Title
Adoption of a Resolution Establishing a Recruitment and Hiring Incentive Policy for Lateral Police Officers in the Alameda Police Department. (Human Resources 2510)
Body
To: Honorable Mayor and Members of the City Council
From: Jill Keimach, City Manager
Re: Adoption of a Resolution Establishing a Recruitment and Hiring Incentive Policy for Lateral Police Officers in the Alameda Police Department
BACKGROUND
Over the last year, the Alameda Police Department (APD) and Human Resource (HR) staff have focused on recruitment efforts to fill vacant police officer positions. The City has run continuous recruitments and attended job fairs and police academies to reach out to candidates. During this time, the City has been able to successfully attract police officer trainees. However, police officer trainees must attend the six month police academy and perform 18 weeks of field training prior to working independently as a patrol officer. As a result, hiring only new officers does not meet the needs of the Department.
The Department has focused significant efforts toward the recruitment of lateral candidates from other law enforcement agencies. Lateral candidates often have many years of experience and can be ready to work independently in less than 18 weeks. However, while the Department does receive applications for lateral candidates, it has been difficult to find qualified candidates who will leave their current agency to join the City due to the loss of benefits such as vacation and sick leave or special pays related to longevity.
In order to become a more attractive choice to lateral candidates, APD and HR have collaborated to develop a policy titled “Recruitment and Hiring Incentives for Lateral Police Officers”. The goal of the policy is to eliminate the benefit and financial barriers that may prevent a trained officer from leaving their existing agency to join the Alameda Police Department.
DISCUSSION
Hiring and retaining qualified police officers has become a challenge for law enforcement agencies both locally and across the nation. Negative attitudes toward policing, the availability of other jobs, the rigorous background requirements, and the demands of the training process have contributed to the hiring and retention difficulty.
HR and APD are working together to continuously improve the recruitment and selection process. The City currently has a continuously open recruitment for lateral police officers and has done significant outreach. In spite of these efforts, the City has been able to hire only one lateral police officer in the past 12 months. As noted above, it takes ten months to educate and train entry-level police officers, so there is an advantage to the organization to be able to hire qualified lateral police officers.
APD currently has ten vacancies for police officer position. There are currently five police officer trainees attending the six-month police academy who will fill five of the ten vacant positions. The five trainees graduate in the spring and will start 18 weeks of field training prior to working independently as a patrol officer. In addition, APD is in need of succession planning for pending retirements. APD will have as many as 14 sworn employees eligible to retire as of December of 2018.
While the City will continue to hire trainees in order to fill vacancies, it is also important that the City be able to fill at least a portion of the vacancies with lateral candidates.
One challenge that lateral police officers face when deciding to make a lateral move is that many benefits are tied to time served as an employee of a particular agency. As such, many law enforcement agencies offer incentives that provide lateral police officers some level of credit for the years they have worked as a police officer in another agency. APD has prepared the proposed incentive program in order to remain competitive for lateral hires.
The proposed policy includes the following provisions to offer lateral police officers:
• higher starting salary, though within the City’s existing pay scale;
• vacation accruals based on years of experience in their previous agency;
• a lump sum of vacation time upon completion of one year of service;
• service credit towards retention pay; and
• front loading of accrued sick leave.
These incentives are very similar to what is provided to lateral transfers by other law enforcement agencies.
The Department also recognizes that existing employee referrals can be one of the most effective methods for recruiting officers from other jurisdictions. In order to take advantage of this, the proposed policy includes a hiring incentives for current APD sworn staff who recruit qualified lateral polices officers. Existing police officers who recruit a qualified lateral police officer will receive two days of vacation after the new officer has successfully completed their 18 month probationary period.
The proposed policy recognizes that the job market may change in the future or the City’s recruiting needs may change and, therefore, there is a provision to review the need for the hiring incentives on an annual basis.
While vacation accruals and retention pay may be expedited for a lateral transfer, seniority for vacation bidding, other seniority calculations or retiree health would be the same as if they were a new hire.
Staff have met with the Alameda Police Officers Association about this policy and received their support.
The full Recruitment and Hiring Incentive policy is included as Exhibit 1.
FINANCIAL IMPACT
Currently, the City pays approximately $44,000 to sponsor a new police recruit at the police academy. This includes the City’s share of the cost of the academy ($4,000). While the cost of the Police Academy is $5,000 the Peace Officer Standards and Training (POST) Commission pays $1,000 of the cost. The City then pays $40,000 for salary, benefits, and uniform costs while the recruit is in the Academy. Upon the completion of the academy the recruit will spend 18 weeks working side by side with another officer. The recruit will then be allowed to work independently.
While the hiring incentive does allow for a higher starting salary and expedited retention pay, the other incentives are focused on increased vacation and sick leave benefits. Sick leave is not paid out at termination so the only cost associated with front loading sick leave would be if overtime was needed to cover the employees absence. While vacation would be paid out at termination, the employee would only be paid out what they had accrued at the time of separation.
The maximum credit a lateral transfer would receive would be ten years of service credit. The estimated cost of the higher starting salary and retention pay would be approximately $24,000 in the first year of employment for a lateral with ten or more years of experience.
Also, included in the hiring incentive is an employee referral incentive of two vacation days if the recommended candidate completes their probationary period. This incentive would be cashed out only if the officer was unable to use the two vacation days during the fiscal year.
MUNICIPAL CODE/POLICY DOCUMENT CROSS REFERENCE
There is no Municipal Code/policy document cross-reference.
ENVIRONMENTAL REVIEW
This action is exempt from the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA) because it is not a project which has a potential for resulting in either a direct physical change in the environment, or a reasonably foreseeable indirect physical change in the environment, CEQA Guidelines, section 15378(b)(5).
RECOMMENDATION
Adopt a Resolution establishing a Recruitment and Hiring Incentive Policy for lateral police officers in the Alameda Police Department.
Respectfully submitted,
Paul Rolleri, Chief of Police
Nancy Bronstein, Director of Human Resources
Financial impact section reviewed,
Elena Adair, Finance Director
Exhibit:
1. Recruitment and Hiring Incentive Policy