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Cleveland Police can't attract enough applicants to beef up the force

Will Cleveland find enough willing and qualified candidates to achieve the goal of hiring 300 new officers by this time next year?

Cleveland — Right now, the Cleveland Police Department has 1,242 officers. They want to hire 300 more by the first quarter of next year.

However, that might not be so easy.

On Wednesday, Cleveland City Council members grilled Police Chief Calvin Williams, demanding to know why there aren't enough officers on the streets. The city says it's working to hire more officers. Crime isn't good for business, as they say.

Finding enough good candidates for the Cleveland Police force? Well, it's complicated.

The shooting of an unarmed Walter Scott, caught on camera in South Carolina, is as bad as it gets for police. He was running away, but the officer lied to investigators, saying they got into a struggle.

It's just one of a string of high profile shootings that turned off the public, and potential recruits, according to Richard Myers, Executive Director of the Major Cities Chiefs Association.

"We could be doing everything right locally. And all it takes is one incident half way across the country and half the people in our community think we’re as maligned as a rogue officer fifteen states away," he says.

So now there's a cop crisis across the country, including here in Cleveland.

During a Safety Committee meeting at City Hall today, council members said the shortage is not only killing off residents, but businesses.

"If you're going to be serious about increasing the population of Cleveland, if you're going to be serious about getting investments into the City of Cleveland, then you have to get the policing right,” said Councilman Joseph Jones, who represents Ward 1.

Williams and Mayor Frank Jackson continue to say that they're doing all they can to get police on patrols.

"You cannot manufacture a police officer overnight. Even if we can get them hired in a month, they still have a mandates six month training before they can even hit the streets," Williams told the committee.

The bad press, high number of police fatalities, and an improving economy is making it much harder.

"When the economy is on upswing, it’s tough to compete with the private sector that offers benefits and compensation that government can't offer," said Myers, who is also a former Police Chief.

Some departments have lowered their education requirements, even hiring those with past criminal records. That's something Myers says will backfire in the end.

But others, like the police department in Fort Worth, Texas, have gotten creative with fun recruitment videos like the one below. They've seen a dramatic increase in applicants.

Myers says one of the reasons for the difficulty in recruiting new officers is because today's candidates are just different from the baby boomers who have been retiring from the police force.

"It’s not that they're money hungry. They want balance in their life. Their off-time means something to them. So, we have to change the way we do business," he says.

A lot of people say money is what keeps qualified candidates away from Cleveland. We looked at the numbers.

  • Cleveland police officers make an average of $52,842 dollars a year.
  • Columbus police officers make an average of $583 dollars less, according to salary websites we looked at.

We also checked other major cities nearby, like Pittsburgh, Detroit, and Indianapolis. Those salaries were also comparable to Cleveland.

But it should be noted that Cleveland has a higher crime rate than most of those cities. So, that is certainly part of the problem.

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