HPD’s multi-faceted attempt to address increasing crime and decreasing manpower may soon include luring police officers away from other Texas police departments:
“I’m sorry. it’s business,” said Lt. Kenneth Miller of the Houston Police Department’s human resources division, which finds it cheaper and more efficient to hire certified peace officers from other cities instead of finding and training raw recruits. “We need good applicants, and if someone wants to come here (from another department), we’d be foolish not to take them. If someone were recruited here, we certainly wouldn’t be offended.”
A Houston City Council committee takes up the issue today with a planned discussion about authorizing HPD to begin offering in-state police officers a $7,000 bonus to make the move to Houston and enroll in a 12-week modified entry academy class that starts in March.
One problem that has HPD at a disadvantage is the pay:
[Miller] acknowledged, however, that HPD’s starting salary could be a step down for some people coming from other large departments. An HPD officer in his first full year makes a minimum of $36,022, less than base salaries in Dallas, San Antonio and Austin.
But the Austin Police Department, which pays its first-year officers almost $9,000 more than Houston does, has its own problems. Despite its attractive salary, the department has been struggling to keep its manpower at full force and has spent heavily on overtime — a familiar situation in Houston.
On to Sedosi who has his own thoughts on why police departments are having trouble recruiting good candidates:
Minority activists have painted the police as the enemy to its constituency, leading to the formation of a chasm of distrust between minority citizen’s and the police that are charged to protect them. Selective enforcment of laws, miles of red-tape and bueracratic entanglements (not to mention the ever-looming threat of a lawsuit) have made it near impossible for police to fight crime and protect the citizens as is their charge.
There are now people walking around with video cameras in an attempt to capture “police violence” on a daily basis. Never mind that these “activists” very seldom are present to capture on tape the violent acts commited by the criminals which leads to the violent arrest. That’s a problem for other’s to figure out.
And then we sit and wonder why our children don’t want to be police any longer?
