smaller departments need fewer officers. Escondido has 10 vacancies, Oceanside has 26 and Chula Vista has 19. El Cajon needs six officers and La Mesa needs five. Carlsbad has two open jobs after recently extending conditional job offers to four applicants.
Oceanside Sgt. Javar Beaver said lateral transfers not only can get bonuses of up to $22,000 but 480 hours of “banked” sick time, a benefit he said could come in handy if someone in the officer’s family fell ill soon after the new job began.
Beaver, the department’s lead recruiter, said the 26 openings are the most he’s ever heard of in his 11 years with Oceanside and said it puts a heavier load on current patrol officers. He tells job prospects that his department pays well, enjoys good community support — and has a great location, too. “Being able to drive by the beach every day — it is just amazing,” he said.
National City began offering its lateral bonuses in late 2022, and so far, three new hires in the 86-officer department have received them. One came from the El Centro Police Department, one from San Diego city schools police and a third had completed the police academy. Lateral officers are attractive when it comes to recruiting: their academy training has already been paid for and completed, and they typically have some experience in the field.
The only local police agency not in hiring mode is Coronado: the affluent seaside city’s department has 47 sworn officers, one above its budget, which a spokesperson described as “overstaffing.” It offers no signing bonuses or other incentives and has no officers tasked with recruitment. Most departments “sponsor” recruits, paying them as they complete six months of training at the San Diego Regional Public Safety Training Institute at Miramar College. Not Coronado.
“We do not offer a recruit position. We don’t have to at this point,” department spokesperson Lea Corbin said in an email. “We only accept those who have already completed an academy.”
California has recruitment struggles across the state. The Alameda Police Department offers what seems to be the shiniest prize for new hires: a $75,000 bonus. The department, which also has a six-figure starting salary, had 1 in 3 jobs vacant last spring when the city implemented the incentive.
“It’s difficult to afford housing here in the Bay Area and so knowing that that’s a burden or an obstacle or something that people are going to struggle with, how can we as a police department come up with ways — creative ways — to remove that?” Alameda Police Chief Nishant Joshi told CBS News in April. In January, Joshi told the Mercury News he expects the department to have filled its vacancies by June.
Alameda requires the new employee to commit to staying five years or they will have to pay back some of the money on a prorated basis. Some departments pay out bonuses over several years to guard against those trying to game the system or “bonus hop” from job to job.
The city of Hemet is offering a $60,000 signing bonus for police officers with three years of California patrol experience. Officers receive $10,000 when they complete field training and $50,000 after five years of service. The city of Whittier not only pays a $20,000 bonus for lateral hires but also will provide officers a $50,000 interest-free loan for the purchase of a residence in the city of Whittier. The loan is forgivable after 15 years of city service.
It’s not just the money
Wexler said some agencies are streamlining their hiring process or easing policies such as restrictions on displaying tattoos to help make hiring easier. He said people who choose a law enforcement career look at many factors when they consider a department.
“I don’t think it is all about money — because Alameda is offering $75,000, Seattle is offering $30,000, Washington, D.C., is offering $25,000,” Wexler said. “I think people are selecting departments where they think the working conditions are good and the community is supportive.”
San Diego police Sgt. Jason Tsui said he sees some applicants who engaged in behavior in their youth, such as drug use, not knowing they’d end up wanting to join law enforcement. Departments are weighing such things differently than they did in the past, he said.
“I can’t be someone to judge because at the end of the day I’m all about character: Do I trust you? Do I believe in you? Can you work hard? Are you a team player? Are you honest?” said Tsui. “I think people are the same, it’s just that people have different backgrounds. That’s why we have to be flexible. The generations are different.”
Departments also are making changes so good candidates don’t get tripped up on outdated tests. Tsui said San Diego changed its physical abilities test, which used to be “literally the hardest test in the county,” so it is more aligned with what recruits do in the police academy.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=58TrjCiNR9U“The whole point of the entrance physical test is to make sure that you are going to be physically fit for the academy, right? But that’s not a good indicator of it because we’ve seen people who pass that and they are out of shape. We see people that fail that (and they) are in great shape,” he said.
La Mesa also changed its test. Applicants still have to do five “work sample” tests — an agility run, drag a 150-pound dummy, climb over two types of fences and run 500 yards. But they no longer have to complete all the tests in under 3½ minutes, said police Lt. Katy Lynch. “It is not one single event,” she said, noting that some qualified female candidates had difficulty with the old test.
“We were worried we were losing good female candidates,” Lynch said.
Many departments allow applicants with a college degree to skip the written test entirely. San Diego also is looking into offering virtual tests online instead of setting in-person testing dates. “We are just trying to make it a little bit more convenient,” Tsui said.
One of the recommendations that came out of DOJ’s examination of police recruiting and retention last year was about changing law enforcement’s image. Instead of emphasizing the “warrior” mentality by highlighting specialty assignments like SWAT teams, the group suggested sharing more about guardian aspects of the job. “Recruitment campaigns should underscore the opportunity that policing offers to join a noble profession that has a real impact on community and serves a higher purpose,” the report said.
Recruiters say some of those interested in law enforcement see the job as a way to help others. “They want to serve our community and help people out, to help and to give back in their way,” said sheriff’s Deputy Alan Peters. “People have the desire to serve, and that’s what we are looking for — just regular people with integrity, willing to work, willing to learn.”
Officers who began their careers more than a decade ago recall a time when hundreds of candidates chased an open job or two.
“When you look back 20 years ago, there used to be 200 people that would be fighting for one position,” recalled Lynch of La Mesa. These days, she said, her department receives between 40 to 60 applications per month.
“It is a shift,” Lynch said. “It is competitive among the agencies when it used to be more competitive among the candidates.”
