By Craig Anderson

DOVER — Delaware’s law enforcement agencies haven’t been immune to challenges associated with officer performance and the public’s perception of it.

Police departments nationally have struggled to attract recruits following the killing of George Floyd by a Minneapolis officer who was later convicted of murder, The Associated Press reported. Mass protests and calls for reforming or defunding the police, as well as the coronavirus pandemic, took their toll on officer morale.

Concern for finding prospective officers in the First State is widespread, as well, according to police chiefs here.

Ellendale’s Bruce VonGoerres said several of his fellow Sussex County police chiefs cited their difficulties in a meeting June 15.

In Dover, according to Chief Thomas Johnson Jr., “The number of applications — we’ve never seen it so low, especially when we had multiple positions available.”

While the Smyrna Police Department had more than 250 candidates take a written examination during a process to hire two candidates in 2010, the agency had about 25 people take the test during the last cycle in February.

Harrington Chief Norman Barlow said his department tested approximately 15 candidates in its last process, compared to 50 to 75 in the past.

“I don’t know 100%, but I don’t think people want to do this job anymore with what is going on in the world,” he said.

In previous hiring cycles, Lewes PD would receive 50 to 100 applications for an opening, but the last two new officer searches, in April 2020 and January of this year, have summoned just 20 to 30 applications.

Cheswold is in the early stages of hiring officers for the first time since COVID-19 arrived, and Chief Christopher Workman said, “I am not very confident in the amount of candidates that will be interested in pursuing a job in law enforcement.”

Meanwhile, in Rehoboth Beach, the department could only fill 14 of its authorized 28 seasonal police officer positions this summer. Chief Keith Banks said roughly 40 to 45 candidates, typically college age, applied for summer duty, as opposed to 100 to 150 in years past.

There was a “significant drop in applications” to become a Delaware State Police trooper during the recent hiring process, spokesman Master Cpl. Gary Fournier said.

The pandemic had a heavy impact on recruitment efforts, he said.

“Our recruiters attend career fairs offered by high schools and colleges, in addition to many community events, to recruit qualified applicants,” Cpl. Fournier said.

“These opportunities were canceled due to the pandemic. Recruiters tried to combat the challenge by participating in Zoom career fairs and joining criminal justice classes via Zoom to speak with interested applicants.”

Additionally, he said, “The current climate towards law enforcement also hasn’t helped.”

Chief Banks attributed the shortage of candidates to a number of factors, including the high cost of housing, uncertainty over COVID-19 issues and limited recruiting options. Seasonal officers are paid $15.25 an hour to start and are bumped up to $15.50 in their second year.

Also, many of the potential returnees may have been negatively affected by last year’s working conditions, Chief Banks said. As the young officers interacted with the public during the ongoing pandemic, they were at times “spit at, cursed at, yelled at and screamed at” when it came to enforcing COVID-19 guidelines, he said.

“They’re often 19- to 21-year-old kids,” and responding to that kind of behavior can be particularly challenging at that stage of life, according to the chief.

In addition, while Rehoboth Beach police had previously visited colleges in person to find candidates, Zoom conferences had to be utilized this year and proved to be far less effective, Chief Banks said.

Typically, around half the seasonal officers return for another year. This year, Chief Banks said, “only a handful did.”

Though the department is fully staffed with 19 full-time employees, the dearth of younger seasonal officers could present challenges in the future.

“We do hire seasonal officers to become permanent officers, and having fewer of them to take a look at makes that tougher,” Chief Banks said.

Police, public confidence

There’s a likely correlation, Chief Johnson said, between negative police publicity and attracting enough qualified candidates to join the ranks.

“You can’t discount the idea that when you don’t see a whole lot of people applying that might lead into your mind that that’s a bit of a measuring stick on public confidence or the opinion of the group that they are trying to serve every day,” he said.

“If the number of people interested in joining the ranks is declining, what does that say about the overall opinion of the profession?”

Out-of-state strife between police and their communities has impacted Delaware, Lewes Chief Thomas Spell said.

“Our biggest challenges are surrounding the nationwide conversation and negative perceptions of policing,” he said. “Here in Sussex County, we are very fortunate to have great community support; however, at times, the national conversation can be overbearing.”

Furthermore, there’s an increased need to hire police officers, as increasingly more veterans are opting out of their law enforcement careers.

The rate of retirements at some departments rose 45% compared to the previous year, according to new research on nearly 200 law enforcement agencies conducted by the Washington, D.C.-based Police Executive Research Forum and provided to the AP. At the same time, hiring slowed by 5%, the group found.

So while Chief Johnson said he was pleased with a recent class of recruits, he looked warily to the future.

“I was able to find quality, diverse candidates to deliver the services that the community has come to expect,” he said. “The only caveat is that the signs are there that in the future, if we have a sudden turnover or a little bit of a bout of attrition, where maybe five, six folks come upon their retirement dates at the same time, then we need to rebuild a significant portion of our staff. Then, will the candidates be there?

“That might be, for Dover, a 2023 or 2024 question, and while that’s a concern, it also gives us time to try and put some proper strategies in place to try and ward that off.”

Chief Johnson added that hiring the right candidate can head off problems for years.

“There’s a whole lot of literature out there that says police chiefs can solve a whole lot of their employee problems over the arc of a 25-year career by making sure they get the hiring process right,” he said.

“If you find where professional failures occur in policing, in a lot of cases, you can trace back to the hiring process and maybe find an error of omission or find something that was a bit of a flag that should have given you the heads-up that you might have some kind of problem with this employee over the course of their career. And that’s why the hiring process is so important and why it’s essential that we have a high number of quality applicants that are interested in doing this career.”

A limited applicant pool means it’s more crucial to get each decision right, Chief Johnson said.

