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Despite the state’s police shortage, the Aurora Police Department is not having any problems recruiting new officers to fill its growing positions, according to Aurora Police Department officials.
A report released by the U.S. Department of Justice in October 2023 stated that police departments across the country “face a historic crisis in recruiting and retaining qualified candidates.”
A study earlier that year by the Police Executive Research Forum found that despite rising recruitment, departments were still losing more officers than they were hiring.
The impact of the COVID-19 pandemic, a tight labor market, community dissatisfaction with police and concerns about officer safety have led to police shortages across the country, according to a U.S. Department of Justice report.
The report also suggests some short- and long-term ways the department can improve hiring strategies and retain existing officers, but officials said in a recent interview that the Aurora Police Department has rebounded from its pandemic-era lows. .
Aurora Police Chief Keith Cross said the Aurora Police Department has approximately 290 total officer positions budgeted for between 2020 and 2021, with nearly 30 positions vacant. He said the department currently has 326 budgeted positions, the most in the department’s history, and only seven positions are vacant.
Those open positions are expected to be filled soon, he said. Cross said the department plans to hire up to 10 new officers next month and will hold at least two more hiring events this year.
He said the department is actually recruiting slightly more officers than there are positions to fill in order to anticipate retirees’ retirements, get ahead of them and give retiring officers a chance to train the officers who will replace them.
“Typically, we hire a group of people in December because we know that come January, we’re going to lose a certain number of officers,” Cross said. “We’re at the stage now where a lot of the people we hired in the mid-to-late 90s are reaching retirement age, so there’s been quite a bit of turnover in our department.”
Aurora Deputy Police Chief Matt Thomas said the department has been successful in recruiting and retaining talent after taking a “comprehensive look” at its recruiting process and making some changes.
One of the changes is a program where experienced officers from other departments can earn incentives through a lateral recruiting process if they join the Aurora Police Department.
Over the past few years, Cross said, the department has increased the starting salary for these lateral hires and reduced the amount of training they need to complete because of their experience. Officials said the officers were treated in the past as if they were new employees, so they were paid and trained accordingly.
With the new incentives in place, the department now recruits most of its new officers from other departments, Thomas said. Cross said the incentives “helped us tremendously to make up for lost ground.”
But Cross said even before the current incentives were implemented, officers from other departments were already transferring to the Aurora Police Department for better training and opportunities.
In fact, they said, Cross and Thomas both worked for other departments before joining the Aurora Police Department more than 20 years ago.
Lt. Bill Rowley, who also started his career with another department, said the Aurora Police Department’s reputation locally as an organization with very high training standards and high morale has prompted an influx of officers from other departments.
“Every police department in the area knows that if you want to be a good police officer, that’s where you want to be,” Rowley said of the Aurora Police Department.
Thomas said the department has invested heavily in training officers and created a new position earlier this year to lead its professional development efforts.
The new position, which will be at the lieutenant level, will work with new officers to determine career paths and then provide them with training and guidance to achieve their goals, he said. Some examples of potential career paths he gave include community policing, traffic enforcement and investigations.
Thomas said the department also works to promote leaders internally.
Cross said when existing officers or newly recruited officers want to join the Aurora Police Department, it’s now easier for them because of some changes to the recruiting process.
These changes, including regular and personal contact with candidates and manual review of applications by sworn officers, help reduce the time applicants wait to hear back from the department and show them that the department is invested in them from the beginning,” said Cross and Thomas said.
Thomas said when officers from other departments apply to join the Aurora Police Department, they are contacted within days to start the process. He said these lateral hires are an important part of the department’s hiring strategy and account for about 60 percent of the officers the department typically hires.
It can take up to a year for new recruits to be fully trained, but since officers from other departments have already attended the police academy’s 16-week course and already have at least two years of experience, Thomas said, they can Leave the scene alone faster.
However, Cross said these experienced officers face their own unique challenges when they come to the department. He said they have to adapt to the department’s professional standards, something they may not have been used to in past departments.
“Sometimes, once you’ve been doing this for a while, you develop a habit of doing things on your own, no matter where you are,” Cross said. “Now, you go to a completely different agency and they do things differently. For an officer, that can mean a lot.”
Thomas said department officials often choose between hiring new employees or experienced officers from other departments based on current needs.
Thomas said one of the department’s latest efforts to encourage new employees to join the department is the Officer Explorer Program.
He said the department already has a program for younger children – the Youth Law Enforcement Academy – and for young adults – the Cadet Program – but the Explorers program bridges the gap between the other two programs . Thomas said the programs combined now offer young people interested in joining the police a clear path to becoming a sworn police officer.
To recruit adults, the department invested in marketing on social media and other online spaces, Thomas said.
The department’s main recruiting video can be found on the Aurora Police Department’s website, with a large portion focusing on the department’s training and opportunities. A large part is also dedicated to diversity and community engagement in the department.
Cross said diversity is important to the department, especially on its recruiting staff, in part because people often have to see other people who look like them doing something before they can see themselves doing it. .
“Growing up, I saw very few people who looked like me in the police department in this city,” he said, recalling his days as a young black man growing up on Aurora’s East Side. “As much as I was interested in doing it, deep down in my heart I didn’t know if I would be able to pull it off.”
He said the department is still not as diverse as Cross would like to see, but the department has made great strides in the past few years.
Cross and Thomas said the Aurora Police Department is able to invest heavily in marketing and training programs because it has the support of the city of Aurora and the community at large.
Cross said this support also allows the department to stay ahead of trends from equipment modernization to community engagement.
One example is a new survey tool the department is using to track community satisfaction with the police department, specifically after interviews with officers.
Thomas said that as part of the survey, those who interacted with police were called several days later asking for their impressions of the interaction. He said some people are not recalled, such as when they have been victims of violent crime and are at risk of becoming victims again.
According to the internal survey, an overwhelming majority of respondents said they had a positive view of the department. Officials said that of about 5,000 responses, nearly 80% said they had a “positive” or “very positive” view of the department, while about 6% said they had a “negative” or “very positive” view of the department. negative”.
“We knew we had good relationships in the community, but we wanted to take a look at that and see if there were ways we could improve it,” Thomas said.
Cross said the department is also asking for feedback on the types of crimes residents are most concerned about.
Rowley, who oversees the investigation software, said the findings are currently for the department’s internal use only, but the department plans to post the results on its transparency website in the coming months.
Cross said a similar survey is also sent to officers in the department to get feedback on training opportunities and solicit suggestions on how to improve the department.
Thomas said high levels of training, advancement opportunities and community support help retain Aurora Police Department officers instead of sending them looking for new jobs, which also contributes to the department’s high staffing levels.
Additionally, he said the department also offers retention bonuses.
Cross said if some officers scheduled to retire can stay on for a few more years because of pay raises, the department would benefit from those officers sharing their experiences with new hires.
“This person has been doing this for 20 or 25 years, and you hope they can pass some of that on to the person coming in,” he said. “If you don’t fill that gap, sometimes it can be very difficult for a new group of officers who are coming in and trying to learn the job.”
rsmith@chicagotribune.com
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