“On one end, it’s still probably enough applicants to find employees you can be confident will make it, but your margin of error is a little bit smaller, let’s face it,” he said.

Making career choices

Besides social unrest involving the police, economics play a part, as well, Chief Johnson said.

“We just came out of a pretty strong period, where there was a lot of economic growth. There was a lot of opportunity out there and talented people, the kind of people we’re looking for. They have options, and sometimes, when you look at being out in the elements, round-the-clock shift work, the challenges you have in a public career, the holidays, the weekends, the sacrifices you have to make versus the opportunity for your talents to go into the private sector, the schedule, good benefits package, whatever you might get for the options you’re considering, ... that’s all part of the calculus when we’re trying to locate talented people with the skills we’re looking for. Those folks typically have a lot of choices when the economy is in good shape, and the economy has been in good shape in the recent years,” he said.

“I’m not wishing for a bad economy — don’t get me wrong — we just have to up our game to make sure we’re competitive with other employment opportunities for talented people.”

Said Sgt. Brian Donner of the Smyrna Police Department, “The biggest challenge is simply finding folks who are interested in a career in law enforcement. Qualified candidates have always existed.

“However, with a negative national perception, high-profile incidents and an evolving economy, they are not currently applying in the numbers they once did.”

So, Chief Johnson added, attracting prospective officers “circles back to myself and other police chiefs being better ambassadors for how great this profession is, the quality of work that we do and the difference we make in people’s lives.

“If we don’t demonstrate how that occurs, then shame on us because that’s literally part of recruiting for this profession — showing the positive byproducts of what we do.”

Looking for candidates

DSP has partnered with Delaware Technical Community College’s Law Enforcement Option program and is looking to team up with Delaware State University’s criminal justice program, Cpl. Fournier said.

When it comes to promoting recruitment, “We utilize our Facebook and Instagram pages to post information and updates on our hiring process, in addition to streaming advertisements on digital billboards,” Cpl. Fournier said.

The Smyrna Police Department, according to Sgt. Donner, is “constantly utilizing social media to try and welcome people to our department and get them interested in joining our team.”

“We also use a national-based web service for our job postings that gets our job openings out to candidates across the country via many different known job websites. We also utilize our own officers to try and network with friends, family and colleagues who may be interested in joining us.”

At small departments, recruiting is done on a much more local scale.

According to Chief Workman of Cheswold, “We don’t employ any recruiting efforts other than word of mouth and personal connections with people when they inquire about hiring and being a police officer. We are too small to offer signing bonuses and high starting salaries like the bigger departments to get people in the door.

“We have to rely on the promises of education and experience gained through working in a smaller agency.”

Lewes PD uses the internet and print media for advertising, as well as targeting college job fairs, Chief Spell said.

He added that the process of recruiting qualified candidates takes months longer than in the past, “and as a result, our current staff is forced to do more with less,” he said.

“This obviously leads to officer fatigue, reduced time off and lower morale. I would bet that most agencies have lower morale than in the past. Some agencies are not able to do special projects/special enforcements/community policing like they want to.”

About 25% of applicants move on to a background check, Chief Spell said. The last process in January included 20 applicants and six moved forward. Three were disqualified during the background check phase.

“Typically, past drug use — not hard drugs but even marijuana use that was too close to the application time — truthfulness issues, immaturity and lack of experience in a public service would make them not the ideal candidate,” he said.

“Most agencies try very hard to not just fill openings with a body because of the expense of training and then losing the recruit.”

A shallow recruit pool means that First State police agencies of all sizes are often competing for the same candidates seeking to begin their careers.

“The running joke in Delaware law enforcement right now is that we are all fishing in the same pond for the same few fish each hiring cycle,” Sgt. Donner said.

“When we get close to the end of a hiring cycle, our top candidates nearly always are close to receiving a conditional offer of employment from another similar agency that we must try to compete with.”

Lewes Chief Spell added, “We are constantly in competition for the same people.

“Often, we even ‘steal’ seasoned officers from each other who want better pay or other enhanced benefits or better policing environments. The ideal recruit for Lewes is often the same for Rehoboth, Georgetown and Ocean View.”

According to Milford police Sgt. Robert Masten, “Delaware agencies are typically looking at the same applicant pool. We try our best to make our department an attractive option for those interested in a law enforcement career.”

Cpl. Fournier concurred, saying it “isn’t uncommon to have an applicant who is in several law enforcement hiring processes. Law enforcement agencies want to hire the best candidate and every agency has something different to offer. At the end of the day, the applicant has to choose which agency is the best fit for them.”

A ‘combustible mixture’

The climate today, AP reported, coupled with increases in crime in some cities, is creating what Chuck Wexler, head of the Police Executive Research Forum, called a “combustible mixture.”

It’s creating “a crisis on the horizon for police chiefs when they look at the resources they need, especially during a period when we’re seeing an increase in murders and shootings,” Mr. Wexler said. “It’s a wake-up call.”

The data from Mr. Wexler’s organization represents a fraction of the more than 18,000 law enforcement agencies nationwide and is not representative of all departments. But it’s one of the few efforts to examine police hiring and retention and compare it with the time before Mr. Floyd’s killing in May 2020.

Researchers heard from 194 police departments last month about their hires, resignations and retirements between April 1, 2020, and March 31, 2021, and the same categories from April 1, 2019, to March 31, 2020.

By comparison, the changing public attitude on policing is well-documented. In the past year, as many as half of American adults believed police violence against the public is a “very” or “extremely” serious problem, according to one poll conducted by The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research.

“It’s hard to recruit the very people who see police as an opposition,” said Lynda R. Williams, president of the National Organization of Black Law Enforcement Executives, who previously worked on recruitment efforts for the Secret Service.